Marvel is launching an all-new Hulk series, and you can read the entire first issue for free. Hulk #1, by writer Chris Condon and artist Alessandro Cappuccio, arrives on 1 May 2027 as Marvel's one and only Comics Giveaway Day title for the year. It's shaping up to be a great time for Hulk fans: a brand-new run that costs nothing? What's not to like.

Mark 1 May 2027 in your diary

Comics Giveaway Day is the yearly event where publishers and comic shops team up to hand out free comics, and IGN describes it as the companion event to Free Comic Book Day. For comic fans it's one of the highlights of the calendar, so it's well worth getting the date down now.

The free copy, with Cappuccio's main cover, will be at participating local comic shops, so check with yours nearer the time. Marvel is also releasing True Believers Blind Bag copies of Hulk #1, plus 20-bag display boxes that each hide a "Gamma Irradiated" glow-in-the-dark variant cover by Patrick Gleason.

Who's making the new Hulk series

Condon and Cappuccio are reuniting after their best-selling run on Ultimate Wolverine, with long-time Hulk editor Mark Paniccia on board too, as The Beat also reports. The new series follows Hulk War: Infernal Rage, the event that wraps up Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Nic Klein's Infernal Hulk saga.

Marvel's teaser is short and sweet: Bruce Banner still carries the curse he has always tried to outrun, and this time he's stopped running from it. Condon told IGN the series is a tribute to everything from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's original debut to Infernal Hulk, before promising that "HULK STILL SMASH".

Hulk #1 True Believers Blind Bag: a riveted steel panel with the Hulk's face in a window and a radiation warning sign
Hulk #1 True Believers Blind Bag. Image Credit: Marvel

Some of the Hulk's greatest comic runs

After more than 60 years of smashing, the Jade Giant hardly needs an introduction, and he has had some properly great runs since Lee and Kirby created him in The Incredible Hulk #1, cover-dated May 1962. If a free first issue gets you hooked, here are a few places to dig in:

  • Peter David's Incredible Hulk: a 12-year run that began with issue #331 in May 1987 and dug deep into Bruce Banner's psychology.
  • Planet Hulk: Greg Pak's 2006 to 2007 epic, in which the Hulk is exiled to the alien world Sakaar and forced to fight as a gladiator. It led straight into World War Hulk.
  • The Immortal Hulk: Al Ewing and Joe Bennett's 50-issue superhero horror series (2018 to 2021), which earned three Eisner Award nominations for Best Continuing Series.
  • Infernal Hulk: Johnson and Klein's current saga, which Marvel calls acclaimed and which sets the stage for this relaunch.

Will you be at your local comic shop on 1 May for a free copy, or hunting down that glow-in-the-dark Gleason variant?