This is Bruce Jones’ inevitable Abomination story. Everyone who writes for Hulk for a decent length of time wants to script Abomination.

This one is pretty good.

We still don’t know who is charge of Home Base (it’s Leader–the other Hulk villain everyone wants to write about), the group that is pursuing Bruce Banner, but they sic Abomination at him after putting a bomb in Emil’s head–so that if he doesn’t fight Hulk, they’ll kill him.

Meanwhile, Banner hooks up unknowingly with Blonsky’s ex-GF–seemingly at random. He turns into Hulk and sniffs her.

That’s weird. I mean, is he blowing her boobs?

Nadia believes that Emil is dead. When Bruce reveals himself as Hulk, the two have a deeper bond–but Abomination is still lurking. When the behemoths finally meet–in issue #54–she tries to play peacemaker.

Banner beats Blonsky, in part by playing possum to Abomination, who doesn’t know that Banner and Hulk are now the same.

After he defeats Abomination, Banner leaves Nadia in a hotel room–because he still needs to figure out and stop whoever is running Home Base (again, it’s The Leader)–and a Home Base agent shows up after he leaves…And kills Nadia.

This is another slow-burn story–the kind Jones has been doing for this whole run. Your mileage may vary, but I really like how different his Hulk stories are.