I love when Chuck talks comic books. :) In issue #1 of the Hulk, there is a bit where Thunderbolt Ross is raging, and Bruce Banner says something like "I despise men that think with their fists." This from a scientist whom has designed and is testing a devastating weapon of mass destruction. I think that is an interesting examination about uses of force, and a strong hint as to just what Dr. Banner is suppressing of his own urges.
In at least one version the Gamma Bomb is supposed to destroy buildings but leave people intact. I'm sure that consoling for the guy on the fifth floor.
Thank you for doing this. Bruce Banner is one of my favorite characters. In fact, he comes in at number five on my list. (Sam Vimes, Granny Weatherwax, the 11th Doctor, Harry Dresden, Bruce Banner). All my heroes have one thing in common. Every one of them is a character who does good by choice. They are heroes because when they have to decide to help people or hurt them they make a conscience decision to help even though they could do evil. And we know they want to. They just want to do good more. Bruce could, at any time, just give in. He could stop the struggle and just let The Hulk rule his life. How hard would it be to get angry again every time he calmed down? We live in a world of 24 hour news. Twitter exists. UA-cam comments are a thing. There are SO MANY ways to just give in to the madness and never have to feel sad, or scared, or week again. But he struggles against his weakness every day and that makes him a hero to me.
@@kamdan2011 I don't like speaking ill of Ditko as he was also an excellent illustrator, but yeah. Kirby's everything surpasses his work. Kirby's work doesn't age, whereas Ditko was good for the time.
I'm really excited by this series -- this episode itself was really fascinating to watch, and you've brought a lot of insight many (including the filmmakers) ignore. Your analysis of the series really reminds me of how Peter David in the 90s treated Hulk and Banner, and the way you brought it together made that run really fall into place (especially Joe Fixit).
7:12 when I drink I am more opinionated, but, I also get super friendly and tell people I love them. I'm drinking right now - not enough to get drunk enough to start saying those things - but I'm very happy that the drunk me is someone who I actually kind of like, and not a horrible monster.
Yeah, it's funny how the Hulk was originally more like a Jeckyll and Hyde situation, with a bit of Frankenstein and the Wolfman (changing at night) thrown in, for good measure. Fortunately, they changed the Hulk so that he changed when angry or under stress. I believe that change was an idea from Steve Ditko, when he worked on the character in his Tales to Astonish run. Even after those changes, though, it was difficult to consider the Hulk any kind of a hero. He was usually manipulated into fighting the bad guys, either by other people or by circumstances.
Great video. I found you through your other big comics project, and I love hearing you talk about them like this. Making fun of Trek is fun and all, but I love the more deep dive into histories.
One thing I felt immediately was that Metal Master is gonna get sued by Magneto for gimmick infringement. But seriously, it's really neat to see you covering all this and I look forward to seeing more of it.
Fav character as a kid. Spiderman was obviously the flagship, but I liked the Hulk the best. (This is before the x-men explosion. Then they got all popular :)
The Hulk for me has always been one of those famous Marvel characters that I didn’t care too much about. Nothing against the Jolly Green Giant, and a number of his character elements and stories such as Planet Hulk, World War Hulk, She-Hulk, Amadeus Cho are things I really like. Unfortunately I never really cared for the character himself, even when the MCU came out and his frustrating film rights got people to question why there’s no other solo film. This is a very interesting look at him, and perhaps I may have a greater appreciation of him by the end of this miniseries.
He's changed so many times, and he's hit SEVERAL mutually-incompatible islands/plateaus of quality in terms of good theming and a pleasant status quo that serves lots of good stories.. but at his basis, he's just kind of unpleasant. And the wide audience can't handle such a complicated storyline that changes so many times, the way comic book fans can.
I've always been more of a DC fan than Marvel, but I can still understand and respect the cultural and historical significance of some of Marvel's characters like this.
I've long rejected all the film incarnations of the Hulk because this Jekyll & Hyde aspect of the Banner/Hulk character are sorely missing. It's what gives the creation its unique breadth, even when it was written for kiddies. My own "definitive" version is the child-monster is the Trimpe/Sal Buscema era, which incorporated aspects of Of Mice & Men; reader's sympathy for the Hulk as well as Banner.
18:50 SFDebris: "Trademark costume for the character. NOTHING" me: Oh no! SFDebris: "Except torn purple pants." me: (sigh of relief) Also, had NO IDEA Rick Jones controlled the Hulk a la Gigantor. That'd have been a neat thread to keep up with.
I hope you also do an analysis on the Mighty Thor. Just, ugh, just skip Jason Aaron's love letter to Jane ''i'm better than Thor in everything for no good reason'' Foster for the love of Odin.
Can you do a video on ang lees hulk it is a underrated and under appreciated film that was ahead of its time i love how it above and beyond and took the character seriously
While it's true that Bruce Banner may behave in a deliberate, heroic way, it's also correct to say that he's more concerned about his work than the consequences. What makes the gamma bomb unique is obviously that a far larger proportion of its energy is released in the form of ionizing radiation like gamma rays, than kinetic energy. So rather than destroy entire cities, it just makes them uninhabitable for thousands of years, and its inhabitants all die slowly. He's the definition of thoughtless.
I’m thinking that will be the case as Avengers #1 is where Hulk appeared next after his series ended, and where the whole trend of heroes going up against the Hulk started. Hulk also left the Avengers by issue 3 so that could also warrant some discussion.
Yes. You can absolutely see the formation of the gray hulk/joe Fixit personality that would show in Peter David’s hulk beginning here in this first 6 issues. Especially, the mental back and forth of Bruce and Hulk subtlety influencing each other’s personality and actions. Can’t wait for the second part of this series.
Maybe it's the dialogue as well as your pitch, but your voice when reading the Hulk's "Joe" persona early on sounds like you're imitating Harrison Ford, or rather, Mark Hamill's impression of Harrison Ford.
The Dr. Bruce Banner in the comic being discussed is an utter idiot, arrogant, a terrible scientist who should lose his degrees for thinking he is above peer review, whose solution for testing deadly radiation is "let's build a bomb, and detonate it above ground!". Sorry, as a biologist married to an engineer who used to work on fusion test reactors, I was facepalming the whole time. Admittedly, clearly the writers are to blame for just doing the most generic superhero origin story: "Science experiment gone wrong 101" and "Nobody did basic security measures to check the test area", with a dash of "heroic sacrifice". And the times it was written in are also to blame, when people thought gamma radiation was "mysterious". [Gamma radiation: Any type of ioizing electromagnetic radiation from the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei, i.e. uncharged photons, with quantum energies above 200 keV (kiloelectronvolts) up to 8 MeV, although very-high-energy gamma rays from quasars can reach the range of teraelectronvolts TeV. It can pierce solid matter much more readily than Alpha and Beta radiation does because it interacts less with atoms. Because of that, gamma rays can easily pass through organic tissues, releasing secondary radiation (i.e. X-rays), damaging DNA and even bone marrow cells. Usually, people don't die of high doses immediately, but once the damaged cells try to divide or synthesize proteins or in the case of bone marrow create fresh red blood cells, the fun starts. Shielding requires lead or thick concrete, not an open trench.] In the story, it's basically a placeholder for "magic", and Banner' survival implies he was most likely a latent mutant (in the sense of "mutant" from the X-Men) from birth. If any of the characters in that origin story had acted logically and followed proper proceduces, none of that would have happened. I'm not even talking of the teenager in the car, he's a teenager, they do dumb things. No. Banner's words imply he has never tested "gamma rays" before, but instead of testing them in a lab, safely, he builds a giant bomb. Then he and the army decide to detonate that bomb above ground. Splendid. Banner is so utterly arrogant that he never submitted any scientific papers on his work for peer review, or even let any other scientist on the project see his formulas. Despite all that, the army is funding his "research", because of course they do. The only sane person here is his fellow physicist Dr. "I don't have a last name" Igor. And the writers turn him into a jackass who for unexplained reasons wants Banner to _die_ so badly he is willing to commit murder by not stopping the countdown. On the topic of the countdown, why the hell did Banner not simply raise alarm and _shut the whole experiment down_ before he ran out like a headless chicken to save the teenager in the car from a countdown that Banner could have shut off at any moment? This is what emergency shut-off buttons are _for!_ Instead he races against a ticking clock that should not be ticking, because the writers created a false dilemma: "We don't have time to cancel the countdown, because there's a countdown we can only delay and time is running out, we have to hurry! No time to tell anyone what's going on!" Eh? It also never entered Banner's mind to _tell the army_ or _anyone_ but Igor that he was leaving the bunker. No, he had to play the big hero like an idiot. Let's talk about the utter failure of security: The entire area should be military restricted area, with a fence around it. F Security Failure #1: The teen in a car(!) got inside... he didn't sneak in, he drove in, in a loud car! Are the guards asleep? Failure #2: Banner and Igor can see the car from their bunker window, but no-one else can? (and Banner's car is parked right outside.) Failure #3: The entire area was not swept for intruders _before_ the countdown started? And there are no alarms warning idiots to stay clear?? Failure #4: No-one notices that their head scientist is leaving the bunker and jumping into his car and driving into the area that everyone is staring at. Instead of tackling the boy so that they both fall into the trench, Banner pushes the boy in the very last second and dramatically stays at the edge of the trench. (Not that the shallow trench would help, but whatever.) That is such a Hollywood trope. "I'll push you out of the way of the bullet and then stand in your exact place so I get shot." So in short, everyone in that story is an idiot, except for Igor, who is written as a total ass with homicidal tendencies until we find out he's a spy meant to stop Banner's experiments.
And after Hulk/Banner meets the Gargoyle, Banner the physicist is suddenly also a geneticist, apparently? And not only can he figure out how this previously untested gamma radiation mutated him (what?), he can build a machine that can apply this to humans without killing them (because of course he can), all in the span of one jump-cut and without the help of his lab notes. And the gamma radiation is now magic spell that can reverse mutations as well and turn the Gargoyle who was turned into a monster back into a human. Okay then. Except Banner never uses this magic machine on himself because he is certain it won't work.... why? He has a sample size of one, and he hasn't run any tests. I guess he read the writers' script.
Immortal Hulk and Planet Hulk are my favourite story arcs for the Green Guy!
Hulk is probably one of my top 5 favorite marvel characters. This is gonna be a fun series
Immortal Hulk is my favorite
Same, #5 actually rite on da dot
I love when Chuck talks comic books. :) In issue #1 of the Hulk, there is a bit where Thunderbolt Ross is raging, and Bruce Banner says something like "I despise men that think with their fists." This from a scientist whom has designed and is testing a devastating weapon of mass destruction. I think that is an interesting examination about uses of force, and a strong hint as to just what Dr. Banner is suppressing of his own urges.
In at least one version the Gamma Bomb is supposed to destroy buildings but leave people intact. I'm sure that consoling for the guy on the fifth floor.
@@ShadowWingTronix Shyeah. It's not the fall, it's the sudden impact of irony.
Doubt it was on purpose but clever
Al Ewing Immortal Hulk is playing with a lot of ideas from the original Hulk.
The character of Banner/Hulk is the perfect melding of the story of Frankenstein's Monster and Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde.
As well as Werewolf stories.
Thank you for doing this. Bruce Banner is one of my favorite characters. In fact, he comes in at number five on my list. (Sam Vimes, Granny Weatherwax, the 11th Doctor, Harry Dresden, Bruce Banner).
All my heroes have one thing in common. Every one of them is a character who does good by choice. They are heroes because when they have to decide to help people or hurt them they make a conscience decision to help even though they could do evil. And we know they want to. They just want to do good more.
Bruce could, at any time, just give in. He could stop the struggle and just let The Hulk rule his life. How hard would it be to get angry again every time he calmed down? We live in a world of 24 hour news. Twitter exists. UA-cam comments are a thing. There are SO MANY ways to just give in to the madness and never have to feel sad, or scared, or week again. But he struggles against his weakness every day and that makes him a hero to me.
Well said. That’s why Bruce appeals to me, as well. His internal and psychological struggle is instantly relatable.
Hulk smash that puny like button!
Jack "The King" Kirby is one of, if not the greatest illustrator to ever work in the comics industry.
Kirby’s Hulk > Ditko’s Hulk
@@kamdan2011 I don't like speaking ill of Ditko as he was also an excellent illustrator, but yeah. Kirby's everything surpasses his work. Kirby's work doesn't age, whereas Ditko was good for the time.
I'm really excited by this series -- this episode itself was really fascinating to watch, and you've brought a lot of insight many (including the filmmakers) ignore. Your analysis of the series really reminds me of how Peter David in the 90s treated Hulk and Banner, and the way you brought it together made that run really fall into place (especially Joe Fixit).
7:12 when I drink I am more opinionated, but, I also get super friendly and tell people I love them. I'm drinking right now - not enough to get drunk enough to start saying those things - but I'm very happy that the drunk me is someone who I actually kind of like, and not a horrible monster.
dont beat your wife ya wino
You are drunk
I love this the Hulk is my favorite character of all time and this is great, I hope he goes all the way to Immortal Hulk.
"It was back when we didn't know the Russians were incompetent" -- Hank Hill
Man I hope you talk about the Peter David run! That is one I am currently reading and is pretty good.
Immortal Hulk is better.
Immortal Hulk is...wow
Immortal Hulk is what happened when someone read a Junji Ito material and said..."you know what? We can make it work with the Hulk"
I personally like both.
The Hulk is my favorite Marvel superhero and I am so glad to see you doing this series.
"Is he Man or Monster or is he Both?"
*Manster!*
I love incredible hulk he's really awesome and badass :)
becoming someone different is one of the many things keeping me from trying alcohol.
Yeah, it's funny how the Hulk was originally more like a Jeckyll and Hyde situation, with a bit of Frankenstein and the Wolfman (changing at night) thrown in, for good measure. Fortunately, they changed the Hulk so that he changed when angry or under stress. I believe that change was an idea from Steve Ditko, when he worked on the character in his Tales to Astonish run. Even after those changes, though, it was difficult to consider the Hulk any kind of a hero. He was usually manipulated into fighting the bad guys, either by other people or by circumstances.
Great video. I found you through your other big comics project, and I love hearing you talk about them like this. Making fun of Trek is fun and all, but I love the more deep dive into histories.
The guy can make even the most innocuous and convluted corporate history & film production stories interesting, that’s for sure.
dude, you GOT to take a look at Immortal Hulk!
This is an excellent video
Pls do more of theses love them just found your channel
No Linkara cameo, I am slightly disappointed.
Excellent, concise video. Really looking forward to the rest of this series.
One thing I felt immediately was that Metal Master is gonna get sued by Magneto for gimmick infringement.
But seriously, it's really neat to see you covering all this and I look forward to seeing more of it.
No, no..Metal Master gets to sue Magneto because he got beaten by a wooden gun BEFORE Magneto!
I've always enjoyed a good Hulk story.
Fav character as a kid. Spiderman was obviously the flagship, but I liked the Hulk the best. (This is before the x-men explosion. Then they got all popular :)
The Hulk for me has always been one of those famous Marvel characters that I didn’t care too much about. Nothing against the Jolly Green Giant, and a number of his character
elements and stories such as Planet Hulk, World War Hulk, She-Hulk, Amadeus Cho are things I really like. Unfortunately I never really cared for the character himself, even when the MCU came out and his frustrating film rights got people to question why there’s no other solo film.
This is a very interesting look at him, and perhaps I may have a greater appreciation of him by the end of this miniseries.
He's changed so many times, and he's hit SEVERAL mutually-incompatible islands/plateaus of quality in terms of good theming and a pleasant status quo that serves lots of good stories.. but at his basis, he's just kind of unpleasant. And the wide audience can't handle such a complicated storyline that changes so many times, the way comic book fans can.
I've always been more of a DC fan than Marvel, but I can still understand and respect the cultural and historical significance of some of Marvel's characters like this.
Very nice video. I hope you get to the Bill Mantlo and Peter David runs soon!
If you like these early Hulk stories you should check out the current Immortal Hulk run.
great video bro
Interested to see where this is going and if Chuck incorporates the current Immortal Hulk into the discussion
Now let's find out who the incredible Hulk really is!
[Removes mask]
THE INCREDIBLE HULK!?
GREEN GOBLIN: Damn, why didn't I think of that
I hope you do a video on the peter david run and immortal hulk
nice video bro
I've long rejected all the film incarnations of the Hulk because this Jekyll & Hyde aspect of the Banner/Hulk character are sorely missing. It's what gives the creation its unique breadth, even when it was written for kiddies. My own "definitive" version is the child-monster is the Trimpe/Sal Buscema era, which incorporated aspects of Of Mice & Men; reader's sympathy for the Hulk as well as Banner.
18:50 SFDebris: "Trademark costume for the character. NOTHING"
me: Oh no!
SFDebris: "Except torn purple pants."
me: (sigh of relief)
Also, had NO IDEA Rick Jones controlled the Hulk a la Gigantor. That'd have been a neat thread to keep up with.
I would love a video on the bruce jones run
Is thats were the magneto wooden gun this originats?
Watching Amazing Colossal Man this weekend and noted the Hulk origin slightly rips it off.
I hope you also do an analysis on the Mighty Thor.
Just, ugh, just skip Jason Aaron's love letter to Jane ''i'm better than Thor in everything for no good reason'' Foster for the love of Odin.
Can you do a video on ang lees hulk it is a underrated and under appreciated film that was ahead of its time i love how it above and beyond and took the character seriously
Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor, and Wolverine.
the original Hulk is like the american Devilman
While it's true that Bruce Banner may behave in a deliberate, heroic way, it's also correct to say that he's more concerned about his work than the consequences.
What makes the gamma bomb unique is obviously that a far larger proportion of its energy is released in the form of ionizing radiation like gamma rays, than kinetic energy.
So rather than destroy entire cities, it just makes them uninhabitable for thousands of years, and its inhabitants all die slowly.
He's the definition of thoughtless.
I hope you eventually make it to Immortal Hulk
He actually added a video publicly to his UA-cam?
The incredible hulk is was one my favorite comic book character ever rick Jones help him out
I'm curious whether or not you'll later discuss how he's a founding member of the Avengers.
I’m thinking that will be the case as Avengers #1 is where Hulk appeared next after his series ended, and where the whole trend of heroes going up against the Hulk started. Hulk also left the Avengers by issue 3 so that could also warrant some discussion.
So Joe was the first...who knew!
17:54 Joe? As in Joe Fixit?
Talk about JOEshadowing!
Yes. You can absolutely see the formation of the gray hulk/joe Fixit personality that would show in Peter David’s hulk beginning here in this first 6 issues. Especially, the mental back and forth of Bruce and Hulk subtlety influencing each other’s personality and actions. Can’t wait for the second part of this series.
Maybe it's the dialogue as well as your pitch, but your voice when reading the Hulk's "Joe" persona early on sounds like you're imitating Harrison Ford, or rather, Mark Hamill's impression of Harrison Ford.
The mcu fucked up the hulk so much
The Dr. Bruce Banner in the comic being discussed is an utter idiot, arrogant, a terrible scientist who should lose his degrees for thinking he is above peer review, whose solution for testing deadly radiation is "let's build a bomb, and detonate it above ground!". Sorry, as a biologist married to an engineer who used to work on fusion test reactors, I was facepalming the whole time. Admittedly, clearly the writers are to blame for just doing the most generic superhero origin story: "Science experiment gone wrong 101" and "Nobody did basic security measures to check the test area", with a dash of "heroic sacrifice". And the times it was written in are also to blame, when people thought gamma radiation was "mysterious". [Gamma radiation: Any type of ioizing electromagnetic radiation from the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei, i.e. uncharged photons, with quantum energies above 200 keV (kiloelectronvolts) up to 8 MeV, although very-high-energy gamma rays from quasars can reach the range of teraelectronvolts TeV. It can pierce solid matter much more readily than Alpha and Beta radiation does because it interacts less with atoms. Because of that, gamma rays can easily pass through organic tissues, releasing secondary radiation (i.e. X-rays), damaging DNA and even bone marrow cells. Usually, people don't die of high doses immediately, but once the damaged cells try to divide or synthesize proteins or in the case of bone marrow create fresh red blood cells, the fun starts. Shielding requires lead or thick concrete, not an open trench.]
In the story, it's basically a placeholder for "magic", and Banner' survival implies he was most likely a latent mutant (in the sense of "mutant" from the X-Men) from birth.
If any of the characters in that origin story had acted logically and followed proper proceduces, none of that would have happened. I'm not even talking of the teenager in the car, he's a teenager, they do dumb things. No.
Banner's words imply he has never tested "gamma rays" before, but instead of testing them in a lab, safely, he builds a giant bomb.
Then he and the army decide to detonate that bomb above ground. Splendid.
Banner is so utterly arrogant that he never submitted any scientific papers on his work for peer review, or even let any other scientist on the project see his formulas. Despite all that, the army is funding his "research", because of course they do.
The only sane person here is his fellow physicist Dr. "I don't have a last name" Igor. And the writers turn him into a jackass who for unexplained reasons wants Banner to _die_ so badly he is willing to commit murder by not stopping the countdown.
On the topic of the countdown, why the hell did Banner not simply raise alarm and _shut the whole experiment down_ before he ran out like a headless chicken to save the teenager in the car from a countdown that Banner could have shut off at any moment? This is what emergency shut-off buttons are _for!_ Instead he races against a ticking clock that should not be ticking, because the writers created a false dilemma: "We don't have time to cancel the countdown, because there's a countdown we can only delay and time is running out, we have to hurry! No time to tell anyone what's going on!" Eh?
It also never entered Banner's mind to _tell the army_ or _anyone_ but Igor that he was leaving the bunker. No, he had to play the big hero like an idiot.
Let's talk about the utter failure of security: The entire area should be military restricted area, with a fence around it. F
Security Failure #1: The teen in a car(!) got inside... he didn't sneak in, he drove in, in a loud car! Are the guards asleep?
Failure #2: Banner and Igor can see the car from their bunker window, but no-one else can? (and Banner's car is parked right outside.)
Failure #3: The entire area was not swept for intruders _before_ the countdown started? And there are no alarms warning idiots to stay clear??
Failure #4: No-one notices that their head scientist is leaving the bunker and jumping into his car and driving into the area that everyone is staring at.
Instead of tackling the boy so that they both fall into the trench, Banner pushes the boy in the very last second and dramatically stays at the edge of the trench. (Not that the shallow trench would help, but whatever.) That is such a Hollywood trope. "I'll push you out of the way of the bullet and then stand in your exact place so I get shot."
So in short, everyone in that story is an idiot, except for Igor, who is written as a total ass with homicidal tendencies until we find out he's a spy meant to stop Banner's experiments.
And after Hulk/Banner meets the Gargoyle, Banner the physicist is suddenly also a geneticist, apparently? And not only can he figure out how this previously untested gamma radiation mutated him (what?), he can build a machine that can apply this to humans without killing them (because of course he can), all in the span of one jump-cut and without the help of his lab notes. And the gamma radiation is now magic spell that can reverse mutations as well and turn the Gargoyle who was turned into a monster back into a human. Okay then. Except Banner never uses this magic machine on himself because he is certain it won't work.... why? He has a sample size of one, and he hasn't run any tests. I guess he read the writers' script.