Infernal Hulk vs. Wolverine #1 Review: Claws Out, Hell Open

WEPAAAA! Marvel said Infernal Hulk vs. Wolverine and I already knew nobody was coming to this joint to discuss their feelings over coffee. Phillip Kennedy Johnson throws Logan straight into the nightmare that has been building around the Infernal Hulk, and what could have been twenty pages of claws versus gamma meat actually has enough horror, character and ugly little surprises under the hood to make this feel like more than a pit stop on the road to Hulk War. It is violent as hell when it needs to be, but the book works because the violence has a purpose. Wolverine is hunting missing mutants. Something has been done to them. Logan takes that personally, and once he gets the scent, everybody involved is about to have a very bad night.

The setup is clean. Mutants have disappeared, including Glob Herman and Jamie Madrox the Multiple Man, and the X-Men have a lead on where they may have ended up. Wolverine goes in because, c’mon, who else are you sending into a situation involving kidnapped mutants, body horror and a Hulk possessed by the Eldest? Logan moves through this issue like a hunter who already knows the woods are wrong. Johnson does not waste time pretending Wolverine is confused about what kind of mission this is. He knows people are suffering, he knows the thing responsible is somewhere nearby, and his entire strategy is basically find them first, survive whatever comes second.

Where Johnson gets smart is in how he uses Logan’s healing factor. Wolverine stories can get lazy with that power real quick. Stab him, burn him, break him, wait five minutes, repeat. Here the damage becomes part of the horror. Jonas Scharf makes every bite, tear, impact and disgusting transformation feel physical, and Logan’s ability to survive only means the book gets permission to put him through worse. You can almost hear the bones complaining. When the Infernal Hulk finally starts making his presence felt, the fight does not read like two action figures being smashed together. Logan looks small next to this thing, and that scale difference gives the whole encounter a nasty edge.

And yo, Jonas Scharf came to work. The opening pages establish the hunt with heavy shadows, moonlight and silhouettes before the book starts revealing the creatures hiding inside that darkness. His Infernal Hulk is not just Hulk with a spooky paint job. The body feels swollen, corrupted and wrong, with that grin doing half the psychological damage before a fist ever lands. Scharf also keeps Wolverine compact and aggressive. Logan crouches, lunges, twists and attacks from ugly angles, so even when he is badly outmatched physically, the choreography never makes him feel passive. He is getting wrecked, sure, but he is always looking for the next opening.

Alex Guimarães pushes that artwork even harder with color. The issue spends a lot of time in cold blues and blackened nighttime tones, which makes the Infernal Hulk’s toxic greens look absolutely foul when they start bleeding into the page. Then the book detonates into hotter yellows, reds and supernatural pinks as the situation escalates. That contrast gives the action an actual visual progression instead of every page screaming at the same volume. There is a sequence late in the issue where the palette practically blows the doors off the comic, and because the earlier pages were willing to stay dark and controlled, that explosion lands exactly the way it should.

Johnson also remembers something important about Wolverine: underneath all the stabbing, Logan gives a damn. The missing mutants are not just bait to get him into a Hulk fight. His reaction to what has happened to them gives the story its anger. That is the part that keeps the book from becoming empty spectacle. Logan has seen people turned into weapons before, he has been used as one himself, and you can feel that history underneath the way he responds here without Johnson stopping the comic for a five-page Wolverine biography. If you know Logan, it is there. If you do not, the scene still works.

The actual clash delivers, although I would not call this the definitive Hulk versus Wolverine throwdown some readers might expect from the title. This is a bridge into something bigger, and Marvel is not exactly hiding that with “March to Hulk War” stamped all over the book. A chunk of the issue is setup, rescue and escalation before the heavy hitters truly collide. Normally that kind of event plumbing can make a one-shot feel like homework, but Johnson keeps the immediate mission strong enough that the issue has its own reason to exist. You get a beginning, a nasty middle, a real confrontation and a final turn that pushes the larger story forward.

VC’s Cory Petit keeps a busy issue moving without letting balloons smother Scharf’s art. There are monster sounds, Wolverine grunts, impacts and plenty of ugly noise flying around these pages, but the lettering stays readable even when the action gets chaotic. That becomes especially important once the book starts stacking bodies, transformations and powers into the same sequences. Nic Klein’s cover sells exactly what is inside too: Logan in the middle of a fight he absolutely should not enjoy, with the Infernal Hulk looking like somebody took gamma radiation and taught it how to hate.

My biggest knock is that the book sometimes feels caught between being its own Wolverine-versus-Hulk event and being Chapter Zero-point-something of Hulk War. The ending makes the larger machinery very obvious, and readers who have not been following Johnson’s Hulk material may need a minute to understand exactly how far Bruce Banner and the Hulk have been ripped apart. The recap does its job, but there is a lot of mythology packed behind the monster throwing hands with Logan. Still, once the claws come out, Scharf and Guimarães make sure the comic never feels like a damn instruction manual.

Infernal Hulk vs. Wolverine #1 knows why we showed up and gives us the fight, but the reason I dug it is everything wrapped around that fight. There is mutant horror here, some genuinely grotesque imagery, a Wolverine who feels like Wolverine, and an Infernal Hulk that looks like a problem the entire Marvel Universe should be worried about. Johnson is clearly moving pieces toward Hulk War, but this one-shot has enough blood in its veins to stand on its own. Logan walks into hell because somebody has to, the Hulk waiting for him is no longer playing by Banner’s rules, and by the end you can see the bigger war coming over the horizon. Yeah. This is about to get stupid ugly. WEPA!

CRUSADERS SCORE: 4/5

TEAM CREDITS:
Writer: Phillip Kennedy Johnson
Artist: Jonas Scharf
Color Artist: Alex Guimarães
Letterer: VC’s Cory Petit
Cover Artist: Nic Klein
Associate Editor: Martin Biro
Editor: Mark Paniccia
Editor in Chief: C.B. Cebulski
Publisher: Marvel Comics
On Sale: September 23, 2026
Reviewed by: Al Mega