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At the start of 2009, my wife and I looked around our place and realized that we had boxes and boxes of stuff we weren't using. I'm not saying we were quite ready to go on Hoarders, but it was closer to being true than we would like. This is the problem when someone who collects tons and tons of CDs, DVDs and books marries someone who also collects tons and tons of CDs, DVDs, and books. When my wife and I catalogued all of our contents on Delicious Library, we found the task impossible without the usage of a bar code scanner. It would have taken hundreds of frustrating hours otherwise. Once we had all of our media itemized, we came to realize that we could get rid of 20 boxes worth of it without ever even noticing what was gone. What followed was a process of enforced minimalism wherein we picked the various items we could not live without and eliminated the rest.

In the process of performing this task, we got rid of most of our graphic novels, a not inconsequential number since, as you know, one of our dear friends and contributors here at BOP owns and operates a comic book store. Over the years, we had picked up a lot of books from him that we found were now collecting dust. When we came to one particular graphic novel, however, my wife and I both proclaimed that we couldn't part with it. That title was Planet Hulk, a grandiose story arc from Greg Pak that took The Green Scar away from his home world and moved him to a long forgotten place in the universe, one that may not have been properly prepared for his rage but had prophesied his arrival nonetheless. Given the fact that my wife is the bigger comic book fan (in terms of zeal, not size...I've got over a foot on her), it was rare that we would agree on a title. There is something in the Stranger in a Strange Land premise offered by Pak that resounded with both of us. For this reason, Planet Hulk maintained its spot on the book shelf as any number of other, lesser works failed to survive the culling.

Part of the process of thinning out the media herd was that we would no longer accept media screeners from various PR firms for a time. After all, the constant onslaught of available review copies would take up a lot of the free room we had recently created. And we still have some stuff lying around from previous promotions. We agreed not to sell that stuff and we've honored it, which makes us quite possibly the only people in the world in possession of Miss Congeniality 2 pink cell phone covers. No, that's not a joke. I even know which drawer they're in. Keeping all of this in mind, you now appreciate how highly we must regard Planet Hulk if we jumped at the opportunity to enjoy a review copy of it. Yes, there is some bias there you may want to keep in mind, but the reality is that the same people inclined to give this disc purchasing consideration probably have a lot of the above apply to them as well...except for the pink cell phone cover part.

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