The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 107

Incredible but true! The Hulk (see cover) is Max Ferguson! 5)fifltt5 happiness and fulfillment in a modern, materialistic society?" The answer, as in the case of Our Girl Sunday, is obviously: "No!" So The Hulk goes around busting up the secret projects of the United States government and its enemies alike, reverting from time to time to his alter ego, Dr. Bruce Banner, in order to create new machines for The Hulk to destroy. Naturally, The Hulk is the idol of the college crowd. But in Toronto, Hulk is regarded ambivalently by his voice, satirist Max Ferguson. Max, whose impersonations are broadcast every morning on CBC radio, has a five-year-old son who growls around in a huge green Hulk sweatshirt and bunks down every night under a raging Hulk poster.

Sitting at home, hugging a kitten, Ferguson gives the impression that he feels sorry for the big lug of a Hulk, who is doomed to a life of a radio-active super-strength, and a concomitant diminution of his mental powers. But "From time to time I get letters or calls from people asking me to quit The Hulk," Max says. "All this violence in our society makes people wonder if The Hulk doesn't have an adverse effect on children." It's doubtful the children are worrying. If current projections of Spider-Man's popularity are correct, the webbed wonder will surpass Superman in readership by the end of 1969. After that, The World.

That is if Peter Parker's Aunt May doesn't die of a heart attack. All of the Marvel Heroes provide a tidy extra income source for Canadian actors who want to prac- Scripts for Spider-Man, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Mighty Thor, were written in the U.S. Then in a Toronto studio. Cowan gathered his players. Paul Soles, the mobile-faced interviewer and actor, who works regularly on the daytime CBC Take 30 program, became Spider-Man and his alter ego, Peter Parker.

Billie-Mae Richards, now a grandmother and for years one of the regulars on Jake And The Kid, mimics all the little chickies who are Parker's girlfriends. Paul Kligman, another top actor, plays J. Jonah Jamieson, an unbelievably bad-tempered newspaper editor and probably the only person in the world who doesn't like Spider-Man. Bunny Cowan is the narrator and the cop who says: "There he goes now!" After that, the cast just wings it. "It's incredible sitting in a studio trying to visualize some of those scripts," says Paul Soles.

"We don't have anything visual to work with. We just break ourselves up sometimes with the double entendres we get out of what we're reading. I can play as many as four characters in one segment. Sometimes I even get into fights with myself. You know: Grahh Uff Bargle Take that! Shoooooo And the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man swings away." "I thought I was going to get a chance to act finally, after all these years," says straight announcer Keith Rich of CKEY.

"When Bunny brought me in I really started to show how I could emote. But he cut me off right away. 'Play it he told me. 'You're a Marvel Hero. You don't have any emotion about what you Even my kids don't believe I'm really Captain America.

I guess nobody who watched the series would believe I'm a Canada-first man who likes being at home on his sheep farm, eh?" One of the Marvel Heroes who is allowed emotion is The Incredible Hulk. As the question is asked at the opening of the series: "Can a green-skinned introvert with anti-social tendencies find tise their craft and still live in this country. John Vernon, star of Wojeck and one of the best actors Canada has ever produced, has moved to Hollywood. But his voice lives on as Iron Man. Other famous Canadian players who have doubled as cartoon heroes include Jack Creeley who is Mighty Thor and Larry Mann, who once played all the characters in a segment by himself.

But the inventiveness of the actors and the enthusiasm of Bunny Cowan for his new industry cannot resolve the problems presented by a projected new series on the Fantastic Four. The F.F. are: Mr. Fantastic, who can stretch any part of his body into any shape; The Thing, who is best left undescribed; The Flame, a sort of teenage human blowtorch; and Invisible Girl, a real sweetheart who can disappear behind an impenetrable force field. Mr.

Fantastic marries Invisible Girl, a Marvel Hero first. And already the question is being asked: Can a man who can stretch any part of his body into any shape find happiness with a girl who is surrounded by an impenetrable force field? America) Rich has "T' yT li Mastermind sJ jy II JiC Bunny Cowan is I t'ijj A fj fSl a monster, too. I 5 Tif iiy I Ik Wer Wojeckan VS 1 17 If 1 Iron Man, John Vernon I jr tw moved to Hollywood. 4 1.