Red Hulk #2
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeRed Hulk #2 (2025) is the second chapter of Thunderbolt Ross's first-ever solo ongoing series, a milestone that arrived at the precise moment the character was making his live-action debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Titled 'The Great Escape,' the issue pivots the series from pure captivity thriller to active-resistance narrative, accelerating the prison-break plot that writer Benjamin Percy had deliberately structured as a long-game war story rather than a conventional superhero slugfest. Its chief creative distinction is the careful assembly of a misfit strike team—Red Hulk, Machine Man (Aaron Stack), Deathlok (Luther Manning), and General Simon Ryker—whose shared roots in military cybernetics give the book a thematic coherence rare for an event tie-in. Within the broader One World Under Doom tapestry, the series stood out among reviewers as one of the few tie-ins that felt genuinely integral to the event's stakes rather than tangential to them.
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The series was conceived by writer Benjamin Percy after learning about the One World Under Doom event, which he immediately associated with Thunderbolt Ross as Doctor Doom's natural first target given Ross's combined military, strategic, and gamma-powered profile. Percy pitched the 'Think Tank' prison premise directly to editor Mark Paniccia, framing the entire run as a war book structured in distinct phases—the first arc modeled on escape-thriller pacing, later arcs escalating into full guerrilla warfare. Percy reunited with artist Geoff Shaw, with whom he had previously collaborated on the 'Sabretooth War' arc in Wolverine (2020) and the Wolverine/Ghost Rider: Weapons of Vengeance crossover; their shared aesthetic of brutal, kinetic linework, colored by Bryan Valenza and lettered by Cory Petit, was a deliberate creative choice to ground the Hulk mythology in the visual grammar of war comics. A prelude story by the same creative team appeared in Incredible Hulk #19, the milestone 800th issue of the Hulk franchise, seeding Ross's covert-mission backstory before the ongoing launched.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Released March 26, 2025 (cover-dated May 2025); the second issue of the first-ever Red Hulk solo ongoing series in Marvel history.
- Story titled 'The Great Escape'; written by Benjamin Percy, with full art (pencils and inks) by Geoff Shaw, colors by Bryan Valenza, and letters by Cory Petit.
- Editors: Mark Paniccia (editor), Drew Baumgartner and Mikey J. Basso (assistant editors); Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski.
- The issue is a tie-in to the 2025 Marvel line-wide event 'One World Under Doom,' in which Doctor Doom has seized the title of Sorcerer Supreme and imposed global dominion.
- Core narrative: Thunderbolt Ross (Red Hulk) stages a breakout from Doom's underground 'Think Tank' prison in Latveria, aided by Machine Man (Aaron Stack), Deathlok (Luther Manning), and General Simon Ryker—all characters with shared roots in military and cybernetic experimentation.
- Doctor Doom appears in this issue in voice only; the primary antagonists in action are his Doombot legion. Fellow prisoners Hugo Perez and Li Wan Tang die during the escape sequence.
- A key plot mechanic established in the preceding issue—Ross's Red Hulk powers fading from prolonged underground confinement—drives the tension of issue #2's escape, culminating (per the Wikipedia summary of the arc) in Ross regaining his powers after exposure to a nuclear explosion.
- The series was preceded by a prelude short story in Incredible Hulk #19, the 800th milestone issue of the Hulk franchise, establishing Ross's covert-mission backstory with the same creative team.
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Reprinted in Red Hulk #1 (2025)
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