Comic Books - The Incredible Hulk History

In this article we're going to cover the history of
one of the most changing comic books and characters ever - The
Incredible Hulk.

The Incredible Hulk was another Marvel creation
from the genius mind of Stan Lee. The character debuted in 1962 and
thus began a strange evolution of a character that was probably the
most tormented in comic book history.

The Incredible Hulk was Dr.
Bruce Banner. He was a scientist experimenting with gamma rays. Well,
one of this experiments went haywire and Banner was exposed to the
gamma rays himself. He was close to death and miraculously survived,
but not without paying a huge price. It seems that whenever Banner
became angry he would transform into this hideous green creature who
became known as The Hulk.

Unlike most other super heroes, The
Hulk was not good. He wasn't entirely bad either. He would come to the
aid of the underdog and saved many an innocent person in his day. But
he had very little affection for law and order. Maybe it had something
to do with the fact that they were trying to kill him all the time. The
Hulk consequently inflicted as much harm on the upholders of justice as
he would do to the criminals. He was an odd bird all right.

Oddly,
the first comic with the green Hulk lasted only 6 issues when the
appearance of the Grey Hulk hit the stands. In this incarnation Banner
would transform into the Grey Hulk at night and then back to himself
when dawn came. The reason for this was because Banner could not live
with what he had become. So he transformed into his darker side at
night to let out his ugly side, since Banner was afraid of the dark.
This was done without him knowing it. In later issues however, it was
done consciously.

In 1964, two years after the first appearance
of The Hulk, there was an issue of Tales To Astonish featuring Giant
Man where he ended up meeting and fighting The Hulk. In the next issue
of that book it would split into two sections. The first section would
feature Giant Man and the second section would feature the Hulk.
Finally in issue number 70, The Sub-Mariner took over Giant-Man's place
in the book.

It wasn't until 1968 that The Hulk took over the
whole book. It was at this time that Tales To Astonish was dropped and
the new title for the book was The Incredible Hulk. This is the reason
why you never find issues 7 through 101 of the Incredible Hulk, the
only comic book hero to suffer this comic numbering fate.

The
Hulk basically ran this way until 1998 when a book came out called "The
Rampaging Hulk" which tells of the early history of The Hulk before
anybody knew Bruce Banner was The Hulk. It lasted six issues.

Finally,
in 1999 The Incredible Hulk ended its run with issue number 474. But it
didn't stay dead. After the new comic titled simply "The Hulk" hit the
stands, 12 issues in, the word Incredible was added back to the title.
The Incredible Hulk had returned.

The Hulk was such a popular
character it saw its way into cartoons and a feature movie, which
unfortunately was not true to the comic and quite awful according to
critics.

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