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Review and Media by Amazing Spidey
Episode #24 - Hulkbuster Directed By: Dan Thompson and Bob Arkwright Music By: Keith Emmerson Animation By: Koko Enterprises Guest Starring: Robert Hayes as Iron Man/Tony Stark, Dorian Harewood as James Rhodes, Jennifer Hale as Julia, Ron Pearlman as Bruce Banner/Hulk, Tom Kane as HOMER and Matt Frewer as The Leader. Review: The one and only Iron Man team up episode stands as one of the show’s best. I’m personally glad we didn’t get a lot of guest stars, as they only hinder his ‘lone wolf’ attitude. Thankfully this attitude remains here, as Hulk and Iron Man spend the majority of the episode beating the hell out of each other.I love time travel stories, and this one was a great one to use. I believe this is the first use of Hulk in this continuity, so it's great that we got to see some of his origin. I've always been a sucker for the gamma bomb story, so I was glad to see it here. I thought it was especially cool how they managed to link the story to The Mandarin, as the build up to his return drew came to it’s close and we finally get to see where the story was heading in the following episode. The Hulk faired better he than he did over in Fantastic Four, mainly thanks to a superior design, which actually reminded me of Mark Bagley’s, my favourite comic book artist, rendition of ol’ Jade jaws, which is odd, as he’s only drawn The Hulk a handful of times in his career. Despite the lack of purple pants (boo!) this design fairs better than both his own show’s design, and the aforementioned Fantastic Four design. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Bruce Banner design. For some bizarre reason, Banner is blonde, and it doesn’t suit the character in the slightest. Luckily, he’s only in the episode for a few minutes, before green skin comes in although, we did have to suffer from a terrible “green at the gills” joke, courtesy of Rhodie. The Leader's design, however, was awesome. I always thought The Leader was a mockery of a villain in the Hulk cartoon, but he was ruthless here. His design was also on the creepy side, which really helped. It certainly worked better than the orange and black. I’m still disappointed they neglected to use this and The Hulks designs in his spin off, and that Leader later became something of a joke. Speaking of designs, I loved Iron Man's Hulk Buster suit. You can’t fail with a big ass Iron Man suit. It’s simply a modified version of the suit he used to fight Firepower in Armour Wars, but its still badass. It’s a shame Toy Biz failed to notice this at the time. I especially enjoyed Iron Man reasoning with The Hulk and his attempts to stop Banner being blasted by the gamma bomb. Whilst I enjoyed this episode a great deal, I found its follow up to be slightly superior. Screenshots: 
 
 
 
 
 
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