The Incredible Hulk
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The Incredible Hulk is a comic book superhero in the Marvel Comics universe. He is the alter-ego of Dr. Robert Bruce Banner, and manifests as a large, superhumanly strong, (usually) green creature of pure rage. The first appearance of the Hulk was in The Incredible Hulk Vol.1 #1 (1962), created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The Hulk is one of Marvel Comics' most recognized characters.
The Hulk is cast as an emotional and impulsive alter ego of the withdrawn and reserved physicist Dr. Bruce Banner. The Hulk appears shortly after Banner was accidentally exposed to the blast of a test detonation of a gamma bomb he invented. Subsequently, Banner will often involuntarily transform into the Hulk, depicted as a giant, raging monster, leading to extreme complications in Banner's life. While the coloration of the character's skin varies during the course of its publication history, the Hulk is most often depicted as green.
As the Hulk, Banner is capable of immense feats of strength, which increases with his feelings of rage and anger. Anger is a common trigger of Banner's transformation. A common storyline is the pursuit of both Banner and the Hulk by the police or the armed forces, due to the destruction he causes.
The Hulk character has since been depicted in various other media, most notably by Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk and Bill Bixby as Banner in a television series and three television movies, by Eric Bana in Hulk (2003), and Edward Norton in The Incredible Hulk (2008), as well as in three animated series and various video games.
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History
The Hulk was inspired by the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the dichotomy usually consisting of the simple minded and emotional brute who springs from a quiet intellectual. Indeed, in contrast to the quiet Banner, the most famous version of the Hulk has been as a childlike persona who just wants to be left alone, but is continually forced to battle foes determined to hunt him down. This is somewhat similar to that of Universal Studios's 1931 film, Frankenstein, another major influence on the character.
In the first issue of The Incredible Hulk, the Hulk was supposed to be gray. However, the publishers of the time had difficulties with printing a consistent and clear shade of gray, so after the first issue they decided to make him green and that color stuck. For a period later in the series, the Hulk reverted to a gray color.
In the origin story of the Hulk, Dr. Bruce Banner was a military scientist who had developed a new type of weapon called the "Gamma Bomb." As the bomb was being tested (in a fashion reminiscent of the Trinity atomic bomb test), Dr. Banner noticed that teenager Rick Jones had driven his car onto the test site. Banner raced out into the open to bring the young man to safety, but the bomb exploded before he could reach safety himself. Banner was subjected to an incredible dose of gamma rays, and this was what caused him to transform into the rampaging Hulk. At first he became the Hulk when the sun went down, but this was soon changed to the more familiar transformation whenever Dr. Banner became angry or emotional. This story had a strong Cold War subtext to it: in addition to the Gamma Bomb test, the Hulk was promptly captured in the first issue of the book and brought to a country which is presumably the Soviet Union (though the name "Soviet Union" was never used in the book, the story ended with a statement about the end of "Red tyranny"). Later revisions of the Hulk's origin (especially for the TV series of the 1970s and the animated TV cartoon of the 1980s) removed the military subtext and made Banner a non-military scientist.
The plots of many of the earliest Hulk stories would involve General Thunderbolt Ross continually pursuing the Hulk, his "Hulkbuster" U.S. Army group at his side. Ross's daughter Betty was a love interest for Bruce Banner and would criticize her father for going after the Hulk so relentlessly without regard to her feelings for the Hulk's alternate identity. General Ross's right-hand-man, Major Glenn Talbot, was also in love with Betty but was an honorable man and was torn between pursuing the Hulk and gaining Betty's love in an honest way. Teenager Rick Jones was the Hulk's first and only friend for a time. Later on, another teenager named Jim Wilson became the Hulk's friend.
For over twenty years, the Hulk would rampage across the face of Marvel Comics, engaging in titanic battles and leaving destruction in his wake. He became the ultimate personification of "brute strength" in comic books, something that not even Superman would be able to match in terms of sheer, raw power. Futhermore, the Hulk's strength can increase further when he is further provoked into more intense anger which leads to his enemies often underestimating his power at critical moments.
Occasionally the Hulk would gain a decent intelligence, only to lose it again; during the mid-1980s, Bruce Banner "lost control" of the Hulk and he became a truly mindless, rampaging monster. Shortly after this, however, writer Peter David took on the mantle of the Incredible Hulk and made some drastic changes to the character. The previous author, Al Milgrom, had returned the Hulk to his original "grey" state, and the Hulk gained a brutish intelligence. David ran with this, and the Hulk got a job as a Las Vegas casino enforcer. Later, David expanded on an earlier story that established that Banner had an abused childhood which fostered a great deal of repressed anger which triggered a latent case of multiple personality disorder. The three dominant personalities are the quiet intellectual Banner, the Gray Hulk which embodies his more antisocial cunning side and the Green Hulk which embodies his inner child and repressed rage. Eventually, Doc Samson, a scientist who had his body enhanced by a controlled gamma radiation exposure managed to merge Banner's personalities into one healthy personality which balanced Banner's intellect and conscience, the Gray's cunning and confidence and the Green's body. David spent the next decade taking the Hulk on a series of adventures that many fans considered to be a change of direction that breathed new life into the character.
After David left the comic series in the mid-1990s, the Hulk reverted back to a green-skinned, rampaging behemoth.
In addition, Bruce Banner has a cousin, Jennifer Walters, whom he once had to give an emergency blood transfusion when she was critically wounded. As a result, she took on the Hulk condition as the She-Hulk. However, her form allowed her to keep most of her original personality albiet with more assertiveness and self confidence.
The Incredible Hulk's supervillain enemies include
- The Leader: A villain whose own exposure to gamma radiation made a superintelligent genius with an oversized brain.
- The Abomination: A soviet spy who deliberately exposed himself to gamma radiation to become a reptilian version of the Hulk with his original personality and intelligence intact.
- The U-Foes: a quartet of villains who participated in an attempt to recreate the same accident that created the Fantastic Four. When Banner discovered them in the middle of their foolhardy scheme, he interfered with it to successfully save their lives. Although they survived and gained superpowers, they swore revenge on Banner for supposedly cheating of the chance to gain even more power.
- While not a supervillain, Wolverine of the X-Men made his first-ever appearance in Marvel Comics as a villain in the Hulk series.
Hulk Comic from Marvel UK
Hulk Comic (later The Incredible Hulk Weekly[1]) was a black-and-white Marvel UK comics anthology published under the editorship of Dez Skinn starting in 1979. The series was notable for featuring new Hulk material drawn by Dave Gibbons and Steve Dillon. This material was significant in that it portrayed the illiterate, wandering Hulk of the 1970s television series. Issue 15 to 20 included Hulk being trapped on an island with Dr Scarabeus - the first mainstream comic work for writer Alan Moore (with penciller Paul Neary and inker David Lloyd)[2][3] Once the title began featuring American reprints, it chose to display the Marvel Universe Hulk as depicted by Sal Buscema. The title lasted 63 issues before merging with Marvel UK's Spider-Man title.
Movies & Television
There was a cartoon, TV series, and even a few TV movies for the Hulk. The TV series and movies starred Bill Bixby as Dr. David Banner and Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk himself. In 2003, Ang Lee directed a film on the Hulk, which was released on June 20, 2003 to mixed reviews, and a second film, starring Edward Norton in 2008.
Interpretations in popular culture
The Hulk character and the concepts behind it have been raised to the level of iconic status by many within and outside the comic book industry. In 2003 the Official PlayStation magazine claimed the character had "stood the test of time as a genuine icon of American pop culture." [4]
The Hulk is often viewed as a reaction to war. As well as being a reaction to the Cold War, the character has been a cipher for the frustrations the Vietnam War raised, and Ang Lee said that the Iraq War influenced his direction.[5][6][7] In the Michael Nyman edited edition of The Guardian, Stefanie Diekmann explored Marvel Comics' reaction to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Diekmann discussed The Hulk's appearance in the comic book Heroes, claiming that his greater prominence, alongside Captain America, aided in "stressing the connection between anger and justified violence without having to depict anything more than a well-known and well-respected protagonist."[8] Asked by Naomi Klein if a new Cold War was imminent, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez cryptically replied: "The geopolitics of the world will be like the Incredible Hulk comics, where he tenses himself before the transformation."[9]
In Comic Book Nation, Wright alludes to Hulk's counterculture status, referring to a 1965 Esquire magazine poll amongst college students which "revealed that student radicals ranked Spider-Man and the Hulk alongside the likes of Bob Dylan and Che Guevara as their favorite revolutionary icons." Wright goes on to cite examples of his anti-authority symbol status. Two of the most notable are "The Ballad of the Hulk" by Jerry Jeff Walker, and the Rolling Stone cover for 30 September 1971, a full color Herb Trimpe piece commissioned for the magazine.[10][11] The Hulk has been caricatured in such animated television series as The Simpsons[12] Robot Chicken and Family Guy,[13] and such sketch comedy TV series as The Young Ones[14]. The character is also used a cultural reference point for someone displaying anger or agitation. For example, in a 2008 Daily Mirror review of an Eastenders episode, a character is described as going "into Incredible Hulk mode, smashing up his flat".[15]
The 2003 Ang Lee directed Hulk film saw discussion of the character's appeal to Asian-Americans.[16] The Taiwanese born Ang Lee commented on the "subcurrent of repression" that underscored the character of The Hulk, and how that mirrored his own experience: "Growing up, my artistic leanings were always repressed -- there was always pressure to do something 'useful,' like being a doctor." Jeff Yang, writing for SF Gate extended this self identification to Asian-American culture, arguing that "the passive-aggressive streak runs deep among Asian Americans -- especially those who have entered creative careers, often against their parents' wishes."[17]
Vital Statistics
- Name: Robert Bruce Banner
- Aliases: Mr. Fixit
- Height (as Hulk)- 7 ft/2.1 metres
- Mass (as Hulk)- 1048 lbs/475.4 Kg
- Eye color (as Hulk)- Green
- Hair color (as Hulk)- Green
- Intelligence Level as:
- Hulk - Below Normal
- Banner - Genius
- Gray Hulk - Gifted
- Gestalt Hulk - Genius
- Strength Level (as Hulk) (Superhuman Class 100 on average):
- Calm - Superhuman Class 90
- Enraged - Potentially Incalculable
- Endurance Level - Superhuman; variable up to incalculable
- Stamina Level - Superhuman
- Agility - Normal
- Reflexes - Normal
- Intelligence Level as:
For more information about strength levels in Marvel Comics see: Strength Levels (comics)
Special Skills and Abilities: The Hulk can see astral projections and has some limited ESP. He can leap at least 3 mi/4.8 Km in a single bound. Though the Hulk has a child-like intellect he is aided by an undeniable cunningness in combat. The Gray Hulk, as Mr. Fixit, is skilled in the ways of organized crime, though he acts as a mere enforcer. Robert Bruce Banner is an extraordinary genius in the field of theoretical physics.
