The Incredible Hulk #340

A struggling title nobody wanted

By 1987 The Incredible Hulk had been running since May 1962, when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced a monster who was originally colored gray before printing problems turned him green. A quarter-century later the book was, in the words later used to describe it, a struggling title that no one else wanted to write. The editor Bob Harras offered it to Peter David, and David's run began with issue #331, cover-dated May 1987.

David took the title somewhere new. Instead of a rampaging green brute, he leaned into Bruce Banner's divided mind and the switches between the savage green Hulk and a smarter, more streetwise gray Hulk. That gray Hulk is the one on the cover of #340, and he would later take on the name Joe Fixit and work as muscle for a Las Vegas casino owner.

Issue #340, "Vicious Circle," carries a February 1988 cover date. One fan database lists it among comics released in October 1987; another tracker gives February 1, 1988. The sources do not agree on the exact on-sale date.

Peter David and a young Todd McFarlane

Peter David was born on September 23, 1956, in Fort Meade, Maryland. His time on The Incredible Hulk lasted 12 years and became the work he is best known for; he won an Eisner Award in 1992 and created new casts for the book such as the Pantheon. Readers knew him by his initials, PAD. He died on May 24, 2025, in East Patchogue, New York.

Todd McFarlane was born on March 16, 1961, in Calgary, Alberta. He drew The Incredible Hulk from 1987 to 1988, penciling issues #330 to #334 and #336 to #346, before Marvel moved him to The Amazing Spider-Man with issue #298 in 1988. There his tangled "spaghetti webbing" and his work on the villain Venom made him a star.

The Hulk run is where McFarlane's style took shape in public. On #340 he penciled and inked the interior himself and drew the cover with the inker Bob Wiacek: Wolverine in the foreground, claws out, with the snarling gray Hulk reflected in the blades. That reflection is the reason the issue is collected as a cover first and a story second.

Vicious Circle

The story opens in an unseasonable Texas blizzard. The Hulk, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Clay Quartermain and Rick Jones are hunting for missing government gamma bombs. The X-Men's Blackbird is trying to land nearby: the team is flying to Dallas during "Fall of the Mutants," chasing a prophecy that the X-Men would die there.

After the Hulk throws a truck at a squad of soldiers and starts a forest fire, Wolverine tracks him by scent. Wolverine draws first blood, apologizes and tries to walk away, saying he has more pressing problems. The Hulk, spoiling for a fight, will not let him. Quartermain finally breaks up the brawl with a rocket launcher, and the Hulk leaps off carrying his friends' van.

Around the fight, David kept his longer plots moving. The Leader and his henchman Half-Life scheme to steal a gamma bomb, and the issue closes on Betty Banner alone, smashing a snow globe and breaking down in tears. Later issues reveal she has just learned she is pregnant. The fight itself was the second major Hulk-Wolverine clash, following Wolverine's debut in Incredible Hulk #180 and #181 in 1974, and the Hulk refers back to that first meeting.

How the CGC 9.8 trades

This is a mass-market comic, not a rarity. One tracker of graded sales had recorded 3,602 sales of CGC-graded copies across all grades by early October 2026, 362 of them at 9.8, with the most recent 9.8 sale on September 27, 2026. When a CGC 9.8 newsstand copy came up at a regional auction in September 2021, the lot description put the newsstand census at 804 copies in 9.8 with three graded higher.

Because so many copies exist, the price of a 9.8 is set by a steady stream of sales rather than a few headline auctions. In 2026 most CGC 9.8 copies sold online for between about $1,200 and $2,000, with one white-pages copy bringing $2,399.00 on September 14, 2026. The highest single sale one price tracker has on record is $3,500, for a CGC 9.8 on August 17, 2022.

Collectors distinguish newsstand copies from direct-edition copies, and some sellers list them separately. Later reprints also exist, including a 2025 edition packaged with a Wolverine statue by McFarlane's own toy company and a facsimile edition, so a 9.8 label should be checked for the original 1988 printing.

From Hulk to Spawn

Within months of #340, McFarlane was drawing Spider-Man, and in August 1990 Marvel gave him a new adjectiveless Spider-Man series to write and draw; its first issue sold 2.5 million copies. In 1992 he co-founded Image Comics, and Spawn #1 sold 1.7 million copies, a record for an independent comic that stood through 2007.

That trajectory is what lifted #340 above the rest of his Hulk issues. It is the cover that shows the McFarlane style arriving fully formed, on two of Marvel's most popular characters, and it has been reprinted in Hulk vs. the Marvel Universe and Wolverine vs. the Marvel Universe collections as well as in special editions decades later. Peter David stayed on the Hulk for 12 years in all, long after McFarlane left.

The numbers

Cover date

February 1988

Print run

Not documented in the sources consulted

Census, September 2021

804 newsstand copies at CGC 9.8, three graded higher (per an auction lot description)

Recorded graded sales, October 2026

3,602 across all grades; 362 at CGC 9.8

Most active grade

CGC 9.6, with 777 recorded sales

Reprints

Hulk vs. The Marvel Universe and Wolverine vs. the Marvel Universe collections; a 2025 statue-pack reprint; a facsimile edition

Timeline

1. May 1962

   The Incredible Hulk #1 introduces the Hulk, originally colored gray.

2. Nov 1974

   Incredible Hulk #181 completes Wolverine's debut as a Hulk antagonist.

3. May 1987

   Peter David's run on The Incredible Hulk begins with issue #331.

4. Oct 1987

   Incredible Hulk #340, cover-dated February 1988, is listed among comics released this month.

5. 1988

   Todd McFarlane leaves the Hulk after issue #346 and starts on The Amazing Spider-Man with #298.

6. Aug 1990

   McFarlane's Spider-Man #1 sells 2.5 million copies.

7. 1992

   McFarlane co-founds Image Comics and launches Spawn.

8. Sep 25, 2021

   A CGC 9.8 newsstand copy is offered at a regional auction; the census then shows 804 newsstand copies at 9.8 and three higher.

9. Aug 17, 2022

   A CGC 9.8 copy sells for $3,500, the highest sale on one tracker's record.

10. May 24, 2025

    Peter David dies in East Patchogue, New York.

11. 2025

    A reprint of #340 is packaged with a Wolverine statue.

12. Sep 14, 2026

    A white-pages CGC 9.8 copy sells online for $2,399.00.

The world in 1987

• Sep 17, 1987

  Pat Robertson announces his run for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination.

• Oct 1, 1987

  A magnitude 5.9 earthquake strikes the Los Angeles area.

• Oct 16, 1987

  Rescuers free a young child trapped in a well in Midland, Texas, after a three-day ordeal.

• Oct 19, 1987

  Stock markets plunge on Wall Street and around the world.

• Oct 23, 1987

  The Senate rejects Robert Bork's Supreme Court nomination, 58 to 42.

• Dec 8, 1987

  Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in Washington.

Price record

A realized private sale is a completed transaction outside an auction room. The amount is what changed hands on the date shown. Private sales are reported less consistently than auction results, so a single comparable carries less weight than a run of them.

By reference price, The Incredible Hulk #340 is number 64 of 100 in the comics entries of the FLOAT 100. 92 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (97 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The Hulk was colored gray in his 1962 debut; the Hulk on this cover is the gray version.
• Wolverine made his debut fighting the Hulk in 1974, and the Hulk mentions that first meeting in #340.
• The fight happens in a blizzard in Texas, near the Dallas/Fort Worth airport.
• Clay Quartermain ends the fight by firing a rocket launcher at both of them.
• The X-Men were on their way to Dallas because of a prophecy that they would die there.
• Peter David was offered the Hulk because it was a struggling title nobody else wanted, and he stayed for 12 years.