Warning! This article contains spoilers for Maestro: World War M #1
In a genre-bending twist that no one saw coming, Marvel Comics’ latest Hulk series just accidentally created Marvel’s version of the Matrix. In the desolate wasteland of Marvel Comics’ future, the Hulk is a brutal overlord who rules his kingdom with an iron fist. Just as the Matrix’s Neo was the only one who could stop the evil machines that have ravaged the Earth, one unlikely Marvel hero will have to rise to the occasion as he is the only one who can stop the Hulk’s villainous reign of terror.
In Maestro: World War M #1 by Peter David and German Peralta, the Abomination’s body is frozen in stasis while his mind is locked into a virtual simulation. The simulation shows the Abomination as a high-ranking KGB official who is terrorizing a powerless Bruce Banner. His fun comes to a crashing halt, however, when MODOK unexpectedly appears right in front of him. MODOK tells the Abomination that his reality isn’t real, and that he is needed in the real world as he is the only one who can save it. When MODOK takes the Abomination off-line, the Abomination confusedly and quite literally awakens in the desert of the real.
The similarities between the Abomination’s journey in this issue Maestro: World War M and Neo’s journey in the Matrix is striking. Both are the last hope the world has in saving the planet from a seemingly unstoppable force, and both were trapped in a simulation in an attempt to neutralize their respective threats. Plus, within their respective simulations, both the Abomination and Neo weren’t very good people. Neo was a computer hacker who sold stolen information to the highest bidder while Abomination was a member of the KGB who terrorized a helpless scientist just for fun. Even though they weren’t the most heroic characters within their simulated realities, both were called to save the world as they are the only ones who are capable of doing so.
The Abomination and the simulation he was trapped in weren’t the only references to the Matrix within this Hulk issue. Just as the Abomination has seemingly become Marvel’s version of Neo, MODOK seems to be Marvel’s very own Morpheus. In the film the Matrix, Morpheus is the one who tells Neo that he is living in the Matrix and subsequently gives him the capability to leave it. Just as Morpheus freed Neo’s mind, MODOK freed the Abomination from his virtual prison, adding to the overall narrative shared by Hulk and the Matrix.
While the Abomination is facing a villainous future Hulk rather than an army of murderous robots, the threat the Hulk poses is incredibly similar to that of the Matrix’s machines. Just as the machines had done in the Matrix, the Hulk has taken over the world and has trapped the only person who could stop him in a false reality. While it seems as though Marvel Comics did this entirely by accident, the initial resemblances are just too blatant not to notice, proving that, whether Marvel meant to or not, the Hulk has created Marvel’s very own version of the Matrix.