Incredible Hulk: The End #1

History

The comic is a direct adaptation of Peter David's prose short story 'The Last Titan,' which he originally wrote for the 1998 Marvel fiction anthology The Ultimate Hulk (Berkley Publishing Group), with contributions acknowledged in the printed credits to Stan Lee and Keith DeCandido of Byron Preiss Media. When Marvel launched its 'The End' line of prestige-format one-shots in the early 2000s under editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, David revisited that prose framework and translated it into sequential art alongside Dale Keown — the Canadian artist who had drawn 27 issues of Incredible Hulk alongside David in the early 1990s and whose visual interpretation of the character remained definitive for many fans. The book was edited by Bobbie Chase, with Tom Brevoort co-editing, and shipped on June 26, 2002, with an August 2002 cover date; it was produced on card-stock covers with glossy interiors and clocked in at 47 pages — a prestige squarebound format that set it apart from standard monthly fare.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Written by Peter David and penciled by Dale Keown, with inks by Joe Weems and John Livesay, colors by Avalon Studios' Dan Kemp, and letters by John Workman — the full creative credits confirmed by Marvel's own issue page.
• Published on-sale June 26, 2002 (cover-dated August 2002) as a 47-page squarebound prestige one-shot with card-stock covers and glossy interiors.
• Set on Earth-2081, the story follows a Bruce Banner estimated to be over 200 years old — the last human alive after a global nuclear holocaust — whose repeated suicide attempts are thwarted by the Hulk, who refuses to relinquish existence.
• The issue was the first entry in Marvel's 'The End' publishing line, a series of non-canon one-shots depicting potential final stories for major Marvel characters.
• The story is adapted from David's own prose short story 'The Last Titan,' originally published in the 1998 Hulk fiction anthology The Ultimate Hulk (Berkley Publishing Group).
• The issue won the Wizard Fan Award for Favorite One-Shot of 2002.
• The book has been reprinted multiple times: in Giant-Size Hulk #1 (2006), Hulk: Future Imperfect Second Edition (2015), Incredible Hulk by Peter David Omnibus Vol. 5 (2023), and the Marvel: The End Omnibus (2024).
• The narrative contains deliberate callbacks to David's 12-year Incredible Hulk run, including references to the Grey Hulk's 'Joe Fixit' Las Vegas era and the character of the Maestro, functioning as a retrospective on the David era as a whole.

Full credits