Original Sin #3.4/Hulk vs. Iron Man #4 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Despite everything that we've been led to believe over the last three issues, we learn here that Tony didn't create the Hulk.  Sure, he tampered with Bruce's bomb, but he actually discovered that the extra shielding that Bruce had installed to make sure that the bomb didn't kill too many people would've done the exact opposite, since it would've built up too much pressure.  In fact, Tony saved Bruce's life, because the blast with the shields would've killed everyone in the observation bunker.

Technically, Gillen has been pretty careful to make sure that we only ever confirmed that Stark tampered with the bomb throughout this mini-series.  However, it's hard not to feel like he pulled a fast one on us with this revelation, reversing everything that we already seem to know to be true.  On several occasions, Tony has accepted blame for creating the Hulk.  Given the amount of techno mumbo-jumbo that we've seen throughout this series, we've been mostly forced to accept his word for it.  So, it seems weird to learn that he didn't actually mean it.  He learns the truth at the end of last issue, and Gillen seems to want us to believe that the guilt that he feels then comes from the fact that his alcoholism meant that he passed out before he could warn Bruce about the "morphogenic" potential of the bomb.  He instead sends Bruce an e-mail to that effect before he passes out, an e-mail that Bruce didn't read given his fury at Tony.  However, we were clearly led to believe that this guilt came from confirmation that he had, in fact, created the Hulk.  As such, again, it feels cheap when it's implied that the guilt came from Tony's passive, and not active, responsibility in the Hulk's creation.

To make matters worse, I'm extrapolating a bit there.  Tony never exactly says that he still blames himself for not being sober enough to warn Bruce.  I'm just trying to make his guilt at the end of last issue make sense, mostly because I like Gillen and hate to think that he just simply went all soap-opera cliffhanger on us, where everyone comes back Monday to discover that the gunman had no bullets in the gun and the threat is resolved in 30 seconds.  Moreover, it's hard to feel like this passive guilt would've been as extreme as the guilt that we see on Tony's face at the end of last issue when he realized "the truth."  In other words, Gillen and Waid may have overplayed the certainty that we've seen over the last three issues regarding Tony's role in creating the Hulk, because the revelation at the last minute that he didn't create him feels like a ret-con (even after only three issues).

Finally, we also somehow are left with the loose end of the effect that Arno warned the Hulk that the use of Extremis to upgrade him would have.  In other words, despite the talent of both writers involved in this project, it winds up just a mess.

** (two of five stars)