The Incredible Hulk in 1962

There were always two Marvel heroes that I could never get into: Thor and The Hulk. It’s going to be verrry interesting to see if my opinion changes after reading the series from the top to bottom.

First off, we’re going with The Incredible Hulk in 1962. The Hulk received an extremely short-lived series toward the middle of ’62, that continued a bit into the next year.

Issue 1 covers the obligatory Hulk origin story obliquely criticizing the horrors of the nuclear age. Though I suppose that’s a theme in early Fantastic Four and the team’s origins, right? Now that I think of it, the entirety of early Marvel is bathed in fear and uncertainty.

Hulk also seems to be an amalgamation of Jekyll/Hyde and Frankenstein’s monster.

I think the key is that you can’t read The Incredible Hulk as a superhero book. It has to be read as a sort of Atomic Age take on gothic horror, or an American version of a Toho movie (itself a commentary of nuclear weapons).

So we have this interesting situation where the U.S. government doesn’t understand the circumstances that created the Hulk, and they try to chase him down. At the same time, Bruce Banner is trying to keep his transformations into Hulk under control, which proves impossible. All the while, the Russians are infiltrating Banner’s quarters to steal nuclear secrets. So how do Lee and Kirby handle the first few issues? Alien stories, of course!

Bah.

Issues: The Incredible Hulk volume 1 001-004

Rating: 5