All thanks (or fault) to an action figure of the Frankenstein monster.
At the beginning of the sixties the puppet of the creature (with the features of Boris Karloff from the films of thirty years earlier) had a good success and then the Marvel publisher Martin Goodman asked Stan Lee (at the time chief editor of the publishing house and his in-laws) to create a character who resembles the monster, but different enough not to risk a lawsuit for plagiarism.
So Lee, with the help of the designer (and co-subjectist) Jack Kirby, brings out the number one of “The Incredible Hulk”, with a cover date of May 1962, sixty years ago.
At the time the so-called Marvel Universe is in its infancy, the Fantastic Four were created (by Lee and Kirby) only the previous year and soon after Thor (always Lee and Kirby with the help of the texts of Larry Lieber, the brother) will arrive. of Stan – Lieber was his real surname) and Spider-Man (Lee with the designer and co-script writer Steve Ditko), and in fact the first issue recalls the rhythm and themes of the horror stories published at the time by the publishing house and often by Lee and Kirby, it’s not a superhero comic.
But all the key characters of the series are present: from the scientist Robert Bruce Banner, creator of gamma rays, to the young Rick Jones, “creator” of the Hulk (it is to save him that Banner absorbs the gamma rays that will transform him into the Green Goliath), to General Ross and his daughter Betty, whom Banner will later marry.
The Hulk, however, is gray, he will turn green starting from number two (Stan Lee had noticed that the gray was not printed well on the bad paper at the time used for comic books) and has an evil intelligence (he is not the childish monster which would later become).
In addition to Frankenstein (Kirby’s Hulk resembles the Creature), among the sources of inspiration there is the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson “The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ››: not surprisingly, Banner becomes the Hulk when darkness falls.
If the first Hulk is creepy and sometimes evil, he later has the personality of a child who talks about himself in the third person, and just wants to be left alone. Famous expressions of him such as: “The Hulk is not the fearful Banner!” Fearful humans attacked the Hulk, now the Hulk will smash them! ››.
Now Banner becomes the Hulk when he is in a state of agitation: he is the best known version of the Hulk, thanks also to the late seventies TV series, which is partly inspired by it, and the designer Herb Trimpe, column of the series for almost every year. Seventy, gives the Hulk its most classic graphic characterization.
Meanwhile, other characters hit by gamma radiation arrive: the Chief, his archenemy made super intelligent by radiation, She-Hulk and Doc Samson, Banner’s cousin and psychiatrist respectively.
When the Hulk turns a quarter century, in the issue of the series with a cover date of May 1987, another epochal turning point occurs.
Peter David, born in 1956, is an employee in the sales department of Marvel, who almost by chance starts writing Hulk, because no other screenwriter wants to do it. The cycle of him officially begins in this book, will last for eleven years (until 1998) and David will become the best writer of the series and one of the most brilliant in the history of Marvel.
Gradually the screenwriter (thanks to designers like Todd McFarlane, Dale Keown and Gary Frank) changes the cards for the character.
Developing an idea already had by the great cartoonist Barry Windsor-Smith (who recently developed it in the graphic novel ‹‹Monster››) and then the writer Bill Mantlo had stolen from him for an episode of Hulk, it turns out that the little Banner had a series of childhood traumas due to the abuses suffered by his father, violent and then murderous of his mother, which caused him a dissociative identity disorder.
There is no longer only the strong Hulk but with the brain of a child, there is also Joe Fixt, the gray Hulk, less strong but intelligent and devious.
Bruce’s problems therefore arise from his multiple personality. Doc Samson in an atypical psychotherapy session has Bruce Banner hypnotized by the former supervillain Ringmaster: Banner, the gray Hulk and the green and childish Hulk are confronted. They merge and the new Hulk is born: strong like the green Hulk, with the intelligence of Banner and a bit bastard like the gray Hulk. David changes the series and the new Hulk (who no longer transforms into Banner) will be the protagonist for years.
In the long management of David, drawn by the great George Perez (unfortunately passed away this year), the miniseries “Future imperfect” stands out in which in a dystopian post-atomic future the few remaining humans are tyrannized by the Master, a bearded green monster who does not others than the Hulk, turned evil. “Our” Hulk is brought into the future by Janis, nephew of the now very old Rick Jones and manages to defeat his future self.
The Master is a fascinating character and in recent years David himself, in various miniseries, has told the prequel of the saga, that is, how the Hulk became the Master.
After David (who has however returned to the character on several occasions) the series has had alternate management, at times seeking a return to the simple man-monster transformations of the past, others going beyond David himself, as in the recent beautiful cycle, which lasted four years, by Al Ewing (lyrics) and Joe Bennett (drawings) with a now immortal Hulk and another version, this time totally evil, of the Green Goliath, another side of Banner’s complex personality.
Hulk in tv e al cinema
If the Hulk has remained in the imagination of those who do not read comics for decades, it is due to the TV series “The Incredible Hulk” (1978- 1982) starring Bill Bixby (Banner) and Lou Ferrigno (Hulk).
Here Banner is renamed David not Bruce, considered a gay name at the time (they were other times, really), but the series, while devoid of other superheroes, has its own elegiac appeal. Banner travels across America, and when his heart pressure increases, he transforms into a wild green monster, the Hulk, but here mute.
It is a fascinating series on the road with the fugitive Banner, always in search of a healing from gamma rays and who in his wandering discovers the darker side of America.
The series is devoid of other characters with superpowers but in the three TV films that come out between 1988 and 1990 there is the first attempt to create a Marvel universe in another medium, the first embryo of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this time on television and not in the cinema.
It features Thor (unrecognizable compared to the comics), Daredevil (with a different costume, but quite faithful to the comics version) and, despite the title of the third being “The Death of the Incredible Hulk”, a fourth film was also planned (Lee himself talked about it in his monthly column on Marvel books, “Stan’s Soapbox”), with the participation of his cousin She-Hulk and perhaps Iron Man, but Bixby’s tumor (who later died in 1993) prevents it from realization.
The film debut is with the controversial ‹‹Hulk›› by Ang Lee (2003) in which Banner is played by Eric Bana: of the cartoon character Lee (no relation to Stan) he seems to have taken only the difficult relationship with the abusive father , interesting idea, but not enough to make a good movie.
He arrives in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (with all the films of the various Marvel characters linked together) with “The Incredible Hulk” (2008) directed by Louis Leterrier and starring Edward Norton.
But the definitive Hulk is Mark Ruffalo starting from the first ‹‹Avengers›› (2012), who thanks to the computer graphics (which gives us a Hulk with features similar to his) also “interprets” the Green Goliath.
He is a Hulk who talks, who plays a gladiator on a distant planet in “Thor: Ragnarok” (2017), as in a comic saga of the early 2000s and who has recently become intelligent (Professor Hulk) as in good part of the David cycle.
The Hulk Ruffalo will also appear in the TV series dedicated to She-Hulk, out at the end of August, but it deserves a film of its own. Maybe a film version of “Future imperfect”, as David himself hopes.