1801396058?profile=original“Why does Hulk’s head hurt when Hulk tries to think?”

 

“Hulk smash!”

 

That was the Hulk I encountered every time I looked at an issue of Tales to Astonish in the mid-1960's.  Whenever physicist Bruce Banner felt intense stress, he transformed into the over-sized, emerald-hued monster called the Hulk.  The Green Goliath possessed incalculable strength and was virtually indestructible, to boot.  “Hulk is the strongest one there is!” he bellowed in almost every story.

 

He was also a green-skinned imbecile.  The trade-off for all that might was he retained none of Doctor Banner’s intellect.  Or hardly any intellect at all, for that matter.  That meant the Hulk was easily frustrated, and with his hair-trigger temper, he would go off on a destructive rampage once or twice an issue.  Even when he wasn’t pissed off at one thing or another, he was still something of a lout.  (The idea that an unannoyed Hulk had a childlike innocence wouldn’t emerge until the next decade.) 

 

1801396369?profile=originalAnd the Hulk’s speech reflected his limited brainpower.  He referred to himself in the third person, as “Hulk”, being unable to grasp the concept of definite and indefinite articles.  Most others he addressed only by physical characteristic---with the exceptions of Rick Jones and the hated General “Thunderbolt” Ross.  (“Ross!”)  A McGuffey Reader wouldn’t have helped, since the big green goof was also illiterate.

 

In going back and filling in the blanks on the early Marvel universe---thanks to the reprints in Marvel Tales and Marvel Collectors’ Item Classics, and the infrequent back issue---I had come across a few original-concept surprises:  Thor speaking in conventional English; Iron Man’s clunky, all-golden armour; Daredevil’s first costume of yellow-and-black.  Yet, nothing was as startling as discovering the departures between the early Hulk and the version familiar to me.  And not just because they were so different; but also because there were so many of them that the character himself seemed to change from issue to issue.

 

Obviously, with the Hulk, Stan Lee was going for a riff on the classic Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde.  It was equally obvious that Lee couldn’t settle on how he wanted to do that.  Each succeeding story brought a change in the concept.  Stan liked the Hulk as a character, believed in its marketability.  He wasn’t going to let it go.  So he kept tinkering with it.

 

Rather than present them in the piecemeal fashion that I discovered them, it’s better to go in chronological order, to show how the Hulk was a character in search of a format.

 

 

The Incredible Hulk # 1 (May, 1962)

 

1801398794?profile=RESIZE_320x320Whoa!  If all you knew about the Hulk was from the mid-1960’s onward, then you wouldn’t have recognised much about ol’ Greenskin at all from his début.  For one thing, he wasn’t green---he was grey!  That fact is well-known now, to the point that, in the late 1980’s, Marvel attempted to make hay out of a grey Hulk.  But by 1965 with the Hulk firmly established as being green, his original grey-ness had been swept under the rug and wasn’t considered part of his canon.

 

That was only the most visual difference.  The original Hulk had some smarts.  No Einstein, but he was crafty.  Personality-wise, he was arrogant and brutish, and above all that, I had to wrap myself around the fact that this Hulk could use personal pronouns.

 

And the last unexpected thing:  Dr. Banner’s transformation into the Hulk was triggered by the setting of the sun.  And at dawn, he reverted to his human self.  Day and night, good and evil---one of Stan’s less subtle metaphors.

 

 

The Incredible Hulk # 2 (Jul., 1962)

 

Ah, that’s better.

 

As it developed, there were printing problems with a grey-skinned Hulk.  The four-colour process used at the time didn’t accommodate grey all that well, and it was impossible to keep the shade consistent.  After seeing the first issue’s uneven colouration of the Hulk, Stan Lee changed the hue of his star’s skin to green.  There was no in-story explanation; the Hulk was simply green, as if he had always been so.

 

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He was still transforming according to the rise and fall of the sun, though.  And the Hulk was still functionally intelligent, in a thuggish sort of way.  But a new wrinkle was added---the now-emerald behemoth was prone to bestial rages, when provoked or frustrated.

 

It’s also worth pointing out that, at this stage, the Hulk, though phenomenally strong, wasn’t as staggeringly powerful as he would become a mere three years later.  In order to keep the Hulk contained, Bruce Banner confined himself to a vault in his secret desert laboratory just before sunset.  The stone walls of the vault were sufficient to keep his monstrous self imprisoned, despite his constant pounding.  The idea that the Hulk could not punch through a stone wall would be unthinkable by the time I started reading the stories.

 

 

The Incredible Hulk # 3 (Sep., 1962)

 

1801398983?profile=RESIZE_320x320Practical considerations had forced turning the Hulk green, but this issue marked the first time Stan Lee made a change in the character for dramatic reasons.  I’m guessing Stan found the night-and-day aspect too limiting.  But he didn’t stop there.

 

The opening chapter of “Banished to Outer Space” sees the Hulk tricked into boarding a rocketship, which General Ross then seals and launches from a remote location.  Angry at the deception, Rick Jones fiddles with the dials and knobs of the rocket’s control panel, in an attempt to bring the Hulk back to Earth.  This causes the ship to pass through a radiation storm, which bathes the craft and its emerald-hued occupant in a bizarre energy.  This strange force also surges back through the control panel and briefly envelops Rick.

 

The Hulk’s rocket is disabled and it crashes to Earth near its launching point.  But, by then, it is daytime, and as Rick rushes to the crash site, he realises that the Hulk would have changed back to Bruce Banner before the ship hit.  The boy fears Banner was killed by the impact.

 

To his astonishment, Rick sees the Hulk emerge from the wreckage, even though it is broad daylight.  Something in the strange radiation removed the nighttime constraint on the Green Goliath’s existence.  But that’s not all of it.  When the monster angrily lashes out at Rick, the boy discovers that he can command the Hulk’s actions.

 

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The downside is, when Rick falls asleep, his mental control of the Hulk lapses, leaving the Emerald Behemoth in a mindless rage.  Rick awakens just in time to save a near-by town from a Hulk rampage, but he is left with the problem of how to stay awake constantly.

 

 

The Incredible Hulk # 4 (Nov., 1962)

 

Lee must have decided that he hated the notion of a mind-controlled Hulk as soon as it saw print because, in the first of the two stories in this issue, he not only jettisoned the idea, but came up with yet another format for his green-skinned star.

 

1801399311?profile=RESIZE_320x320When General Ross sends troops to capture the Hulk, in “The Monster and the Machine”, Rick Jones mentally commands the enthralled goliath to flee.  Instead, Ross settles for taking Jones into custody, in order to determine the connexion between him and the Hulk.  Rick telepathically summons the Hulk, who attacks the base and swoops off with the boy.

 

Rick has the Hulk take them to Dr. Banner’s secret desert lab.  Realising he cannot go on without sleep, the youngster takes a desperate chance.  He finds a prototype of a gamma-ray projector, along with Banner’s notes for operating it.  Ordering the Hulk to submit to the device, Rick then follows Banner’s written directions.  The machine fires to life and blasts the Emerald Behemoth with gamma radiation.  He immediately reverts to Bruce Banner.

 

Dr. Banner studies the data recorded by the projector-ray and theorises that, with controlled dosages of gamma radiation, he can control his transformations to the Hulk and back.  After making some adjustments to the ray, he straps himself in and tells Rick to pull the switch.  One gamma-ray-zap later, Banner discovers that he has succeeded beyond his wildest hopes.  Not only has he transformed back to the Hulk, but he has retained Banner’s intellect!

 

1801401724?profile=originalRick Jones quickly sees that the monster may have Banner’s brains, but still displays the brutish nature of the Hulk.  The Banner part of him holds some influence though, as the Green Goliath declares his intention to use his might to accomplish good deeds.

 

In the second story of the issue, “Gladiator from Outer Space”, the Hulk establishes his super-hero credentials by defeating an attack by Communist forces disguised as an invasion of aliens from outer space.

 

This story marks the introduction of the Hulkster’s purple trunks, replacing his familiar torn trousers.

 

The next issue, # 5 (Jan., 1963), was the only one in the series’ run that instituted no changes to the previous ish’s status quo.  So we can skip it and go right to . . . .

 

 

The Incredible Hulk # 6 (Mar., 1963)

 

After two issues of being able to change between the Hulk and his normal self at will, Dr. Banner begins to experience some side-effects from the gamma-ray projector.  The transformations are becoming more painful and less complete.  When the Hulk turns the ray on himself at the beginning of the story, he discovers that he has not changed into his usual frail human form.   "Puny" Banner has become huskier and more muscular.

 

Before he has time to adjust to his new physique, Banner is alerted to an event at the military base commanded by General Ross.  A being called the Metal Master (a real alien from outer space this time) has arrived in the near-by town and claims dominance over the Earth.  He backs it up, too, when he uses his power over metal to rout Ross’s army, by melting tanks and deflecting missiles.

 

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Banner steps under the gamma-projector and becomes the Hulk, again.  But there’s been another glitch.  While the rest of him is the Hulk, his head is still that of Bruce Banner.  He’s really into this super-hero stuff now and refuses to expose his secret identity.  Instead, he dons a latex mask of the Hulk, which he had conveniently made “for study”, and bounds off to tackle the Metal Master.

 

The troops hold back while man-monster and metal-master square off.  Round One goes to the villain, though, when he turns a hunk of iron into an aerial torpedo and---again, it was a weaker Hulk in those days---kayos ol’ Greenskin with it.  The Metal Master flies off, and curious soldiers surround the semi-conscious Hulk.  One of them discovers the Green Goliath is wearing a mask and removes it.  Fortunately, the transformation process had completed during the battle, and Banner-head was replaced by the Hulk’s unsightly noggin.

 

1801402037?profile=RESIZE_320x320After an interlude in which the Hulk once again escapes from General Ross’s custody, feverish preparations are made for the next confrontation with the Metal Master.  Bruce Banner has an idea for a weapon which will defeat the marauding alien, but he needs Rick Jones’ help to gather the components.

 

Incidentally, this story features Rick’s formation of the Teen Brigade (which is a subject for its own Deck Log Entry---if I ever get desperate for ideas).

 

By now, the Metal Master is in Washington, D.C., making his demands to the White House.  The Hulk arrives just as the villain is demonstrating his power, but instead of the knock-down, drag-out battle that a reader would expect to see in a 1965 tale of the Hulk, instead, ol’ Jadejaws wins out over the Metal Master with trickery and guile.  The alien puts everything back the way it was and leaves Earth.

 

Back at his secret lab, the Hulk learns that, for saving the nation’s capital, the President has awarded him a pardon for any crimes of which he’s been accused.

 

 

 * * * * *

 

 

The entire run of the Hulk’s first series and at the end, he was even more different from the version that I knew than when it started.  Here, he possessed Bruce Banner’s mind and scientific acumen; he controlled when he changed to the Hulk and back; and he willingly acted as a super-hero.  That was a far cry from “Hulk smash!”

 

However, something I had read in The Avengers # 16 (May, 1965) now made more sense.  Iron Man reminded the new line-up that, when the Avengers were founded, the Hulk was a member.  That was my first inkling of such a thing, and I had struggled to fathom how even Stan Lee could make the brainless, temperamental monster fit in as part of the team.  But the Green Goliath of The Incredible Hulk # 6 would be more workable in a group, as I saw for myself when I was finally able to read the Avengers’ origin.

 

 

The Avengers # 1 (Sep., 1963)

 

The Hulk is still eating his super-hero Cheerios in this tale, as we see when he tries to prevent a nest of dynamite from exploding on a line of railroad tracks.  Unfortunately, the dynamite is only an illusion, cast by Thor’s arch-enemy, Loki, and it causes the Hulk to inadvertently damage the tracks himself.  Nevertheless, he is able to hold the tracks secure while a train passes over them.

 

1801404584?profile=RESIZE_320x320Unfortunately, the engineer spies the Hulk and jumps to the conclusion that he was trying to wreck the train.  That’s the word that gets out and, Presidential pardon or no Presidential pardon, ol’ Greenskin decides to make himself scarce.  This sets in motion the events which lead to the formation of the Avengers, and the Hulk decides it might be a pretty good thing to be on a team of heroes.

 

In the next issue, it’s clear that, while he may be the group’s powerhouse, the Hulk gets a low mark in the “Plays Well with Others” block.  He’s abrasive, arrogant, and intemperate, and Iron Man would dearly love to chop the Emerald Behemoth off at the knees, except that he has to get in line behind Thor and Giant-Man to do it. During their battle with the Space Phantom, his teammates’ insults quickly push the Hulk past his boiling point.  After growling a few choice words, he quits the Avengers and leaps away.

 

Stan Lee wasn’t giving up on the Hulk.  If he didn’t work as a hero, then maybe he’d find his niche as a villain.

 

 

The Avengers # 3 (Jan., 1964)

 

1801405094?profile=RESIZE_320x320This issue begins closely after the conclusion of the previous one.  While the Avengers launch a search for the Hulk, their quarry returns to the American southwest, where Rick Jones persuades him to rest in the desert lab.  Using the gamma-ray projector to become his human self, an exhausted Bruce Banner locks himself in the stone vault and tries to sleep.  Instead, he tosses and turns fitfully, only to feel himself involuntarily transforming back into the Hulk.  Banner is helpless to prevent the change, blaming it on an insufficient dosage from the gamma-ray projector.

 

Instants later, Rick is startled to see his green-skinned pal smash through the stone wall of the vault, something he had not been able to do before, and it scares the bejeesus out of him.  It’s more than just the monster’s increased strength.  The Hulk is filled with rage and a contempt for humanity.

 

It’s a sea change for the character of the Hulk.  He had always been brutish and arrogant, even with Bruce Banner’s intellect, but here, he moves over to the dark side.  He considers humans to be less than ants, and if he happens to step on them so be it.  Later, when he teams up with the Sub-Mariner, the Hulk is willing, even eager, to destroy the Avengers.  And after that’s done, he plans on killing Namor for good measure.

 

He has bloomed into an outright villain, an attitude which will guide his next few appearances.

 

The Hulk battles the Avengers twice in this tale.  The first time, he outwits and outfights his former teammates with embarrassing ease.  The second time, with the Sub-Mariner at his side, he almost pulls off the unthinkable.  That’s when Stan Lee tosses the readers another curve.

 

In the heat of battle, the Hulk suddenly reverts to Bruce Banner.  Banner chalks it up to the excitement of the pitched combat with the Avengers.  Within the short, unstable history of the Hulk, this is the first time the transformation has ever occurred without any outside stimulus.  A corner is about to be turned.

 

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Oh, and on a fashion note, this story marks the return of the Hulk’s torn purple pants.  The purple trunks are gone for good, or at least, for the rest of the Silver Age.

 

 

Fantastic Four # 25 (Apr., 1964)

 

This story continues the premise that the transformations from Banner to the Hulk and back again are now occurring spontaneously.  In an early chapter, Banner makes it back to his secret laboratory; however, the Hulk gains ascendency and, in a fit of pique, destroys all of the scientific equipment. The gamma-ray projector is reduced to junk.

 

This is a significant shift for the character, since the ability to control the changes has been taken out of Bruce Banner’s (and the Hulk’s) hands.  Now the transformations occur seemingly at random, which is a far more useful literary device.

 

And the Hulk is still a thug, callous and potentially deadly.  He spends this issue and the next with blood in his eye, ready to visit a terrible vengeance on Rick Jones.  Fortunately, the Fantastic Four and the Avengers are on hand to prevent it.

 

 

Tales to Astonish # 59 and # 60 (Sep. and Oct., 1964)

 

When the Hulk unexpectedly reverted to Bruce Banner in The Avengers # 3, it was probably just a plot device Stan tossed in because he was down to the next-to-last page and he needed a quick end to the story.  But it must have gotten the Smiling One to thinking.  If over-stress changed the Hulk to Banner, it made even more sense that the same thing would cause Banner to change to the Hulk.  Even better, he could toss in some medical mumbo-jumbo about racing pulse rates and elevated blood pressure and stuff like that, to make it sound legit.

 

So that’s just what Stan did.  The problem is, I wasn’t exactly sure when he first did it.  In Tales to Astonish # 59, the Hulk appears in the Giant-Man story, as a prelude to getting his own feature in the title.  That tale---“Enter the Hulk”---includes a sequence in which a highly peeved Bruce Banner lets his anger get the best of him, and he turns into his green-skinned alter ego.  From Banner’s thoughts, it’s clear he knows that the sudden increase in his blood pressure instigates the transformation . . . .

 

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Yet, when the Hulkster moves into his own slot, in the very next issue, we find Dr. Banner completely in the dark about what causes him to turn into the Hulk and back again.  It isn’t until the bottom of page three that he figures out that extreme stress triggers the change.

 

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It seems unlikely that the two stories were printed out of order.  So my guess is Stan Lee, who was cranking out stories for almost the entire Marvel line, got ahead of himself here.

 

 

Tales to Astonish # 65 and # 66 (Mar. and Apr., 1965)

 

As I was reconstructing the Hulk’s early history from all those reprints and back issues, I saw that I was still dealing with the reasonably intelligent Hulk.  From the beginning, he had a solid, if low-brow, intellect and he was still that way when his series in Tales to Astonish commenced. That certainly wasn’t the Hulk I knew.  Of all of these early discrepancies, as Stan tried to find the right formula to make the Hulk work, that was the big one for me:  when did ol' Jadejaws become a dimwit?

 

I had assumed it was a gradual process, something the character eased into.  The more the Hulk moved in the direction of stupid, the more Stan liked it, I figured.  To my surprise, I found out that I'd figured wrong.

 

It happened in one issue.

 

For the first seven stories in his Tales to Astonish run, the Hulk still had a decently working brain and spoke in his tough-guy grammar.  In Tales to Astonish # 65, ol’ Greenskin doesn’t get much camera time, but he still has his wits and talks in proper syntax, with passive verbs and pronouns, even.

 

Then a month later, Tales to Astonish # 66 comes out, and suddenly, right in the middle of the on-going plotline, the Emerald One has turned into an idiot.  Everything is “Hulk angry!  Hulk smash!” now.  And the captions make reference to “the cloudy brain” of the Hulk and how he lacks cunning.

 

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Tales to Astonish # 67 (May, 1965)

 

Now, he was almost the Hulk that I was familiar with.  Almost, but not quite.  There was one last detail.  Stan Lee had insisted that extreme stress also caused the Hulk to change back to Bruce Banner.  In fact, that was still the standard in Tales to Astonish # 66:

 

But, the more the Hulk rages, the faster his heart beats---the higher his blood pressure rises---until it reaches the crucial point which triggers the most amazing transformation in medical history . . . .

 

After that, it’s “Hello again, Bruce.”

 

I think Stan had finally gotten the Hulk to the level he wanted---an almost mindless creature of rage.  Perhaps he felt that this version of the Hulk would work better without a ceiling on his anger.  Or maybe it was just another case of Stan losing track of some of the details among all the scripts he was writing.  But for whatever reason, beginning with Tales to Astonish # 67, the Green Goliath had to calm down after a rampage in order for the transformation back to Banner to kick in.

 

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And that’s the way it stayed.

 

 

When I first went back and read a few early stories and saw how different the Hulk was from the one I was reading by the end of ’65, I had no idea it had actually taken three years of adjustments by Stan Lee to get there.  Sure, most comic-book characters experience some minor revisions at first.  It’s part of the settling process.  But few have suffered as many basic changes in premise as has the Hulk.

 

In the final analysis, though, after all that honing and tweaking, Stan got it right.  The final product---the Big Green Goof---is the version everyone instinctively associates with the character.

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  • There was a fair amount of tweaking on all of the Marvel series from this era, as if they were in such a rush to introduce new characters that they hadn't taken time to fully work out the concepts until the stories were in print. Even the Hulks appearance was inconsistent in those early stories. Maybe it was a product of the inking, but the Hulk never seemed to look quite the same from issue to issue even with Kirby handling most of the characters early appearances.

  • Possibly Lee started out with the idea of doing something like the Prize Frankenstein series. The Hulk looked more like the Frankenstein monster right at the start.

    The other long-running monster series in the Golden Age was "The Heap". Possibly it was the model instead; the Captain wrote about the similarities of Rickie Wood and Rick Jones here (images here). (But I think Rick's red jacket, from his early time as Captain Marvel's partner, was modelled after Billy Batson's red sweaters.)

    My theory is that the Hulk, as initially conceived, was a combination of the Frankenstein monster and the Wolf Man. Banner transformed at night, Larry Talbot under the full moon; like Talbot, Banner feared what his other identity might do.

    At some point early on Larry Lieber rescued a rejected Kirby Hulk story from a rubbish bin. Some of its pages can be seen here. I tried to interpret them here (the link in the post no longer works). They use the Rick Jones-and-the-Hulk-are-linked premise, so my guess is the story was created for The Incredible Hulk #4 and was rejected because Lee decided to change direction again.

    One of the interesting things about how much trouble Marvel had getting the feature right is how much of the "classic" Hulk formula was already there at the start. The Hulk hates Banner, the military seeks to catch him, his stomping ground is a desert. The Avengers/Fantastic Four storyline even depicted Banner as perpetually on the run. (He resumed his life in Avengers #5.)

    I think the second story in #3 was where the Hulk became fast moving. That's also where he started leaping; but the cover describes him as flying, and the Supermegamonkey website notes that the pictures seem to show him flying in #4. The website also notes here that in Fantastic Four #25-#26 the Hulk gets stronger "the more he fights", which "becomes the standard". There are appearances of this notion in #25, where the Thing has thought balloons towards the climax of the fight about the Hulk being stronger than ever, and Journey into Mystery #112, where the Hulk rants at Thor that he's getting stronger. This eventually becomes the idea that the madder he gets the stronger he gets, but I don't know when that formula was first used.

  • Stan said somewhere (Jack Kirby Collector?) that he wanted to make a Frankenstein comic but Martin Goodman was afraid Universal might sue. So he mixed in Jekyll and Hyde (the monster sometimes being a normal person) and the Wolfman (the monster only comes out at night) and used the name of several monsters that had appeared in the past couple of years (the most important being Xemnu, who the Hulk would meet in Marvel Feature#3, the third Defenders story.) Of course in the 1970s Marvel did make a Frankenstein comic and Universal didn't complain. Actually they apparently won't unless you give him a flat head and put bolts in his neck, since they still have the trademarks for that look. But Goodman was being extremely careful at the time, since he didn't know what might get his distributor to drop him. Stan has said that's also why the FF didn't have costumes at first, and why they looked like uniforms when they did get them. Spider-Man was a risk because he was obviously a costumed superhero. "And kids hate bugs!" Did Martin play with girls when he was a kid?

    1936615965?profile=original

    Xemnu must have been popular since he quickly got a second appearance.

     

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  • https://captaincomics.ning.com/forum/topics/hulk-questions-aka-i-was...

    In the above, I talk about Tales To Astonish #66-67. In them, the Hulk gets wounded by the Communists' "evapo-ray blaster" and a dissident scientist treats the Jade Giant with a salve to counteract the effects of the ray in his bloodstream. After that is when we get "HULK SMASH!", so did the ray dumb him down or was it the salve or both?

    And were the Commies trying to disable the American Hulk on purpose?

  • Just like Hank Pym starts having trouble growing right after getting shot by the Hidden Man's Rays of Doom. He says the effects are temporary but right in the next issue he almost passes out when he changes size,

  • I think this is one of those occasions where all of the tinkering helped enhance the character for later use. I never liked the Hulk as a protagonist during his "HULK SMASH!" days because he just felt too limited--I realize now that has a lot to do with how a character like this is presented and approached, but as a solo hero he just never worked for me. That changed when Peter David took over the reins and took the Hulk back to his roots, giving him enough intelligence to work as a protagonist, and then later migrating him through multiple personalities and scenarios, something that's still done today.

  • Luke Blanchard said:

    There are appearances of this notion in #25, where the Thing has thought balloons towards the climax of the fight about the Hulk being stronger than ever, and Journey into Mystery #112, where the Hulk rants at Thor that he's getting stronger. This eventually becomes the idea that the madder he gets the stronger he gets, but I don't know when that formula was first used.

    I think this ties in with the change in which calming down changes him back to Banner. If anger and agitation triggers both changes then the "madder her gets, the stronger he gets," and the resulting unlimited strength thing don't work.

    I liked the characterization of a shrewd Hulk but I can see a problem with it, as Stan may have.

    Possibly the reason for dumbing him down and making him the target of Ross and others explains why he doesn't wipe out everyone in sight. They took a lot of care to show that no matter how many tanks or jet fighters he destroyed the soldiers and airmen always got away unharmed. He is made to react to being attacked by General Ross, The Leader, and others. This helps him be a sympathetic protagonist, if not a hero. His characterization as being very gentle* in some stories was probably intended to appeal to the flower child segment of Stan's audience.

    * Like Frankenstein's monster picking flowers with a child before accidentally killing him/her.


  • Philip Portelli said:

    https://captaincomics.ning.com/forum/topics/hulk-questions-aka-i-was...

    In the above, I talk about Tales To Astonish #66-67. In them, the Hulk gets wounded by the Communists' "evapo-ray blaster" and a dissident scientist treats the Jade Giant with a salve to counteract the effects of the ray in his bloodstream. After that is when we get "HULK SMASH!", so did the ray dumb him down or was it the salve or both?

    And were the Commies trying to disable the American Hulk on purpose?

    Forgive me, Philip.  To make sure my memory wasn't playing tricks on me, I went through my copies of Tales to Astonish before nailing down issues # 65 and # 66 as the break between smart and dumb Hulk.  But I completely forgot about your earlier thread, in which you discussed the same thing.  If I had remembered it, I would have gladly given you credit in my article for being the first one to promulgate the change in the Hulk's mentality and to pinpoint the precise point when it happened.


  • Luke Blanchard said:

    The [Supermegamonkey] website also notes here that in Fantastic Four #25-#26 the Hulk gets stronger "the more he fights", which "becomes the standard". There are appearances of this notion in #25, where the Thing has thought balloons towards the climax of the fight about the Hulk being stronger than ever, and Journey into Mystery #112, where the Hulk rants at Thor that he's getting stronger. This eventually becomes the idea that the madder he gets the stronger he gets, but I don't know when that formula was first used.

    I cited the same passage [the more the Hulk fights, the stronger he gets] from Fantastic Four #  25 (May, 1964) a few years back, in a Deck Log Entry I did on that classic Thing-versus-Hulk donnybrook.  Here is the precise panel which mentions it . . . .

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    As best I can determine, the first time the actual statement that the angrier the Hulk gets, the stronger he gets was made occurred in the Giant-Man story, "Enter the Hulk", from Tales to Astonish #59 (Sep., 1964).  And it was made by ol' Greenskin himself.

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  • Thanks, Commander. The former panel is from #26. In #25 the Thing thinks "but he's stronger than ever!" and "He gets stronger ever minute!!" as he holds the Hulk with the cable.

    Early in Fantastic Four #25 Banner says the changes are coming more often, and the next change might be the last as "each time the Hulk gets stronger!" That might show the influence of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, where that fate overtakes Jekyll.

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