Ornament Review: The Incredible Hulk and Wolverine - Comic Book Heroes #3 - 2010 Hallmark Ornament

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Fun ornament recreation of Marvel character history

Cons: None

The Bottom Line: 

Hulk meets Wolverine

In a historic battle

Now shrunk for your tree

Wolverine First Showed Up Fighting the Hulk?  Another Lesson Learned from Ornaments

What I don't know about comic books and superheroes fills volumes...of comic books.  What little I know comes from the movies and TV shows.  To me, Wolverine goes with the X-Men part of the Marvel brand.  So you can imagine my confusion with the third entry in Hallmark's Comic Book Heroes series of ornaments since it is The Incredible Hulk and Wolverine.

This ornament is based on The Incredible Hulk #181, and it turns out this is the comic that introduced the world to Wolverine.  He shows up just as the Hulk is about to fight Wendigo and causes quite a bit of chaos between the two enemies as Wolverine is quite happy to fight both of them.

The front of the ornament is a recreation of the cover from the comic book, only it has the Hulk and Wolverine leaping partially off the page.  Wolverine is almost in the center of the cover, and he's got one arm extended with his claws out ready for battle.  The Hulk is coming from the right with his mouth open and a hand out ready to swipe at his new opponent.

Since this is a book, the ornament actually opens and there is a mini six page comic book inside you can read that gives you a brief feel for the fight between these two legends.  Never having seen the original, I don't know if these are actually panels from that comic book or not, but I also felt I got the full story from the book.  Since the ornament is only a couple of inches in any direction, these pages are very small, but I could actually read the print just fine.

Since this is a book, you can't really stand it up to display it, although it lies on its back pretty well.  There's a brass post coming out of the spine of the ornament with a hook on top of it for hanging on your tree.  When the book is closed, the ornament is perfectly balanced, so it hangs straight.  Open it some, and you'll notice that it tips back some.

Hallmark didn't really try to hide their series markings on this ornament.  The 3 in a Christmas tree is clearly visible on the back cover alone with all the copyright information.

Turns out that ornaments are no only fun but they can be educational.  Okay, so learning about the history of superheroes isn't all that important, but it did learn a bit of trivia from The Incredible Hulk and Wolverine.

Be sure to check out the rest of the Comic Book Heroes series.

Original Price: $16.95