WARNING: The following contains crucial plot details for Immortal Hulk #3 by Al Ewing and Joe Bennett, on sale now.


Something funky is going on with gamma irradiated people in the Marvel Universe. Al Ewing and Joe Bennett’s Immortal Hulk #3 drives home that fact by reintroducing two classic Hulk villains, Hotshot and Jailbait, both of whom are seemingly suffering from a familiar delusion.

You could be forgiven if you don’t recognize the names, though. Hotshot and Jailbait are both classic, though minor, villains from Hulk’s lengthy history. The duo gets reimagined in Immortal Hulk #3 in some very experimental ways, and, unfortunately for them, the results are downright grisly. So, who are these two and what’s their history with Hulk?

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Most villains take up arms against heroes because they bear a grudge, but in the case of Hotshot and Jailbait (Louis Lembert and Jess Harrison, respectively) they’re really just regular people in a bad situation. Created by Peter David and Todd McFarlane, Hotshot and Jailbait first appeared in Incredible Hulk #345 back in 1988. The two didn’t start off as villains. In fact, they were basically just normal teenagers living in a small town called Middletown. Like most small-town teenagers, they hated living in such an isolated, desolate place and sought to escape their confines. They almost made it, too.

Unfortunately, Middletown happened to be ground zero for one of the Leader’s schemes, which involved encasing the town in a forcefield and irradiating it with a gamma bomb like the kind that created the Incredible Hulk. It’s likely that over 4,000 people died in the explosion, but five miraculously lived on -- only changed.

Those who lived are Burt Horowitz, an encyclopedia salesman who became the super-smart villain Omnibus; Diane Davids, a fed-up defense lawyer who became the super-strong Ogress; Father Jason McCall, a priest who became the necromancer Soul Man; Jess, who became the forcefield-wielder Jailbait; and Louis, the energy beam-firing Hotshot. Together, they joined classic Hulk villains Rock and Redeemer to become the Riot Squad.

It’s hard to hold a grudge against any of these villains because, for the most part, they were kidnapped by the Leader, who turned them into living weapons via mind control. When the Riot Squad eventually shows up again, they’re hardly the kind of snarling, foaming-at-the-mouth villains you would expect.

In Incredible Hulk #366, they tangle with Hulk and knock him down a few pegs, but they appear to only do so at the behest of the Leader. Given how much the Middletown Riot Squad members just wanted to escape their rural confines, it’s hard to believe any of them voluntarily threw down with the Hulk.

The fate of Hotshot and Jailbait prior to Immortal Hulk #3 remains somewhat ambiguous. Up until their most recent appearance, the duo was last seen in Incredible Hulk #464, in which it was revealed that they were defenders of Freehold, the city of great thinkers and gamma-irradiated people created by the Leader.

The Leader envisioned Freehold as a last bastion of humanity capable of conquering the world after an apocalypse. When the Leader died, Omnibus took over the city (though he was operating under the Leader’s psychic orders, as the villain had taken over his mind just prior to death). Hotshot and Jailbait disappeared into the ether -- until now.

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Immortal Hulk #3 reintroduces the duo through a series of experimental, multi-perspective vignettes that explain how a fight between Hulk and Hotshot went down in a South Dakotan church on “Mercer Avenue.” The story is told from the perspectives of a cop, an elderly woman, a bartender and a priest -- and you better believe everyone has their own way of spinning the yarn. Everyone seems to be in agreement about one thing, though, which is that Hotshot showed up at the church demanding the priest do something for his dying girlfriend.

The old woman claims he said, “all I want is to know her immortal soul is saved” even though he “never believed in that stuff before.” The priest is a little less eloquent. He says Hotshot insisted that “the devil” was inside Jailbait, “or something like the devil. Something underneath… below everything.” He says Hotshot demanded an exorcism because “the One Below got into her somehow.” The priest even mentions that Hotshot cited seeing a green door in his dreams, one in the “Below-Place.”

Uh-oh.

Immortal Hulk readers will likely recall Del Frye’s dying words in Issue #2, just after the boy’s father injected him with what was seemingly a gamma-based miracle drug that ended up killing him on the spot. A green ooze began to pour from the boy’s eyes and he claimed he was able to see a green door and that “there’s someone looking through it.”

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Del also volunteered the location of the door before spewing out a thick, green slime: “Below us.” That sounds eerily familiar, and, given the state of Jailbait upon law enforcement’s arrival (her head twisted around and a serene smile on her face), it appears nothing good can come from laying eyes on the green door. The elderly woman recounts Hotshot’s own end after he discovers Jailbait has died. The boy hangs himself in his cell, though she’s not sure how exactly he managed that.

Immortal Hulk #3 is a tragic tale made all the more staggering by the decision to include Hotshot and Jailbait, two people whose lives effectively ended the moment the Leader nuked their town. From living weapons to sad, desperate kids hounded by seemingly supernatural forces, the two escaped Middletown but never actually got to live the lives they wanted -- or anything amounting to a proper life, really. Their sacrifice wasn’t in vain, though, because now the Immortal Hulk has one more clue in the grand puzzle box that is this slowly unfurling Green Door mystery.


One sale now, Immortal Hulk #3 is written by Al Ewing, with art by Joe Bennett, Leonardo Romero, Paul Hornschemeier, Marguerite Sauvage and Garry Brown. Ruy Jose is the issue’s inker. Paul Mounts is the colorist. Cory Petit is the letterer. Alex Ross provides the cover, while Mahmud Asrar and Edgar Delgado illustrated the issue’s variant covers.