I used to say I didn’t get angry. “I get annoyed,” I’d tell friends, “frustrated, exasperated, even aggravated. But I don’t rage or get livid.” And I think it was true. There was a time in my life when I didn’t get angry. The more I age, however, the more I get the
moment from The Avengers (2012). I’m not always angry, but anger is always within reach, if I think about climate change, the war in Palestine, the prison-industrial complex, or more specifically the institutions which enable and uphold these things. These are not things the Hulk can smash.
Or can he?
This question is posed in Al Ewing’s The Immortal Hulk (2019). As I get more into comics, Ewing is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers. His stories explore cosmic scales while telling grounded, personal stories. His greatest strength, though, is the ability to take decades of stories and synthesize them into a new compelling story, which rewards readers who are familiar with the history, but doesn’t alienate new ones.
I never expected to enjoy a story about the Hulk. Compared to other superheroes out there, there’s not much interesting about a white guy who goes on a rampage when he’s angry. It’s a story I’ve seen too often in the real world, but Ewing knows this. Early in the fifty issue run (a feat at Marvel in the modern age), Jackie Mcgee, a black reporter, asks Hulk, “How do I get to be what you are?” Hulk initially dismisses the question, but later on she expands:
How do I get to be what you are? … I Can’t imagine it. At all. What it must be like to feel that rage. To be able to feel that rage. To be allowed to feel it. You smash towns, you ruin lives. You’ve killed people– Not many, but you have. Six months later, you’re on the Avengers again, all is forgiven…Your anger… It’s indulged. Even respected. Mine is dismissed– if I’m lucky. We live in a world of–of men–white, college-educated men, men like Bruce Banner–who just rant and scream and rage and smash things and the world bends over backward to understand that. To reward it. So…yeah. I guess I’m asking. How do I get MY piece of the pie, Hulk? How do I get to be what you are?
Hulk responds favorably. He likes her view of anger, that it’s something that can get things done. Thus, a few issues later, he decides to use his anger to end the world. That is, end the human world, with its nuclear weapons, and profit-driven disasters. Issue 28 opens with a quote from the US Department of Energy, “We considered ourselves a powerful culture,” which adds extra depth and a sense of stakes to the conflict. Hulk’s goals catch on with unsatisfied young adults across the country. Even so, the comic is aware of how this looks, and Bruce/Hulk is confronted by Amadeus Cho, also a hulk, and a Korean-American, who remarks, “I love you Bruce, but you’re an angry middle-class white guy talking about revolution. That doesn’t always end so well.”
Throughout the story, Hulk is never a hero. Immortal Hulk is a horror comic, and the Hulk a monster. Joe Bennet’s art expertly depicts the body horror aspects of the physical transformation between Banner and Hulk in a variety of gruesome ways. This is not a comic for the faint of stomach, with its many gruesome deaths and visceral monsters. Hulk in this story fulfills multiple of Jeffery Jerome Cohen’s seven theses of Monsters, that the fear of the monster is desire (smashing systems of oppression), the monster stands at the threshold of becoming (that Hulk’s anger is our own).
And, because the Marvel Universe can’t branch off too far from our own, Amadeus is correct. Hulk’s revolution fails. Because the truth is, the Hulk can’t smash disaster capitalism. The Hulk can’t smash police brutality or poverty or systemic disenfranchisement. But it’s a good story for the Hulk to try to destroy these intangible things. Because it reminds us anger can be used to spark action for a better world.
