<p>The Incredible Hulk’s Book of Strength</p><p>By James Buckley, Jr. </p><p>1. How strong is Hulk? 1. ______</p><p>2. Since that fateful day of the gamma bomb, Bruce Banner has changed back and forth into the Hulk thousands of times. 2. ______</p><p>3. It is an amazing transformation. 3. ______</p><p>4. The greatest change to Banner’s body—other than his skin turning green!—is the rapid creation of a set of muscles that make him stronger than an entire football team. 4. ______</p><p>5. Hulk stands seven feet (2.13 meters) tall, and weighs 1,040 pounds (468 kilograms), depending on what he had for dinner. 5. ______</p><p>6. He’s as tall as the tallest basketball player, but he weighs three times as much! 6. ______</p><p>7. A less positive change is that his intelligence disappears. 7. ______</p><p>8. While the Hulk is amazingly strong, he often doesn’t know how to use his power. 8. ______</p><p>9. “Hulk smash!” is often all he can say as he tears up the landscape. 9. ______</p><p>10. When he doesn’t use his strength to break things, Hulk’s exploits are breathtaking. 10. ______</p><p>11. He can lift buses full of people, stop trains in their tracks, tear down whole buildings in seconds, or bend thick steel beams like licorice. 11. ______</p><p>12. Often, Hulk is able to use his strength to help people in trouble, such as Banner’s girlfriend Betty Ross or Hulk’s friend Rick Jones. 12. ______</p><p>13. Through Hulk seems like a brute, he has a mellow center. 13. ______</p><p>14. Villains make a big mistake when they get him angry. 14. ______</p><p>15. His anger only increases his strength. 15. ______</p><p>16. Virtually no superhero or super-villain ever invented can defeat the Hulk in one-to-one combat. 16. ______</p><p>17. His fists are like battering rams when he punches and his kick can topple mountains. 17. ______</p><p>18. Gamma radiation gave the incredible Hulk a kind of strength not seen in any creature in the real world. 18. ______</p><p>19. In this book, we’ll compare Hulk’s strength to people, machines, animals and more. 19. ______</p><p>20. Hulk’s strength is just one of his many talents. 20. ______21. We’ll also see that he can leap like a kangaroo on the moon and recover instantly from injury. 21. ______</p><p>22. And though he isn’t the smartest giant in the world, he does have unique mental abilities. 22. ______</p><p>23. Now … Hulk read! 23. ______</p><p>24. Strong muscles 24. ______</p><p>25. Strength can mean many different things. 25. ______</p><p>26. One dictionary says that strength is “the quality of being strong,” which doesn’t really answer the question, does it? 26. ______</p><p>27. So look under strong: “capable of exerting great power.” 27. ______</p><p>28. That’s more like it! 28. ______</p><p>29. In Hulk’s case, he can exert, or use, much more power than the rest of us. 29. ______30. But when he calls on this great power, he is using pretty much the same method that human beings use when they need strength. 30. ______</p><p>31. Hulk is using muscles. 31. ______</p><p>32. Your body’s bony skeleton is surrounded by a network of long, ropy strands. 32. ______</p><p>33. These muscle strands work together in groups to make your bones move, whether that means walking or running or lifting or even eating. 33. ______</p><p>34. Together, your bones and muscles are what give you strength. 34. ______</p><p>35. Hulk has the same major muscle groups as humans… they’re just much bigger and much stronger. 35. ______36. On this page, we’ve shown on Hulk what some of the most important muscles are and what they’re called. 36. ______</p><p>37. All of the muscles in your body (and, of course, in Hulk’s) work in pairs. 37. ______</p><p>38. One set of muscles moves a bone one way; the matching set moves it the other way. 38. ______</p><p>39. For example, Hulk’s biceps muscle pulls his forearm up while his triceps muscle lowers his forearm. 39. ______</p><p>40. You have muscles in every part of your body, each moving different parts of your skeleton when your brain tells them to move. 40. ______</p><p>41. That’s why they’re also called voluntary muscles. 41. ______</p><p>42. Your leg muscles won’t make you walk until they get a signal from your brain to get moving. 42. ______</p><p>43. Muscles in your heart and lungs are called involuntary. 43. ______</p><p>44. You don’t have to tell your lungs to breath. 44. ______</p><p>45. Those muscles do that specialized work on their own </p><p>(we hope!). 45. ______</p><p>46. Muscles are made up of individual strands of tissue wound together. 46. ______</p><p>47. They look very much like a rope. 47. ______</p><p>48. This helps make muscles strong, and also very elastic, or stretchy. 48. ______</p><p>49. When Hulk’s brain signals his muscles to move, they perform a unique and powerful trick. 49. ______</p><p>50. They contract. 50. ______51. That is, they shrink the bundle of muscles being moved. 51. ______</p><p>52. This brings the two bones closer together, along with any small buildings he is lifting. 52. ______</p><p>53. This contraction in pairs of muscles is what lets your body </p><p>(and Hulk’s) perform any action that requires strength. 53. ______</p><p>54. That means everything from running to jumping to carrying groceries in from the car. 54. ______</p><p>55. Muscles also help perform other feats that don’t need much strength. 55. ______</p><p>56. When you thread a needle, for instance, your finger muscles must grab the tiny thread and then aim it through the needle’s opening. 56. ______</p><p>57. This doesn’t take much strength, but it does take muscles! 57. ______</p>