Blogotional

Few characters in comics have seen more revision, different characterizations, different visualizations, and just pain tinkering than The Incredible Hulk. And he is one of the founding memebers of The Defenders, the unteam we continue to discuss here.

I also think there is no more literarily rich character than the Hulk, and I am saddened by the fact that in my opinion, that literary richness has never been realized. Think about it for a minute. Bruce Banner/The Hulk is literally a man at war with himself. In many ways it is the perfect metaphor for what it means to be a Christian - we are people at war with our sinful natures.

And yet, I guess because that comment is so foreign to the secular worldview, that incredible metaphorical richness has never been fully explored in the character. Instead we find that he is really two people in one body, or multiple personalities, or we are treated to the Frankenstein story, the gentle monster hounded to monstrousness.

There have been homages to spirituality, particularly as the Hulk is portrayed within the pages of The Defenders. Therein, the otherwise completely anti-social Hulk functions as part of a team because somehow Doctor Strange, with his powers of magic and the occult, can communicate with the nearly sub-verbal beast. Imagine the power in that metaphor - the beast with which the man battles can only be reached, can only be tamed, on a spiritual level. Such richness left laying there.

As to the variations of the character, they are amazing. With all this richness, the stories have instead dipped into plain old science fiction - He is the only charcter to ever change color, I think. He has been to planets of Hulks. He has had varying degrees of intelligent from Bruce Banner's nuclear physicist's mind to a compltely unintelligent embodiment of pure rage. He has lived the the end of time itself being the only creature alive in the universe. He has spawned hundreds on imitators, all using the same radiation of the Hulk;s origin to try and gain his power, and none coming truly close.

All of this, I think, to avoid the obvious - that is the metaphors and themes I have described. I cannot help but wonder what a C.S. Lewis with his marvelous near-allegorical tales like Narnia and the Science Fiction Trilogy could have done with a character like the Hulk, or Tolkien for that matter.

And it is not, by the way, that comic writers are inferior in anyway, many of them could compare with Lewis in fiction writing (though I think Tolkien might be a stretch) and the medium can, in this day and age, tackle a story of such richness and complexity. I just think the lack of going in this direction reflects two things. One the need to keep a good character going, and two a fear of such themes on the part of the secular.

Like Bruce Wayne, I want to see Bruce Banner saved somehow. With Banner I know how, the problem is it would kill the Hulk forever.

Related Tags: comics, comic books, comic art, The Defenders, The Hulk