Ever since Bruce Banner became the Hulk, he’s struggled to control and ultimately extinguish the monster within him. Ironically, it’s the Banner who is the monster.
In the latest story arc “Hulk Vs. Banner” the Hulk makes a deal with Doctor Doom to separate the pair but while Hulk finally finds peace, Banner goes mad. Banner believes that his greatness has been stolen from him. He becomes obsessed with recreating the Hulk, but the gamma radiation just give him a brain tumor so he decides to do the next best thing. He creates an island of hulks like something out of Doctor Moreau. Unfortunately, that makes him a target for a group of mad scientist hunters, who recruit the Hulk to kill Banner. Hulk reluctantly succeeds in The Incredible Hulk #7, and Banner is vaporized by his own gamma bomb. Not surprisingly, we haven’t seen the last of Banner. He is apparently reabsorbed into the Hulk and symbolically appears in a reflection screaming to get out.
To survive Hulk must “Stay Angry” in the upcoming story arc, which is 5 issues of pure adrenaline. “Imagine if you took the ‘Crank’ movies and put the Hulk in them and every five minutes, cut a segment out of them. … That’s what this is,” explains writer Jason Aaron. “I’m trying to make this the most frenetic and crazy thing I’ve ever written, just barreling ahead 90 miles per hour.”
The Hulk will take on She-Hulk, Punisher, Wolverine, Kraven the Hunter, Mexican drug dealers, Atlantean mobsters, Russian super soldiers, and bigfoots (plural).
“I think you can put Hulk in a traditional super hero setting, but I like the stories where he’s outside those boundaries. In this arc I get to do that with each issue. These are not throwaway one shots. This is act two of my bigger story,” said Aaron.
