The Hulk is a fictional superhero who appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #1 (May 1962). In 2008, the hobbyist magazine Wizard named the Hulk the seventh-greatest Marvel Comics character. Empire Magazine named him the fourteenth greatest comic book character overall, and the fifth highest ranked in the Marvel stable.
The Hulk is cast as the emotional and impulsive alter ego of the withdrawn and reserved physicist Dr. Bruce Banner. The Hulk appears shortly after Banner is accidentally exposed to the blast of a test detonation of a gamma bomb he invented. Subsequently, Banner will involuntarily transform into the Hulk, depicted as a giant, raging, humanoid monster, leading to extreme complications in Banner's life. Lee said the Hulk's creation was inspired by a combination of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein.
Although the Hulk's coloration has varied throughout the character's publication history, the most consistent shade is green. As the Hulk, Banner is capable of significant feats of strength, which increases in direct proportion to the character's anger. Strong emotions such as anger, terror and grief are also triggers for forcing Banner's transformation into the Hulk. 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 character has since been depicted in various other media, most notably by Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk in a television series and six television movies, by CGI in Hulk (2003), and in The Incredible Hulk (2008), as well as in three animated series and various video games.
Characterization
Bruce Banner
The core of the Hulk, Bruce Banner has been portrayed differently by different writers, but common themes persist. Banner, a genius, is emotionally withdrawn in most fashions. Banner designed the gamma bomb which caused his affliction, and the ironic twist of his self-inflicted fate has been one of the most persistent common themes. Arie Kaplan describes the character thus: “Bruce Banner lives in a constant state of panic, always wary that the monster inside him will erupt, and therefore he can’t form meaningful bonds with anyone.”
Throughout the Hulk's published history, writers have continued to frame Bruce Banner in these themes. Under different writers, his fractured personality led to transformations into different versions of the Hulk. These transformations are usually involuntary, and often writers have tied the transformation to emotional triggers, such as rage and fear. As the series has progressed, different writers have adapted the Hulk, changing Hulk's personality to reflect changes in Banner's physiology or psyche. Writers have also refined and changed some aspects of Banner's personality, showing him as emotionally repressed, but capable of deep love for Betty Ross, and for solving problems posed to him. Under the writing of Paul Jenkins, Banner was shown to be a capable fugitive, applying deductive reasoning and observation to figure out the events transpiring around him. On the occasions that Banner has controlled the Hulk's body, he has applied principles of physics to problems and challenges and used deductive reasoning.
The Hulk
During the experimental detonation of a gamma bomb, scientist Bruce Banner rushes to save a teenager who has driven onto the testing field. Pushing the teen, Rick Jones, into a trench, Banner himself is caught in the blast, absorbing massive amounts of radiation. He awakens later in an infirmary, seeming relatively unscathed, but that night transforms into a lumbering grey form that breaks through the wall and escapes. A soldier in the ensuing search party dubs the otherwise unidentified creature a "hulk".
The original version of the Hulk was often shown as simple and quick to anger. His first transformations were triggered by sundown, and his return to Banner by dawn. However, in Incredible Hulk #4, Banner started using a Gamma ray device to transform at will. In more recent Hulk stories, emotions trigger the change. Although grey in his debut, difficulties for the printer led to a change in his color to green. In the original tale, the Hulk divorces his identity from Banner’s, decrying Banner as "that puny weakling in the picture". From his earliest stories, the Hulk has been concerned with finding sanctuary and quiet, and often is shown reacting emotionally to situations quickly. Grest and Weinberg call Hulk the "...dark, primordial side of [Banner's] psyche."
The Hulk retains a modest intelligence, thinking and talking in full sentences, and Lee even gives the Hulk expository dialogue in issue six, allowing readers to learn just what capabilities the Hulk has, when the Hulk says, “But these muscles ain't just for show! All I gotta do is spring up and just keep goin'!" In Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics, Les Daniels addresses the Hulk as an embodiment of cultural fears of radiation and nuclear science. He quotes Jack Kirby thus: "As long as we're experimenting with radioactivity there's no telling what may happen, or how much our advancements may cost us." Daniels continues "The Hulk became Marvel's most disturbing embodiment of the perils inherent in the atomic age."
Though usually a loner, the Hulk helped to form both the Avengers and the Defenders. He was able to determine that the changes were now triggered by emotional stress.
Fantastic Four #12 (March 1963), featured the Hulk's first battle with the Thing. Although many early Hulk stories involve General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross trying to capture or destroy the Hulk, the main villain is often, like Hulk, a radiation-based character, like the Gargoyle or the Leader, along with other foes such as the Toad Men, or Asian warlord General Fang. Ross' daughter, Betty, loves Banner and criticizes her father for pursuing the Hulk. General Ross' right-hand man, Major Glenn Talbot, also loves Betty and is torn between pursuing the Hulk and trying to gain Betty's love more honorably. Rick Jones serves as the Hulk's friend and sidekick in these early tales.
In the 1970s, Hulk was shown as more prone to anger and rage, and less talkative. Writers played with the nature of his transformations, briefly giving Banner control over the change, and the ability to maintain control of his Hulk form.
After Bill Mantlo took on writing duties, a mindless Hulk was sent to the "Crossroads of Eternity", where Banner was revealed to have suffered childhood traumas which engendered Bruce's repressed rage.
At one point, Hulk took on the identity of "Joe Fixit," a shadowy behind the scenes figure, working in Las Vegas on behalf of a casino owner, Michael Berengetti. For months, Banner was repressed in Hulk’s mind, but slowly began to reappear. Hulk and Banner began to change back and forth again at dusk and dawn, as the character initially had, but this time, they worked together to advance both their goals, using written notes as communication as well as meeting on a mental plane to have conversations.
Shortly after this development, Doctor Leonard Samson engages the Ringmaster's services to hypnotize Bruce Banner and force him, the Savage Hulk (Green Hulk) and Mr. Fixit (Gray Hulk) to confront Banner's past abuse at the hands of his father, Brian Banner. During the session, the three identities confront a ‘Guilt Hulk’, which sadistically torments the three with the abuse of Banner’s father. Facing down this abuse, a new larger and smarter Hulk emerges and completely replaces the "human" Bruce Banner and Hulk personae. This Hulk is a culmination of the three aspects of Banner. He has the vast power of the Savage Hulk, the cunning of the grey Hulk, and the intelligence of Bruce Banner.
The Hulk once encountered a depraved version of himself from the future, called Maestro. Thrown into the future, Hulk finds himself allied with Rick Jones, now an old man, in an effort to destroy the tyrant Maestro. Unable to stop him in any other manner, Hulk uses the time machine that brought him to the future to send the Maestro back into the heart of the very Gamma Bomb test that spawned the Hulk.
Artistically, the character has been depicted as progressively more muscular in the years since his debut.
Powers and abilities
The Hulk possesses the potential for near-limitless physical strength depending directly on his emotional state, particularly his anger. This has been reflected in the repeated comment "The madder Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets." The entity Beyonder once claimed that the Hulk's potential strength had "no finite element inside". His durability, healing, and endurance also increase in proportion to his temper. Greg Pak described the Hulk shown during World War Hulk as having a level of physical power where "Hulk was stronger than any mortal --and most immortals-- who ever walked the Earth."
The Hulk is resistant to most forms of injury or damage. The extent varies between interpretations, but he has withstood the equivalent of inner solar temperatures, nuclear explosions, and planet-splitting impacts. He has been shown to have both regenerative and adaptive healing abilities, including growing tissues to allow him to breathe underwater, surviving unprotected in space for extended periods (yet still eventually needing to breathe), and when injured, healing from most wounds within seconds.
His powerful legs allow him to leap into lower Earth orbit or across continents, and he has displayed sufficient superhuman speed to match Thor or the Sentry. He also has less commonly described powers, including abilities allowing him to "home in" to his place of origin in New Mexico, resist psychic control, grow stronger from radiation or dark magic, and to see and interact with astral forms.
As Bruce Banner, he is considered one of the greatest minds on Earth. He has developed expertise in the fields of biology, chemistry, engineering, and physiology, and holds a Ph.D. in nuclear physics. He possesses "a mind so brilliant it cannot be measured on any known intelligence test".
In The Science of Superheroes, Lois Grest and Robert Weinberg examined Hulk’s powers, explaining the scientific flaws in them. Most notably, they point out that the level of gamma radiation Banner is exposed to at the initial blast would induce radiation sickness and kill him, or if not, create significant cancer risks for Banner, because hard radiation strips cells of their ability to function. They go on to offer up an alternate origin, in which a Hulk might be created by biological experimentation with adrenal glands and green fluorescent protein.
Charles Q. Choi from LiveScience.com further explains that unlike the Incredible Hulk, gamma rays are not green; existing as they do beyond the visible spectrum, gamma rays have no color at all that we can describe. He also explains that gamma rays are so powerful (the most powerful form of electromagnetic radiation and 10,000 times more powerful than visible light) that they can even create matter- a possible explanation for the increased mass that Bruce Banner takes on during transformations. "Just as the Incredible Hulk 'is the strongest one there is,' as he says himself, so too are gamma ray bursts the most powerful explosions known."
In other media
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."
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. In the Michael Nyman edited edition of The Guardian, Stefanie Diekmann explored Marvel Comics' reaction to the September 11 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."
In Comic Book Nation, Bradford 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. The Hulk has been caricatured in such animated television series as The Simpsons, Robot Chicken, and Family Guy, and such sketch comedy TV series as The Young Ones & Saturday Night Live. The character is also used as 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". The Hulk, especially his alter-ego Bruce Banner, is also a common reference in rap music. The term was represented as an analogue to marijuana in Dr. Dre's "2001," while more conventional references are made in Ludacris and Jermaine Dupri's popular single "Welcome to Atlanta" and the CunninLynguists' "Halfanimal," to name a few.
From 1977 to 1982, the CBS television network presented The Incredible Hulk, starring Bill Bixby as Dr. David Banner & Lou Ferrigno as his monstrous green alter ego. The series developed a strong cult following & is still watched in syndication today.
The 2003 Ang Lee directed Hulk film saw discussion of the character's appeal to Asian Americans. The Taiwanese born 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."