Hulk smash!
I'm making my way through The Essential Hulk #6 right now. These are black-and-white collections from Marvel that reprint 20-30 comics on paper stock that's just above newsprint quality, and the price point is pretty low compared to just about anything else in American comic shops, with 500+ pages setting you back $20 (as opposed to the increasingly typical $4 for 22 pages if you're buying monthly comic books).
Anyway, I was reading a 1977-or-so issue of Hulk, and once again, someone managed to knock the Hulk out (I think they gassed him), then the bad guys locked him up in a dungeon. The Hulk is taken captive surprisingly often, given that he's a nuclear-powered monster who once literally picked up an entire mountain.
Now, here's what troubled me about this comic. Bruce Banner turns into the Hulk when he's enraged (or gets his adrenaline going in some other way), and the Hulk turns back into Banner when he relaxes. But almost every time the Hulk gets knocked out, he remains the Hulk. How can this be? I'm not saying that kayoing ol' Jade Jaws should cause him to instantaneously revert back to Bruce Banner, but if he loses consciousness for several hours, it seems like that would cause him to change back, wouldn't it?
This is really troubling me. My best guess for this is that the Hulk has to expend at least a certain minimum amount of energy every time he changes (and has to recharge for a certain period of time afterward), and that he's not going to revert back to Banner unless he's really gotten that initial adrenaline rush out of his system.
Yeah, that sounds pretty plausible. I think I can live with that explanation.
Any other thoughts on this, beyond "That guy is really overthinking a 30-year-old comic book that's intended to be read by nine-year-olds"?
Anyway, I was reading a 1977-or-so issue of Hulk, and once again, someone managed to knock the Hulk out (I think they gassed him), then the bad guys locked him up in a dungeon. The Hulk is taken captive surprisingly often, given that he's a nuclear-powered monster who once literally picked up an entire mountain.
Now, here's what troubled me about this comic. Bruce Banner turns into the Hulk when he's enraged (or gets his adrenaline going in some other way), and the Hulk turns back into Banner when he relaxes. But almost every time the Hulk gets knocked out, he remains the Hulk. How can this be? I'm not saying that kayoing ol' Jade Jaws should cause him to instantaneously revert back to Bruce Banner, but if he loses consciousness for several hours, it seems like that would cause him to change back, wouldn't it?
This is really troubling me. My best guess for this is that the Hulk has to expend at least a certain minimum amount of energy every time he changes (and has to recharge for a certain period of time afterward), and that he's not going to revert back to Banner unless he's really gotten that initial adrenaline rush out of his system.
Yeah, that sounds pretty plausible. I think I can live with that explanation.
Any other thoughts on this, beyond "That guy is really overthinking a 30-year-old comic book that's intended to be read by nine-year-olds"?