Following his accidental exposure to gamma rays while saving the life of Rick Jones during the detonation of an experimental bomb, Banner is physically transformed into the Hulk when subjected to emotional stress, at or against his will.

In addition, the Hulk alter ego has many key supporting characters, like his co-founders of the superhero team the Avengers, his queen Caiera, fellow warriors Korg and Miek, and sons Skaar and Hiro-Kala.

[9] In The Science of Superheroes, Gresh and Weinberg see the Hulk as a reaction to the Cold War[15] and the threat of nuclear attack, an interpretation shared by Weinstein in Up, Up and Oy Vey.

[9] This interpretation corresponds with other popularized fictional media created during this time period, which took advantage of the prevailing sense among Americans that nuclear power could produce monsters and mutants.

Peter David, who had initially signed a contract for the six-issue Tempest Fugit limited series, returned as writer when it was decided to make that story the first five parts of the revived (vol.

[39] After a four-part tie-in to the "House of M" storyline and a one-issue epilogue, David left the series once more, citing the need to do non-Hulk work for the sake of his career.

Banner, a physicist who earned his Ph.D. in nuclear physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), is sarcastic and seemingly very self-assured when he first appears in Incredible Hulk #1, but is also emotionally withdrawn.

[9] Arie Kaplan describes the character thus: "Robert Bruce Banner lives in a constant state of panic, always wary that the monster inside him will erupt, and therefore he cannot form meaningful bonds with anyone.

[88] During one storyline where he was placed under a spell to prevent him turning back into Bruce Banner and publicly presumed dead when he was teleported away from a gamma bomb explosion that destroyed an entire town, the grey Hulk adopted a specific name as Joe Fixit, a security expert for Las Vegas casino owner Michael Berengetti, with the grey Hulk often being referred to as Joe after these events.

[101] Titan is a more monstrous and malicious form of Hulk who stands at 30 ft., has black skin, rock-like spikes on his shoulders, and possesses the ability to shoot lasers from his eyes.

Banner's lack of memories often terrifies him as he has often transformed back to witness the devastating aftermath of the Hulk's battles which both saddens and encourages him to find a way to understand his condition so that he won't cause anymore destruction or harm.

[111][112][123][124][125] Despite his remarkable resiliency, continuous barrages of high-caliber gunfire can hinder his movement to some degree while he can be temporarily subdued by intense attacks with chemical weapons such as anesthetic gases, although any interruption of such dosages will allow him to quickly recover.

[131][132] He also possesses less commonly described powers, including abilities allowing him to "home in" to his place of origin in New Mexico;[133] resist psychic control,[134][135][136][137] or unwilling transformation;[138][139][140] grow stronger from radiation[111][121][122][141][142] or dark magic;[143][144] punch his way between separate temporal[145][146] or spatial[147] dimensions; and to see and interact with astral forms.

[149] Banner had a stillborn child with Betty, while the Hulk has two sons with his deceased second wife Caiera Oldstrong, Skaar and Hiro-Kala, and his DNA was used to create a daughter named Lyra with Thundra the warrior woman.

Diekmann discussed The Hulk's appearance in the 9/11 tribute comic Heroes, claiming that his greater prominence, alongside Captain America, aided in "stressing the connection between anger and justified violence without having to depict anything more than a well-known and well-respected protagonist.

"[158] In Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics, Les Daniels addresses the Hulk as an embodiment of cultural fears of radiation and nuclear science.

Two of these are "The Ballad of the Hulk" by Jerry Jeff Walker, and the Rolling Stone cover for September 30, 1971, a full color Herb Trimpe piece commissioned for the magazine.

"[164] In September 2019, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson likened himself to The Hulk in an interview with the Mail On Sunday, as political pressure built on him to request an extension to the date of the UK's withdrawal from the European Union.

[168] The Taiwanese-born Ang Lee commented on the "subcurrent of repression" that underscored the character of The Hulk, and how that mirrored his own experience: "Growing up, my artistic leanings were always repressed—there was always pressure to do something 'useful,' like being a doctor."

Classifying himself a failure and suffering ridicule at the hands of Pym, Banner took some of the recently rediscovered Captain America's blood, combined it with his Hulk formula, and injected it.

Banner rationalized his decision by saying that turning himself into a monster gave the Ultimates a villain to fight, thereby justifying their existence at a time when they were accused of being an enormous multi-billion dollar waste of government resources.

[218] After his rampage, Banner spent a number of months in a cell specifically designed to withstand the Hulk's fury, with Anti-Hulk serum administered to him on a continuous basis.

The delicate procedure of traumatizing a 90-pound scientist simply amounted to throwing him out of the chopper in hopes that his anger would overcome the effects of the anti-Hulk serum coursing through his veins.

[220] During the "Ultimate Six" miniseries, the Triskelion was attacked by Electro and Green Goblin, but Banner was later reported by Iron Man to have "fallen asleep reading a magazine" and was promptly sedated for a week just in case.

hired lawyer Matt Murdock to try to avoid the death penalty for 800-plus murder counts by bringing up the important things Banner had done in the interests of national security, and his work for the Ultimates.

After an intense struggle, the Hulk physically rips Wolverine's body in half and hurls his legs four miles up a mountain, leaving Logan's torso to freeze in the snow.

This series depicts the Hulk's physiology as almost infinitely adaptive to adverse conditions, including simulations of hostile extraterrestrial environments such as the surface of the planet Venus.

After the arrival of escapee Reed Richards, the heroes escaped, but Captain America decided to be left behind in order to stop the villains, although he was defeated by Thor.

[242] Using a portal spell, Hulk has the Ultimates brought to K'un-L'un which is one of Heaven's seven capital cities that he rules at the time when they were going to raid a Damage Control site that contained super-powered prisoners that were going to be executed the next day.

With the aid of the Immortal Weapons who have taken their gamma injections, Hulk manages to outfight the Ultimates where he apparently killed Iron Lad and broke off She-Hulk's hand.