Looking back on The Hulk

Originally published September 19, 1997, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1244

Monsters. I’m told the theme for this issue is monsters. I have some small familiarity with the subject, having lived with one in my head for over a decade.

Ten years ago, when I had been writer on The Incredible Hulk for less than a year, then-promotions head Steve Saffel told me that title was going to be my “breakout” book, the one that fans would notice me for. I told him he was crazy. Hulk was simply not a title that anyone was noticing. Fan mail was so utterly non-existent that I had had to put out an appeal, stating that I would respond personally to any and all people who wrote in to the book. Plus I figured that I had maybe a year’s worth of stories in me. I didn’t see it as a long-term gig at all.

So now it’s 140 issues later (plus annuals, one-shots, a limited series and a novel). I have easily written more words about the Hulk than I have any other single other character. Although if asked which comic series I’m proudest of, I’ll always answer The Atlantis Chronicles (proudly remaining uncollected by DC), The Incredible Hulk nonetheless remains my magnum opus.

How’d it happen to develop that way? Beats the hell out of me.

Over a decade ago, I was sales manager at Marvel Comics when editor Bob Harras trotted into my office one day, plopped down in the chair opposite my desk, and said, “Would you be interested in writing The Incredible Hulk?

To this day, I’m not entirely certain why he asked me. My tenure on Spectacular Spider-Man had put a number of editorial noses out of joint, for it was felt that someone in sales had absolutely no business being involved on the editorial side. In fact, editorial pressure (by editors no longer there) resulted in my being fired off of Spec Spidey, so I figured that my short writing career at Marvel Comics was pretty much over. Yet there was Bob Harras, asking me if I’d be interested in taking on one of Marvel’s oldest and—frankly—most limited characters. At least, limited as far as I was concerned. Dialogue is one of my strengths, and telling the adventures of a character who had no grasp of personal pronouns and spoke mostly in catch phrases (say ’em with me: “Hulk is strongest one there is”; “The madder Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets”; “Hulk smash!”; “Hulk hate puny Banner!”) didn’t exactly float my creative boat.

“You don’t have to do the dumb green Hulk,” he told me quickly when I voiced hesitation. He explained that Al Milgrom had transformed Bruce Banner back into his earliest incarnation of nasty, crafty and gray. Since the sales on the book were nothing to write home about, I had the okay to do whatever I wanted with the character.

The question was, how to approach him in some way that would seem both different and yet a natural outgrowth of what had gone before? Furthermore, how do we take a monstrous character and make him sympathetic? The way it had been generally done before, the Hulk was misunderstood and tormented by the world. A curious dichotomy, really: The underdog is not generally “the strongest one there is.” But that was how the Hulk had generally been made appealing all the previous years. I wanted to try something different, find some new hook for the character, but I hadn’t a clue what it was.

The key turned out to be in issue #314, written by Bill Mantlo. In that issue, Bill described Bruce Banner’s tortured childhood and abusive father. It is said that most heroic fiction is, at its core, the story of struggle between father and son. This was no exception as we learned that Bruce’s father, Brian, tormented and reviled both his son and Bruce’s mother for giving birth to him. We were never given any reason as to why precisely Brian was like this. But we saw the abuse that Brian heaped on Bruce.

To me, that was a pivotal piece of information. Because when one studies genuine cases of Multiple Personality Disorder, abuse suffered in childhood is generally one of the lead causes. Basically, the mind fractures. The core personality is unable to deal with the realities of the horror visited upon it, and so alternate personalities are constructed in order to cope. The individual himself splinters.

Furthermore, it presented an interesting take on the characters since it provided a point of view for both the Hulk and Banner. To Banner, the Hulk was more than just an engine of destruction. He was the symbol of unleashed and unthinking rage, which was everything that his father—his abuser—had been. The transformation into the Hulk was more than simply repulsive because of the penchant for destruction that the Hulk represented, or the pain that the change incurred. Bruce was appalled by the change because he became, in essence, his own father… that which he hated most in the world. And to the Hulk, Bruce was a weakling, a coward. Belittled by his father and unable to stand up to him, deep down the Hulk resented Banner because he felt that Bruce was unable to protect “them” from the threat that his father represented.

It was an intriguing Pandora’s Box of psychological implications. But I quickly discovered that, once Bill opened it, he had promptly slammed it shut again. After that one issue (a Secret Wars tie-in, no less) the topic was dropped. It was as if, having introduced the backstory, Bill felt that everything which needed to be told about the subject had been done.

I strongly disagreed, and proceeded to hinge my entire take on the character around the notion that child abuse had created a classic MPD. There were several subtexts which were part and parcel of my ambitions for the book:

(1) The abuse perpetrated by Brian Banner probably tripped over into the realm of sexual abuse. Although it was never shown or discussed, there is generally some sort of sexual abuse in MPD cases.

(2) Brian Banner was himself abused as a child. This and the previous notion were finally addressed in the Hulk “Negative One” issue.

(3) Bruce Banner would have gone bonkers, gamma rays or no. The nature of Bruce’s childhood abuse made him a prime candidate for MPD, whether he was hit with gamma rays or not. He simply became a super-powered MPD as a result.

It also gave me a hook upon which I could hang my first several years of the series. There had been any number of attempts to cure the Hulk throughout the Marvel Universe. But I couldn’t find any instance where the cure hinged upon a psychiatric treatment or clinic diagnosis. Basically the surface manifestation had been treated, but it had always invariably failed in the long term. Why? Because the core problem was not the gamma bomb, but Bruce and his damaged childhood, and any cure which did not address these issues was doomed to failure. But MPD are, and have been cured. How?

As near as I can tell, generally hypnosis. Hypnotherapy which “folds” the manufactured identities back into the core personality.

Thus would it be for the Hulk.

To my astonishment, I came up with enough story material for four years while, all during that time, slowly moving the Hulk towards an inevitable cure. This occurred in Hulk #377, which introduced the “New Hulk.” He has been that way through much of my time on the series, but lately I’ve decided that he’s gotten a bit too chatty for my tastes, and I’ve opted to make him darker, more foreboding, less loquacious.

However, one might ask: When you’ve lived with a dark, frightening character for so long, doesn’t that begin to affect you?

Well… yeah. Yeah, it does. In many ways, the Hulk has been almost autobiographical for me.

Problems, things on my mind, assorted concerns have all wound up being played out in the pages of Hulk. Naturally it’s always been to a heightened degree, but the principle remains the same.

When a character gets that much into your head, he becomes second nature to you. You get to know his moods, he gets to understand yours. You feel loyalty to him. Indeed, one of the reasons I’ve stayed on the book is dedication and concern. For all I know, if I left the book, a new writer might come in who would undo everything I’ve done over the past decades.

I judge situations as he would judge them. He will say the things that I dare not say… or even think.

And I try not to let my temper get the better of me. Because believe me… you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., P.O. Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)