What If? Planet Hulk #1

History

The one-shot was published on October 24, 2007, as a direct companion piece to World War Hulk — the crossover event that concluded Pak's Planet Hulk narrative — and was edited by Mark Paniccia with Nathan Cosby as assistant editor under editor-in-chief Joe Quesada. Pak was the sole writer on all three stories, with interior art divided among Leonard Kirk, Rafa Sandoval, and Fred Hembeck, while Planet Hulk series artist Carlo Pagulayan provided the cover. The third and shortest story, illustrated by Hembeck in his characteristically cartoony style, was explicitly played for satirical laughs — an unusual tonal choice in a landscape dominated by grim alternate-universe tales — and at one page in length became something of a punchline punchcard for the entire issue. The issue was timed to ride the commercial momentum of the World War Hulk event and gave Pak, still mid-run on Hulk titles, a sandbox in which the concept of Hulk and Caiera having a surviving child could be floated before committing it to main continuity.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published as a one-shot (on-sale October 24, 2007; cover-dated December 2007) by Marvel Comics, clocking in at 39 pages — oversized for a standard single issue of the era.
• Written entirely by Greg Pak, the same writer who crafted both the original Planet Hulk storyline and World War Hulk, giving the alternate-history tales an unusual degree of authorial continuity with their source material.
• Interior art was divided among three pencillers: Leonard Kirk (Story 1 — 'What If the Hulk Died and Caiera Lived?'), Rafa Sandoval (Story 2 — 'What If the Hulk Landed on a Peaceful Planet?'), and Fred Hembeck (Story 3 — 'What If Bruce Banner Landed on Sakaar?' — a one-page satirical piece). Cover art by Carlo Pagulayan.
• First appearance of Skaar, son of the Hulk and Caiera the Oldstrong — depicted in an alternate-reality context in the 'Caiera Lived' story, drawn by Rafa Sandoval, set 21 years after Caiera's conquest of Earth. This appearance predates Skaar's Earth-616 debut in World War Hulk #5 (January 2008).
• Story 1 presents Caiera — empowered by absorbing all of Sakaar's Old Power energy — invading Earth, killing the Illuminati and other major heroes (including Reed Richards, Iron Man, Doctor Strange, and the Sentry), and enslaving humanity beneath her rule.
• Story 2 explores the Hulk landing on the peaceful planet originally intended by the Illuminati, depicting a centuries-long evolution of that world's civilization that treats the Hulk as a near-mythological figure — one of the few What If? tales of this era to offer a genuinely hopeful resolution.
• Story 3 — the Bruce Banner-on-Sakaar segment — is a single-page comedic strip by Fred Hembeck in which Banner (and every hero sent to investigate) is killed instantly upon arrival on the savage planet, an explicit genre parody within the anthology.
• The issue has been reprinted twice: first in What If?: Civil War (Marvel, 2008) and later collected in the Hulk: Planet Hulk Omnibus (Marvel, 2017), which gathered the full scope of the Planet Hulk narrative including Fantastic Four #533–535 and Incredible Hulk #88–105.

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