Sensational Comics 26
A Marvelous Tale Told in the Mighty Marvel Manner!
On the Rampage Against the Reds!
The Hulk hit the water and skipped like a massive green stone. She flipped and bounced over the water before sinking. The Leader, unseen by Captain America and the others, sat back and calculated this new development. "Retreat."
The Humanoids, en masse, stopped and left.
"So, a battle with the Hulk could be profitable, but there is a chance of discovery. No, best to leave right now. There will be other chances."
-H
The Hulk, knocked senseless and already tired, passed out as she sank. Betty Ross emerged from the water, soaked, bewildered, and struggling to see land. "What happened?" She tried to tread water, but every muscle was screaming in protest.
A massive dark shape drew closer. Betty's panic increased when she saw the hammer and sickle painted on the tower of the rising submarine. Dozens of men poured out, guns at the ready. An officer stepped forward. He shouted something in Russian. Betty tried to swim away but found her arms little more than numb stumps. The officer drew something from his jacket and tossed it towards her. Before Betty could wonder, the object exploded, sending gas over the water's top.
Betty struggled to swim away but she slipped into darkness. She was dimly aware of being pulled from the water before the blackness swallowed her completely.
As the scene unfolded, a spy plane zoomed by overhead. The entire drama, including Betty being hauled out of the drink and hustled into the sub, was captured on highspeed film. The images were turned over, passing through increasing higher levels of security until a group of men got ahold of them.
"There! Proof that the Hulk can't be trusted!" General Morris thundered.
"Are you out of your mind?" Glen Talbot shook his head. "Ms. Ross was clearly taken by force, not willingly!"
"Doesn't matter. The Hulk isn't perfect and I think we rely too much-" the room grew silent when General Ross entered.
"Gentlemen." He took a seat. "Just got off the horn with the State Department. The Russians deny even being in the area, there is no Hulk and they don't know what we're talking about."
"So we're just leaving her?" Talbot protested.
"I didn't say that. If you think my daughter is going to be helpless, you don't know her very well."
Betty slowly opened her eyes. Her mouth felt like an old sock. She was on a cot, in what was too large to be a cell, but too secured to be a regular room. The only door opened with some protest and a man entered.
"I see you're awake." His words were English, but the accent was pure Russian. His uniform had no insignia, nothing to demote rank, yet Betty had the sense he was higher up on the food chain than the armed men outside. "How are you feeling?"
"Better, but I'd be even better if I knew where I was."
"I'm sure, but that might be a bit difficult. You were rescued by a sub coming here. Your name has been mentioned even here Ms. Ross and I think we have much to offer each other."
Betty sat up, but agonizingly slow. "I'll think about it, but how about some food?"
The man smiled. "I'll see what I can do." He stepped back and left.
Outside, as the massive steel door swung shut and sealed with a hiss, the Commandant turned to the guards. "Guard her with your life. You" he pointed to the closer guard, "I want her room pumped with nitrous oxide, 40 percent."
"Laughing gas? But sir, we pumped her full of tranquilizers before we put her in there." The guard regretted his action as the Commandant glared at him.
"I know, we pumped enough chemicals in her to kill a bull and she's almost awake. No, she stays drugged or I'll put you in there with her."
The Commandant made his way to the base's other guests. The group, dubbed the Soviet Super Soldiers by the Party, had been ordered there. Whatever their original mission had been he hadn't been told, but now their goal was simple-keep the Hulk under lock and key.
"If we can't get her to defect, at least figure out her power" the Commandant recalled the orders.
"Easier said than done comrade." He stepped onto the balcony overlooking the base's courtyard as the pride of Russian science practiced out in the open. He ran over their abilities as practiced before the base personal.
The Red Guardian, in a bright red and white costume, threw a shield against a group of dummies. The Commandant remembered the first man to wear the costume. Was he purged or did he become the Red Skull? He couldn't recall. The new Guardian was acceptable. A pilot, he thought, but at least someone who knew how to throw a punch.
The next figure of attention was a bear. Ursa Major, although the Commandant wasn't sure if that was his actual rank or name. Was Captain America a real captain? The giant bear walked on two legs and effortlessly lifted cement blocks like they were paperweights.
The next figure was an equally massive figure, almost as big as the bear. He said his name was Perun. Bare chested and with a massive axe, he looked every bit like the god of thunder. "Utter nonsense." The Commandant uttered under his breath. "The Americans have a thunder god, so we have to have one?"
The other figure was stretched out and disassembled. The Crimson Dynamo was disassembled as the pilot tinkered on the bright red armor with help from the motor pool. "Better than that fool Titanium Man…"
He knew there were other members of the team, but they had gone ahead to Moscow. "So, we break one monster with others?" He shook his head. "Better to wipe them all out now, like what we did with the mutants."
Betty was dragged from her cell. Her head was still fuzzy, but as her mind cleared, she was taken to another part of the base.
The Commandant stood before her. "Greetings Ms. Ross. Now, if you're about to change into the Hulk and escape, let me explain why that would bad."
He stepped aside as she was ushered into a massive underground complex. "Here is what you would call a 'think tank'. All the radicals, rebels, and malcontents. If you change-we kill them."
She was half pushed/half shoved towards a small corner. "Professor Stromm here will be overseeing you. Do well and you'll be rewarded." She collapsed in a nearby chair. "Fail and we shoot him."
Stromm nodded and started to check her vitals as the guards left. Her eyes snapped open as she felt a cuff being wrapped around her arm. "What are you doing?" her voice was still slurred.
"Merely checking your vitals." Stromm was a gaunt figure, more a scarecrow than man. "Your pulse is going up."
Betty started to force herself to calm. Stromm nodded. He scribbled a few notes and went back to another table. "Aren't you worried? About whatever or not I'll change?"
Stromm lit a foul smelling cigarette. It was already bent. "Not really. You think I fear being shot?"
"No, but what about your friends?"
"Never had any before, don't need them now." He gestured to a small pile of notes and books. "I'm a geophysicist by trade. Not sure what they expect me to do with you."
"I think they want you to copy me, make more Hulks."
"Isn't one enough?" Stromm tried to straighten his greasy flowing locks of grey.
"Funny" Betty felt strength coming back to her limbs. She stood, somewhat shakily, and made her way over to Stromm's workplace.
"I suspect the drugs they gave you are slowing down your change. Probably shuffled us off to this part of the prison just in case." Betty listened to him talk, but it was like hearing a lecture while underwater.
"I can't and won't help." Betty tried to sound defiant, but her voice was slurred and her lips drooping.
Stromm shrugged his shoulders. "Then don't. They were going to shoot me anyway, so your actions are meaningless."
Betty stumbled around the lab. Stromm casually walked over and slipped something into her hand. She felt a rattle of something small. "Pills?" her hand felt too fuzzy to control. She gripped her fist as tight as she could make it, so as not to lose whatever her gift was.
"Enough!" the Commandant burst into the room, a massive bear walking on its hind legs behind him. "Stromm, if you can't induce some manners in our guest, I'll put her in solitary. Ursa Major, take her to the special wing."
"Well, now I know I'm drugged." Betty giggled as the bear, who looked grumpier than a usual bear, dragged her off.
The bear tossed her into a small cell and closed the door. It grumbled something, but Betty wasn't sure if that was Russian or just how bears talked. Slinking to the floor, she forced her hand open. "Pills?"
She popped all of them in her mouth and swallowed. If it was poison, she'd be denying the Reds a weapon. If not, then she couldn't be in any worse position.
Her heart started to hammer. Her entire body started to shake as the drugs burned out of her system. Her eyes glowed a brilliant jade that lit up the entire cell as the corners of her mouth jerked upwards. "Now this is interesting!"
The Commandant glowered at Stromm. "You had one job!"
"Which I'm not qualified to do." Stromm lit another cigarette off the old one. "I did exactly as you asked, yet she refused. What was I supposed to do?"
"If she wouldn't willingly help, then play on her sympathy!"
"Then you should have sent a puppy."
The entire base shuddered. The Commandant went pale. "What was that?"
Stromm grinned. "I'd say she took those pep pills I'd been hording." The Commandant went paler. He rushed to the hall, shouting orders to the returning Ursa Major.
"Round up all your men, fight!" The base shook again. The bear nodded and left.
The Hulk easily tore through walls. Men scattered before her before a voice called out. "Halt monster!"
The Hulk stopped and turned. There was red and white clad man with a shield, a shirtless man with an axe, and the bear.
"The Red Guardian will stop you!" the lead man chucked his shield at her. She easily caught it and snapped it in half. She turned her back to them and started to focus on smashing more walls when the axe hit her in the head.
She was rattled but unhurt. "You stopped Perun's axe?" the shirtless man gasped.
The Hulk drew her foot up and slammed it down on the blade. Much to her shock it didn't break but she wasn't hurt either. She kicked it aside. She knocked down the wall before her as the bear leaped on her back and wrapped both its massive arms around her.
"Hold her Ursa Major!" the Red Guardian shouted as he picked up the broken shield.
The Hulk snorted and jumped. They smashed through the ceiling and sailed high into the sky. They went straight up. The higher they went, the looser Ursa Major's grip became until he slipped free and fell back. The Hulk reached out and grabbed him.
She landed some distance outside, a man wearing tattered pants in her arms. Curious, she gently put him down in the snow as she heard troops rushing towards her.
The Commandant, flanked on every side by troops, held in his hands a large object that looked vaguely like a pistol if Reed Richards had reassembled a broken one on a drunken dare. He barked a few orders in Russian and fired.
The Hulk casually walked away but the beam from the gun struck her in the shoulder and sent her flying. Crashing through the fence, she felt the burned flesh. The Hulk roared in anger as she climbed to her feet. "You hurt Hulk?"
The Commandant tried to steady his gun for another shot but his hands shook too much.
Stromm, with a knapsack stuffed with equipment and supplies slung over his shoulder, slipped out through one of the many massive holes and eyed the frozen wastes around him. "What was I thinking?"
He heard the Hulk roar. "Eh, might as well try another chance."
Stromm found the Hulk swaying on her feet. Her arm hung limply at her side as she trashed around. "Hulk!"
The jade giantess stopped and looked at him. He recalled the reports of her being little more than a wild animal, but at that moment he hoped they were wrong. "I can help you. Get us out of here and I can help!" The Hulk nodded and picked him up with her good arm before leaping away.
The Commandant watched the pair leap away and vanished over the horizon. He turned to the assembled troops. "Tanks! Now!"
He marched back towards his office, the fancy weapon in his hand smoking. He tossed aside the sparking thing melting a hole in the snow. "You!" he shouted to an approaching trooper. "Get me that proton gun from the second level lab. I'll hunt this monster down myself!"
The Hulk landed some miles away. She collapsed into the snow, steam rising off her wound. "Tired…"
"I know but stay awake please." Strom started to dress the wound. The skin was badly burned. "I know what was in those labs. If anything can kill you, I'm sure its there. We have to keep moving."
The end
Based on "On the Rampage Against the Reds!" which was first published in Tales to Astonish I#65 (March 1965) with credits to Stan Lee (script), Steve Ditko (pencils), Dick Ayres (colors), and Sam Rosen (letters)
Next issue, The Power of the Hulk!
Mighty Marvel Checklist
The Avengers#13-This Hostage Earth!
Tales to Astonish#25-A Voice in the Dark!
Journey into Mystery#27-Every Hand Against Her!
Amazing Fantasy#18-The Wild Hunt!
Giant-Size Avengers#2-The Monstrous Master Plan of the Mandarin!
