Incredible Hulk 1

In this issue:

The Hulk
24 pages :: Jack Kirby/Paul Reinman
reprinted in installments in Marvel Tales Annual 1, Marvel Collectors' Item Classics 14, 15 and 16

reprinted complete in Origins of Marvel Comics, Marvel Masterworks, Marvel Milestone Edition

Forget the movie with the gene manipulation storyline,this is the REAL HULK!!! As any true fan could tell you, this is it, the true origin of bruce banner's raging alter-ego as told by Stan and Jack way back in 1962! A timeless classic that shouldn't been tampered with.

Hours after being exposed to inconcievable amounts of gamma radiation, Banner comes back to his senses and is amazed at the fact that he's still alive, unaware that he will soon be a raging engine of destruction known and feared as
The Incredible Hulk!! At first, the setting sun triggered his transformation, then it was a device created by Banner and after that it was stress caused by anxiety and fear that made him change.

The Hulk also went through a number of changes mentally too. At first he understood that somehow, he and banner were one and the same and semi-intelligent though somewhat rough, only later (as in the seventies) did he regress to an almost childlike mind, totally unaware of his other persona.

From the Onion's interview with Arthur C Clarke: "Well, science fiction, when I started reading it in 1930, was mostly...

Re: The Gargoyle - No, the character Trimpe drew was “The Gremlin”, who was the son of The Gargoyle. The Gargoyle was killed at the end of Incredible Hulk # 1 (discounting an appearance in the Rampaging Hulk magazine, which didn't “really” happen).

What was the “reasoning” for those early (and I say the best) retro issues of RAMPAGING HULK not being part of regular Marvel continuity… were they imaginary stories, take place on an altenrate “What If” Earth, or some other reason?

As I recall, the alien Bereet was introduced into “mainstream” Marvel continuity in an issue of Incredible Hulk written by Bill Mantlo in the 1990s. It was explained that all the Rampaging Hulk stories were “movies” created by her. This, I thought at the time, was a lame explanation that ended up discounting some fun stories. If there were some continuity mistakes in the Rampaging stories, I'm sure they could've been explained with a little imagination. I believe the real reason those stories were discounted was because the writer Doug Moench had in the years since those stories quit Marvel because of disagreements with then-current editor-in-chief Jim Shooter and started working for DC. This kind of rewriting of history took place with a few writers that left Marvel in the 90s.

Oh, by the way, those early b&w issues of Rampaging Hulk featured art by Walt Simonson and Alfredo Alcala depicting the original flat-headed, foul-tempered Hulk. Their Hulk (and I do not use this term loosely)
ROCKED!!!

Watching the movie made me realize just how good the first comic was. Furthermore, I get the impression (as with so many of Stan Lee's stories) that it was a virtual throwaway, probably plotted in a ten minute story conference and no doubt scripted at 10:30 some night after the wife's guest's said their goodbyes to the family. It is a story so powerful that it has kept perhaps a hundred artists and writers employed in the serializing and retelling of it for forty years. I just wish Jack Kirby had been alive to see the CGI Hulk jumping across the desert in the movie, a scene that he had storyboarded so many times in the early years.

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