With
his off-the-chart strength, size, durability, speed
and fighting skills, The Hulk has achieved the enviable
status of one of the most popular Super Heroes of
the last century. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist
Jack Kirby, the character debuted in May 1962 in a
series of Marvel Comics.
A young writer, Lee had just
finished the first of the Marvel line of books with
a then unknown team called the Fantastic Four, and
he was looking for a hero who wasn't as handsome or
pretty-someone, or something, totally different who
could capture the imagination of Marvel's readers.
Lee and Kirby wanted a "misunderstood hero." Lee
remembers, "I had always loved the old movie Frankenstein.
And it seemed to me that the monster, played by
Boris Karloff, wasn't really a bad guy. He was the
good guy. He didn't want to hurt anybody. It's just
those idiots with torches kept running up and down
the mountains, chasing him and getting him angry.
And I thought, "Wouldn't it be fun to create
a monster and make him the good guy?'"
Wondering how to bring a new twist
to Mary Shelley's classic character as imagined by
director James Whale in 1931, Lee recalled another
favorite from his childhood: Robert Louis Stevenson's
half-man/half-monster, depicted in director Rouben
Mamoulian's 1931 classic, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
"I combined Jekyll and Hyde with Frankenstein," Lee
tells, "and I got myself the monster I wanted, who
was really good, but nobody knew it. He was also somebody
who could change from a normal man into a monster,
and lo, a legend was born."
Lee and Kirby imagined
Dr. Bruce Banner, a nuclear physicist who was forever
changed after a freak accident during the testing
of an experimental bomb that showered his body with
gamma radiation. [Notably, Lee, a big fan of alliteration
(think Sue Storm, Scott Summers, Peter Parker), preferred
to give his heroes the same first initials in both
their names, therefore Bruce Banner was born.] Whenever
seriously angered, adrenaline would course through
Banner's body and he would morph into the fearsome
Hulk, a creature of limitless power and endless aggression.
When enraged, he became a brutal menace to society,
but would learn to use his powers to help the weak
and helpless.
Dr. Banner would spend the rest of his life battling
to control the fury of his alter ego and do good
with The Hulk. Though the series was initially cancelled
in March 1963 after six issues, The Hulk immediately
went on to guest star in "Fantastic Four #12" and,
shortly thereafter, became one of the first members
of The Avengers, appearing in the first two issues
of that famous series. Two years later, he turned
up opposite Giant-Man in "Tales to Astonish (#59),"
earning his own story in the very next issue.
By 1968, the popularity of the character caught
on with audiences across the globe. The Hulk had
taken over the entire book of "Tales to Astonish,"
which was then renamed The Incredible Hulk.
The series ran all the way to issue #474, when it
ended its publication in 1999; it was quickly relaunched
in a new series titled The Hulk. With issue
#12, the name was changed back to The Incredible
Hulk, and the title remains one of the most
prominent in the Marvel library today. For almost
half a century, audiences have responded to the
fact that Bruce Banner and The Hulk are two sides
to the same man. They have been fascinated by the
idea that he represents the extremes of the id and
superego that Freud believed controlled us all.
When Banner is The Hulk, his consciousness is buried
in the monster, and he has next to no control over
his green counterpart's actions.
Lee offers that
he originally thought it'd be fun if the monster
and the man "both hated each other. The good
guy, Bruce Banner, doesn't want to turn into the
monster and wishes he could cure himself. The monster
thinks of Banner as a weakling and wishes he wouldn't
have to change back to Banner." And their battle
for dominance raged on for decades while readers
devoured it.
Throughout his career as a Marvel Comics
character, The Hulk has been seen in a number of
incarnations. Not only has he gone from the pages
of comics to television to the big screen; he's
turned from gray to green and lumbering lunk to
brilliant colleague. He's taken on aliases from
Annihilator and Joe Fixit to the Green Scar and
Green Goliath-but he has always retained the core
element that has kept him beloved by audiences for
nearly half a century. He remains indelibly linked
to a scientist confused by the fate dealt him, and
the two have been intertwined in a constant, volatile
relationship.
Fifteen years after his introduction,
The Hulk's immense popularity generated a successful
CBS television series, produced by Universal Television.
In 1977, the show The Incredible Hulk, which starred
Bill Bixby as David Banner and a young bodybuilder
named Lou Ferrigno as The Hulk, was imagined. The
series, which premiered in March 1978, was a huge
hit that enjoyed a five-season run before being
cancelled in 1982. Six years after the cancellation,
the devotion of legions of fans prompted the network
to create three more telefilms, which aired in the
late '80s. In 1993, Bill Bixby passed away from
cancer, ending that legacy of The Incredible Hulk
on television.
In 2003, director Ang Lee imagined The Hulk in a
feature film for Universal Pictures. The Oscar®
winning filmmaker captured Banner and his alter
ego in an origin story, one that examined a portrait
of a man at war with himself and the world. HULK
told the story of a beast that was both hero and
monster - whose powers embodied Banner's waking
nightmare.
The film opened in American markets with a record-setting
$62 million, third only to Spider-Man and Iron Man
in highest opening weekend grosses for original
Marvel properties. When Universal and Marvel decided
to make the next chapter in his saga, they elected
to capture the rawest elements of the franchise,
selecting a French filmmaker known for his lightning-fast
camerawork and passion for the television show that
transfixed him as a child.
Opting for a series reboot that embraces the spirit
and narrative of the Bixby/Ferrigno series, the
studios knew it was time to give fans exactly The
Hulk they demanded. THE INCREDIBLE HULK
would be full of the pulse-pounding actionaudiences
begged to see from their hero-complete with feats
of heroicstrength and a nemesis even more dangerous
and powerful than The Hulk himself. |
