In the first issue of Incredible Hulk, Jason Aaron separated Banner and Hulk. He made this rather tired idea come off as original by leaving the Hulk with his intelligence in tact, and making Banner out as the bad guy; a ruthless scientist obsessed with recreating the Hulk. Jason Aaron continues to build upon this idea in issue 2.
In my review of issue one I stated that I was worried his characterization of Banner might suffer due to his choice of making him the villain of the story, but my worries are mostly eliminated after reading this issue. The book begins with a flashback to Banner shortly after being separated from the Hulk. He's on a deserted island with Betty and, instead of giving his long-lost wife his attention, he can't stop thinking about the gamma bomb that birthed the Hulk. What I like about this scene is that Banner comes off as very sympathetic and tragic. Banner wants to focus on Betty, but he can't get his mind off the Hulk, because of this he comes off more as neurotic than evil, and Bruce has always been somewhat neurotic. Bruce is actually pretty justified in his seclusion as well, he rightly states that he can't trust the government; a point that has been proven time and time again in Hulk comics. There's also a particularly sad moment when Betty finally gets fed up with him and leaves, angrily stating that maybe the Hulk was the one she really loved all long. I see how that might drive Bruce to even further desperation, and his descent into madness is pretty believable, especially when its revealed that he's developed a brain tumor due to all his self-experimenting. I also feel for him when he states that the Hulk was "all he had" scientifically, although I don't feel that's entirely true(Bruce invented a personal force-field shield and an old power taser recently, and those seem like pretty viable scientific accomplishments) but I digress.
We then see the Hulk being introduced to a secret government agency whose sole purpose is to kill mad scientists(a pretty amusing idea) and then being attacked by gamma sharks. By the end of the book his still refusing to go after Banner, but after the reveal on the final page I think he'll change his mind.
The story is well-written and interesting, but the art is very uneven. The beginning with Bruce Banner looks great, but once we get to the Hulk action thinks start to get dicey. What should be the best two pages(Hulk fighting the gamma sharks)look really, really bad. It just looks boring and bland and not at all dynamic, and I'm talking about Hulk battling giant sharks for goodness sake! This scene has all the ingredients of being awesome but the art just completely ruins it. Its really weird because the rest of the book looks pretty good and the last issue's art was great, but these couple pages just look awful.
Overall this issue should be better than the last one, it has more interesting character development and starts to get into the meat of the story, but the art drags it down. Marc Silvestri has proven himself as a good artist, but he really needs to step it up for what promises to be a great, action-heavy, third issue.
7/10