An exploration of my favorite comic book character and why he sets my imagination on fire.

WARNING:  In good conscience, readers, I cannot let you continue on without confessing what I’m sure you’ve surmised.  I am a comic book nerd.  Raised in the American comic book tradition.  Much to the chagrin of independent creators everywhere, I love superheroes.  Now, I don’t really read the big two very much anymore, but when I point to the stories, characters, artists, and writers who inspired me as a kid, I find I unerringly refer to those that worked on and came from superhero comics. 

So, with that out of the way, those of you who are not interested in superheroes of any kind or what I have to say about them have moved on to another corner of the Internet, I’m sure (the whole thing is corners, I suspect), and those of you that remain suffer from at least some affection or direct ire for the genre. 

Some quick superhero philosophy.  The genre does a couple things well that has hooked children for generations.  Chiefly, the key to anybody being a superhero is that they are empowered.  Where others are weak, they are strong.  Where others are afraid, they are fearless.  When any human in their right mind would want to stick their head in the sand and try to ignore the oncoming wave of oblivion, they stand, and (usually) win.  What’s not to love?  They are a projection of what we wish we could be.  Faced with the most difficult situations we can imagine, they have the courage and strength make the right decisions.

I think, on the flip-side of being individually empowered, our poor superheroes are also prone to being propagandized as models of behavior or villainized as fascist expressions of masculine dominance.  And I can’t really disagree.  The thing about being empowered enough to make your own rules is that you would have to believe you know better than everyone else when making decisions that directly affect them.  So naturally, readers and writers cast one of two lights on that idea.  Either the characters DO know better, and so represent a way that we, the consumers, are supposed to behave, or the characters DON’T know better, and represent a fallacy of thought that we, the consumers, should avoid.  I’m not trying to pass a value judgment on either school of thought. I think entertaining stories arise from each idea.

My deep and abiding love for my favorite comic book character, though, springs from the idea that he breaks this rule, due to his nature.  In case you hadn’t guessed by the title, my favorite character is the Hulk.  Now, I will not attempt to argue that the Hulk has been flawlessly written and utilized in his 60 some-odd years of comic book existence.  But in concept, I believe he acknowledges both of the ideas above that make superheroes something to aspire to and something to fear. 

Hulk is the strongest there is.  Physically.  And the more you try to prove that he’s not the strongest there is, guess what? The stronger he gets. Hulk is the ultimate expression of being able to change the world around you to suit yourself.  Who can forcibly stop the Hulk from getting what he wants?  Nobody.  You just have to calm him down.  I would like to believe that my anger and outrage at the state of the world had such a power to change it.  That murder and kidnappings, earthquakes and starvation, climate change and environmental corruption could be halted simply by the power of my anger.  It’s not the case, but therein lies one reason I love the Big Green Guy. 

But I also know that I don’t know everything, and if I did have the power to change the world, even if I was trying to make it better for everybody, I wouldn’t necessarily succeed. Hulk, in concept, acknowledges this.  His desires are simple, generally non-combative feelings centering around wanting to be left alone or to help some individual he cares for.  But his efforts are equally likely to lay waste to beneficial things as they are to be beneficial.  In the face of such power, who’s mind wouldn’t seem like an infant’s?  Even the smartest person would have trouble predicting the consequences of his or her own actions when they could be so catastrophically huge.  Here the Hulk serves as a humbling reminder, to me, that the greatest power in the world does not absolve us of responsibility to each other, and disregarding the welfare of others even briefly can turn you into a monster.

And then there’s the human aspect of the Hulk.  Not physically strong, but highly intelligent and highly socially responsible.  Bruce Banner pits every ounce of his control against that urge to change things out of anger, to act rashly.  Because he does not want to see anyone get hurt.  I think, or rather I hope, that it is a statistically rare person among us who can really think about physical harm coming to somebody else and sincerely wish it upon them.  Who can think that they would like (and I mean LIKE) to be the cause of someone else’s pain, broken bones, maiming, disease or death.  I know that the thought of really being responsible for things like that turns my stomach.  And Bruce Banner can unleash the ultimate human force for change at any time, but the thought of those consequences is enough to encourage him to fight to restrain it until the most necessary of moments. 

And which one of them is right?  Which one of them is necessary?  They both are, to me.  I think the story telling bears this out.  It’s a favorite of writers to make the Hulk a necessary solution to a problem, even though Banner is sort of the model human (intelligent, generous, societally conscious, self-sacrifing).  They are both necessary, both right, depending upon the circumstance

I find this concept so compelling. This idea of Man vs. Monster, Intelligence vs. Strength, Society vs. Independence.  But what I especially love about the Hulk is that there isn’t really a right answer.  Just an interesting question.