Collects World War Hulk 1-5, World War Hulk: Aftersmash, Planet Hulk Saga, Marvel Spotlight: World War Hulk.

Writer: Greg Pak
Artists: John Romita JR, Klaus Janson, Rafa Sandoval, Vincet Cifuentes.

The core Illuminati (Tony Stark, Black Bolt, Reed Richards, and Dr. Strange) send Hulk away from Earth into an alien planet. After a lot of (interesting looking) adventures there, Hulk and his warband return to Earth to punish the people who sent him away. He also thinks that the Illuminati are to blame for a bomb which exploded on the alien planet killing millions of people, including Hulk’s pregnant (alien) wife. Now, Hulk wants revenge!

So, he kicks the crap out of most of Avenger’s heavy weights (the X-Men and Thor are missing and so is Hercules from the initial fighting, although Herc is seen in the aftersmash). Dr. Strange even making himself grow in size and strength and try to defeat Hulk. Only the Sentry refuses to engage him. Not because Hulk and Sentry are friends (which they are) but because Sentry’s agoraphobia is acting up and he can’t leave his house.

(Who is Sentry?? Another very powerful generic white guy made marginally more interesting by his mental difficulties. He was in the Avengers for a while but apparently not any longer.)

In the aftersmash we get to see S.H.I.E.L.D. director Tony and his pals Hercules, Misty Knight, Spider-Man, the Thing, and Luke Cage clean up Manhattan.

Lots of stuff was borrowed from this story to the new Thor: Ragnarok movie, such as some of Hulk’s warband and the whole Gladiator thing.
Unfortunately, once again the some of the smartest men in Marvel universe are behaving really, really stupidly. The next expansion to Marvel’s collectable card game Legendary is based on this comic and it seems to have a lot of playable characters which aren’t shown anywhere else, so I ended up reading this. A few hours of mindless violent fun, but I don’t really care to see Reed behaving so thoughtlessly. (With Tony, I’m already used to it.)