So after a long time I sat down and revisited "World War Hulk" a Marvel crossover from 2007, that was sort of mixed bag. The story had some interesting aspects, especial the Hulk having a clobber fest but it didn't have much of story or plot, you can finish the Trade Paper Back in less than a half of an hour. Now the thing was when I revisited this comic a couple of weeks ago, I actually found a ton of parallelisms to Donald Trump's rise to political power and how he completely hijacked of United States of America's political system.
Now to start off I'll give you guys a brief summary of this crossover so you can understand what the hell I'm talking about later. To start off, Hulk has returned to Earth, and he's pist off. But what happened? Where was he? Why is he crazy mad? Well a group of superheroes, that form an elite within the Marvel community, called the Illuminati (Iron Man, Reed Richards, Doctor Strange, and Blackbolt) shot Hulk into out space. ¿Why? well because he had become too much of a problem, every time he flipped out there was a danger of him leveling a city. So Hulk landed on the planet Sakaar and the whole "Planet Hulk" took place, but seemingly the Illuminati screwed Hulk again blowing up the world that he made his home (or scorching a good part of it) and killing his new wife, Caiera.
At the start of the crossover, the Hulk and his new buddies the War Bound have arrived on Earth with one thing on their mind, to take vengeance on the Illuminati, to make them pay. Hulk clobbers just about every hero and fights Sentry to a standstill when Hulk discovers that the explosion on Sakaar wasn't the Illuminati's fault but Mek's, one of the Warbound who had his own agenda in manipulating Hulk into his clobber fest.
So now let's start off with the nitty and the gritty, what does the comic have to do with the Trump political phenomena. Well to start off Hulk returns from exile, he had been operating outside of the regular Marvel universe, and when he arrives, he stops everything in its tracks. Now Trump was not in any political exile, but basically, he came out of nowhere redefining American politics and literally rewriting rules to the political game. It felt like the gloves were off when he started to battle it out in the Republican primaries, political correctness was Trump first casualty in his race to the White House, in the same way that Hulk wanted to punish the Illuminati. He entered totally out of the traditional political system and structure, and his arrival much like the Hulk's establishes a before and after, both becoming the absolute center of everything. Even Trumps brash style of politics, the centers around confrontation, bravado and oversimplifying the problem at hand, much in the same way Hulk basically sets out to resolve his problems punching everything in sight.
The Illuminati from my point of view play the role of the traditional political establishment and the way they freak out on the arrival of the Hulk is priceless, just in the same way Republicans and Democrats spaz out in how to digest the coming of Trump in the political theater. Hulk is called the World Breaker, Trump from my point of view Party Breaker, he has left the US political system in shambles.We can only imagine the amount of damage control there was in both parties after trumps victory in last years election.
In the climax of the story, Hulk is about to give retribution to the Illuminati, he has ordinary people they explain that they have the grievances with the superhero community, to explain why they feel that superheroes fail them. They tell the captured that every time they save the day the collateral damage for normal people is terrible, while the heroes fly off to the next crisis, not really caring for ordinary people. So regular people favor Hulk because he's going to put the heroes back in their place, they will not be collateral anymore. Now here is where Trump's genius is found, his opportunism border on a superhuman level, he understood how the political establishment had failed for large parts of American society and just fanned the flames like no other, he's like a used car salesman from hell. His election is a validation of the discourse to drain the swamp but also a slap on the wrist to traditional political parties. Even the way the that Hulk supporters in the comic, fit the setreotype of a typical Trumpettir.
Hulk introduced the Warbound as a new elite of heroes, which have little to no experience in this field and their personal agendas start to get in the way, like what happens with the Brood Queen or with Mek. The same thing has happened with most of Trump's administration he mostly has chosen people with no experience in public administration, with questionable personal interests. Even Hiroim one of Hulk closest allies in his endeavors reminds me of poor Jared Kushner, Mek could be Steve Bannon and the Brood Queen Queen Ivanka Trump.
In the story Hulk has to go toe to toe against the Sentry, the ultimate superhero, he's Marvel equivalent to Superman, but the character has a ton of issues that he keeps hidden that make him a liability, in many ways just like Hillary Clinton. Democrats couldn't have presented a more fallible candidate to run against Trump, she had a legion of Voids (the evil part of Sentry) in her closet/basement.
