Real Name: Bruce Banner
First Appearance: Incredible Hulk #1 (1962)
Affiliation: Founding Avenger; now operating outside the team
Powers: Enormous strength, resilience, and powerful leaps in his Hulk form; Banner is a brilliant scientist.

Bruce Banner becomes the Hulk because he tries to save someone else. During a gamma-bomb test, he rushes to protect teenager Rick Jones and is caught in the blast. Instead of dying from the radiation, Banner transforms into a powerful being whom the pursuing soldiers name the Hulk. Incredible Hulk #1 introduces the conflict between the scientist and the destructive figure he fears becoming.

The earliest transformation follows nightfall rather than a simple rule about anger. As the reviewed adventures continue, the relationship between Banner’s mind, the Hulk’s personality, and their changing body develops in different directions. Neither strength nor scientific knowledge provides an easy escape from their shared predicament. The Hulk can frighten people while also fighting threats they cannot defeat themselves.

Rick remains an important ally, trying to protect the man who saved his life. General “Thunderbolt” Ross, meanwhile, pursues the Hulk as a danger, and his daughter Betty is part of Banner’s troubled life around the military base. Suspicion of Banner and fear of the Hulk make it difficult for either identity to be understood.

The Hulk helps establish the Avengers in Avengers #1, but his connection with other heroes is uneasy. His story returns to the struggle for survival in Tales to Astonish #70. After Banner suffers a fatal gunshot wound, Rick uses his laboratory equipment to trigger a transformation. The Hulk lives, now with Banner’s mind in control, but changing back would be fatal.

While Banner works to maintain that form, the Leader’s giant Humanoid attacks the missile base. The Hulk fights it, only for Ross to mistake him for an ally of the attacker. The reviewed story ends with a missile threatening both combatants, leaving Rick racing to warn his friend.

Coverage: based on reviews published on Reviewing Comics as of October 23, 2026.