The Incredible Hulk

The Incredible Hulk Monster, Man, Hero Dana McKnight Texas Christian University hen Marvel Comics introduced The Incredible Hulk in 1962, the following question was displayed prominently within a bold yellow question mark on W the front page: “Is he man or monster or…is he both?”1 Today, it seems easy to dismiss questions about the Incredible Hulk being a monster by merit of the popular Marvel Universe films, which brought the Incredible Hulk to a wide audience. I suspect that most Americans recognize the Incredible Hulk as a member of the Avengers: a hero, not a monster. However, when the Incredible Hulk first made his debut, Stan Lee expected his readers to wonder whether or not the Hulk would be a villain or a hero.2 Drawing from the first six issues of The Incredible Hulk I will discuss how the Incredible Hulk is simultaneously a hero and a monster, both an allegory of the military might of the United States in the atomic age and of the tenuous relationship between security and safety manifest in the uncontrolled destructive power of nuclear weapons. I will close with a glimpse into the contemporary post-9/11 Hulk. Man or Monster? First, it is cogent to get back to the “man or monster” question posed by Stan Lee in the very first issue of The Incredible Hulk, because the Hulk was both a man, Bruce Banner, and a monster, the Hulk. The “man-or-monster” question is not new and was 1 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, “The Coming of the Hulk,” The Incredible Hulk, no. 1, May 1962, in Epic Collection: The Incredible Hulk, Man or Monster? ed. Cory Sedlmeier (Marvel Characters Inc., 2016, Comixology Digital Release), 4. 2 Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon, Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, Inc., 2003), 92. Copyright © 2020, Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs. Confluence asked and answered of other famous monsters to which the Hulk shares more than a number of similarities. One does not have to reach back very far to draw parallels between Bruce Banner’s transformation from a congenial scientist to a large and terrifying being, to note the transformation of Dr. Jekyll into the monstrous Mr. Hyde.3 The hedonistic desires that Dr. Jekyll repressed were manifest in Mr. Hyde as a result of an intentional transformation experiment of which Dr. Jekyll quickly lost control. The other monster that parallels Hulk is Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. Dr. Frankenstein didn’t intend to make a monster; although he was not quite sure what he would be creating, the implicit warning is that Frankenstein was toying with a realm of science that breached the sacrosanct.4 Dr. Frankenstein, like Dr. Jekyll and Bruce Banner, is genius enough to create, but not savvy enough to control or understand, the monster his creation becomes. Therefore, drawing parallels from the out-of- control Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein’s monster to Banner’s scientific creations, the gamma-bomb, and the Hulk is not too difficult of a step. The problem with the comparison arises in the nature of the creatures themselves, because Frankenstein’s creation is not a man but a monster and a murderer, as is Mr. Hyde. Both Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Frankenstein become tragic victims of their created horrors. Neither the monsters nor their creators are heroes, so how is it that the Incredible Hulk is both? Atomic Hulk, the Monster In the first issue of The Incredible Hulk the reader is quickly dropped into the familiar scene of scientists working on a huge explosive: the “G-Bomb.”5 In 1962, as now, Frankenstein’s monster and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were familiar folklore, but so was the theme of scientists working for the government in secret labs. The image of genius scientists working in a military laboratory on a powerful bomb would have reminded readers of scientists secretly working on the Manhattan Project, ushering in the atomic age with the first successful detonation of an atomic 3 Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Newburyport: Open Road Integrated Media, 2014) 4 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein (New York: Open Road Integrated Media, 2014) 5 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, The Incredible Hulk, no. 1, 4-28. 160 Vol. XXVI, No. 2 device on July 16, 1945.6 Seventeen years later, at the publication of the first issue of The Incredible Hulk, nuclear weapons were still a new and fearsome technology. To be fair, nuclear weapons are still fearsome, but scientists and the laity have a better understanding of the destruction that they cause, both in the initial explosion and radiologically. During the 1960s the United States and the Soviet Union were embroiled in the Cold War and the corresponding nuclear arms race. The assumption that the horrific destructive power of the nuclear weapons dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945 would be enough to deter military aggression ended the day that the Soviet Union tested its own atomic device.7 The United States and the Soviet Union scrambled to make higher-yield nuclear weapons in greater numbers than their adversary. The United States and the Soviet Union both claimed self-defense, but the Cold War idea of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) reigned, and hence the party that maintained the most destructive nuclear arsenal would be the party that won the arms race.8 What Stan Lee and Jack Kirby managed to address were 1960s fears “over scientific discoveries and technological devices through a narrative that literally embodies those discoveries and device.”9 Through Dr. Bruce Banner, Lee and Kirby were able to contend with the culpability of genius scientists working on secret devices of uncontrollable and ill-understood destructive power. Banner, of course, was the genius behind the development of the Gamma Bomb, the radiation of which transformed him into the Hulk. Banner was responsible for creating the monster he himself became. It is true that his assistant Igor, a villainous spy, could have stopped the gamma explosion which irradiated Banner: nevertheless, it was Banner, and Banner alone, who created the 6 “The Manhattan Project,” Atomic Heritage Foundation, accessed April 10, 2020, https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/manhattan-project. 7 Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and César Alfonso Marino, “A Globe- Trotting Atomic Weapon: Illustrating the Cold War Arms Race,” 37. 8 Robert Jervis, “The Dustbin of History: Mutual Assured Destruction,” Foreign Policy, November 9, 2009, https://foreignpolicy.com/ 2009/11/09/the-dustbin-of-history-mutual-assured-destruction/ 9 Adam Capitanio, “’The Jekyll and Hyde of the Atomic Age’:The Incredible Hulk as the Ambiguous Embodiment of Nuclear Power,”’ The Journal of Popular Culture 43, no. 2 (2010): 252. 161 Confluence “G-Bomb.”10 Because Banner himself becomes the Hulk, Banner doesn’t represent the scientist at the center of a secretive yet looming and dangerous technology he was the center of the nuclear monster specter.11 During the 1960s concern and fear regarding nuclear technology were beginning to replace the relief that American citizens felt following the end of the second world war.12 The nuclear arms race with Russia contributed to those fears, as did speculation over secret scientific and technological advancements, making Dr. Bruce Banner the perfect candidate for becoming a victim of his own technology. Banner literally transforms into a monster and, because of that transformation, “not only does the Hulk raise a warning flag about new scientific developments, it explores the…connection between scientists and the military.”13 Hulk and Banner both quickly find that the military is more adversary than ally, which also speaks to 1960s concerns and an ideological shift from post-WWII nationalistic hegemonic consensus regarding the might of the U.S. military and the manner in which that might ought to be used.14 Dr. Banner, the Man Prior to the detonation of the G-Bomb, Dr. Banner is ridiculed by General “Thunderbolt” Ross for not testing the bomb soon enough. The General derisively calls him a “milksop” and is suspicious of Dr. Banner, both before and after the detonation of the G-Bomb.15 General Ross actively pursues the Hulk without realizing that the Hulk and Banner are one and the same, all the while commenting about Banner’s lack of masculinity. General Ross objects to Dr. Banner partially because his own daughter, Betty Ross, is romantically interested in Dr. Banner. The romantic 10 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, The Incredible Hulk, no.1, 4-28. 11 Adam Capitanio, “The Jekyll and Hyde of the Atomic Age” 252. 12 Alice L. George and ProQuest Academic Complete, Awaiting Armageddon: How Americans Faced the Cuban Missile Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013) 13 John Darowski and Joseph J. Darowski, “Smashing Cold War Consensus Culture: Hulk’s Journey from Monster to Hero,” in The Ages of the Incredible Hulk:Essays on the Green Goliath in Changing Times, ed. Joseph J. Darowski (North Carolina: McFarland, 2016), 9-10. 14 Ibid, 8. 15 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, The Incredible Hulk, no. 1, 4-28. 162 Vol. XXVI, No. 2 intentions between Betty Ross and Dr. Banner notwithstanding, General Ross’s objections are also an intentional device to “[align] the scientific and rational with effeminacy and masculinity with the destructive power admired by the military.”16 Throughout the first six issues of The Incredible Hulk, Dr. Banner is cooperative with, almost obsequious to, the military even as he is held in suspicion and ridiculed by General Ross. Dr. Banner’s and General Ross’s behavior toward one another stand as an oblique commentary on the principles of the scientists who participated in the Manhattan Project.

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