Hello kiddies! Welcome to Creator Affinity, a new segment where we highlight a creator, his/her books and what is liked about their creations. Today, I will talk about Greg Pak. Ah, yes! Greg Pak, one of my favorites. When I think of this dude, the first book that comes to mind is World War Hulk. Who would have thought that this New York Writer/Director could give us such great stories and give a major character boost to some of oldest and sometimes minor characters in Marvel.
Pak
became very popular for his X-men story titled “Phoenix: End Song.” A five part miniseries about Jean Grey and
The Phoenix Force in which the Shi’ar tried to resurrect the Phoenix in an
attempt to destroy The Phoenix once and for all. Their attempt was unsuccessful and the
Phoenix escapes to Earth and resurrects Jean Grey. The book was very successful
and it gave a different twist to Jean Grey and the Phoenix. With the success of this book, Pak wrote a
sequel called “Phoenix: Warsong.”
Besides
writing X-men stories, Greg Pak is probably best known for his World War Hulk
storyline. In this storyline, which was one of Marvel’s
summer events, Hulk decides to plan his revenge against Earth. In particular, his revenge revolved around the
members of the Illuminati. The Illuminati are a brain trust of the Marvel
Universes’ most intelligent men: Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, Prof. X, Namor, and
Dr. Strange. These men were involved in
some of Marvel’s most important decisions of their time including sending their
friend Bruce Banner into space because of Hulk’s threat to Earth. 
One by one, Hulk
seeks revenge after each of the Illuminati members. Hulk’s tactics towards capturing
the members ranged from using smarts to brute strength. Once he seized his enemies, he tortured
them. Throughout all of this revenge,
Hulk doesn’t realize that in actuality, he was a pawn in the revenge plot of a “new
space friend” he had found from the planet he was outcast to. What I liked about this book was how well Pak
goes about explaining how Hulk took out each of the members of the Illuminati,
thus giving Hulk a hint of intelligence when executing his revenge plots. He
also shows us how Hulk and the Sentry are very similar in a lot of ways.
Another
book that Pak is best known for was The Incredible Hercules. This is probably my favorite read from Pak. At
first, the thought of having two minor characters like Hercules and Cho starring
in a major title may be a bad idea, but ohh man! Pak makes these two characters
likeable and very different form each other.
On one side, you find that Hercules is trying to make peace with Shield. On the other, we have Cho who only seeks to
bring down Shield. The Ying-Yang effect
of these two characters make this book read like a buddy cop comedy. Pak did an amazing job in bringing depth to
the Hercules character. Not only is he a
butt kicking god, but he can reason with people in order to get the job done:
an attribute not commonly found in Hercules.
Recently, Pak has been working at Chaos War, a five part mini series where Hercules and Amadeus Cho lead the god Squad group: Hulk and friends, Alpha Flight, and the surviving Dead Avengers to fight Amatsu-Mikaboshi and his forces. And just this year, Marvel announced that Pak will be writing a new Silver Surfer comic which launched on February 16th. I hope that this story is just as good as Pak’s other stories and that he gives the Surfer a new layer in his character.