The Incredible Hulk #474
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeThe Incredible Hulk #474 is the final chapter of a run that stretched from Tales to Astonish #102 in 1968 all the way to March 1999 — more than thirty years of continuous publication under a single title banner, making its conclusion a genuine landmark in Marvel's publishing history. Writer Joe Casey crafted an ending that gave Bruce Banner a moment of hard-won absolution: after consulting the Watcher's Ultimate Machine, Banner confronts General Thunderbolt Ross and is finally released from the guilt and pursuit that had defined the book since its earliest days. The issue's cover is a deliberate visual callback to the very first Incredible Hulk #1 (1962), an act of self-aware closure that frames the entire run as a complete circle rather than a simple cancellation. Marvel immediately relaunched the character the following month as the shorter-titled Hulk #1 with a new creative team, underscoring that the end of this numbering was an editorially intentional reset, not a quiet fade-out.
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Peter David had written the series for twelve years before departing with issue #467 (August 1998) following a creative disagreement with Marvel editorial over the direction of the Hulk following Betty Ross's death; Joe Casey was then assigned to shepherd the book to its conclusion. According to the Marvel Fandom wiki's retelling of the story's own meta-fictional framing device, Casey was not originally planning a series-finale story — editor Matt Idelson called him to request a suitably grand send-off, and Casey worked with the narrative threads already in motion to deliver a closing chapter. The issue shipped in January 1999 with a March 1999 cover date and was edited by Matt Idelson, with interior art by penciller Javier Pulido and inker Sean Parsons — the same team Casey had used for much of his brief run — and coloring by Marie Javins.
Trivia · 9 facts
- Final issue of The Incredible Hulk's volume that ran continuously (as Tales to Astonish, then as its own title) from 1968 through March 1999 — over thirty years of publication.
- Written by Joe Casey; pencilled by Javier Pulido; inked by Sean Parsons; colored by Marie Javins; lettered by John Workman; edited by Matt Idelson.
- The cover is a direct homage to the cover of The Incredible Hulk #1 (May 1962), bookending the entire run visually.
- Story title is 'The Great Astonishment — Conclusion: It's All True!'; Bruce Banner and the alien Qnax enter the Watcher's Ultimate Machine to learn the deepest truths of their lives.
- The Abomination confronts General Ross and confirms he was responsible for poisoning and killing Betty Ross (an event that occurred in Incredible Hulk #466); this storyline thread is resolved here as both Banner and Ross reach a form of reckoning.
- The issue includes a bonus interview with incoming creative team John Byrne and Ron Garney, previewing the relaunched Hulk #1 (1999) that debuted the following month.
- Joe Casey's closing dedication page reads: 'Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Bobbie Chase, & Peter David … Architects Never Forgotten.'
- The issue has been reprinted twice in collected editions: in the Incredible Hulk Epic Collection Vol. 24: The Lone and Level Sands (2023, collecting #460–474 plus annuals) and in the Incredible Hulk by Byrne & Casey Omnibus (2024, collecting #468–474 alongside the 1999 Hulk relaunch issues and related annuals).
- Both a standard direct-edition and a newsstand edition were published.
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