BORN: May 1962 in the aptly titled The Incredible Hulk #1.
CREATED BY: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, chief architects of the Marvel Universe, which includes Spider-Man, the X-Men, Captain America, Thor, Daredevil and a host of other spandex-clad crime fighters.
INSPIRED BY: Jekyll and Hyde springs to mind, but also Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which influenced Lee to envision a monster that was peaceful and child-like in repose
ALTER EGO: Bruce Banner, a scientist who finds his unhappy inner id unleashed in the form of a nearly indestructible (but gentle-natured) brute after he's exposed to a monstrous dose of gamma radiation.
WAITAMINUTE - RADIATION? Aside from the X-Men and a few others, radiation was responsible for the creation of most of the Marvel superheroes (being bitten by a radioactive arachnid, etc.) For that you can blame the era's obsession with atomic energy and nuclear oblivion. One suspects if the Hulk were created now, he would be the product of renegade genetic engineering.
SO WHY IS HULK SO ANGRY? Maybe it's because after a paltry six issues, his original series was cancelled and he was back-burned into the pages of the anthology series Tales to Astonish. Eventually the character became such a cult sensation -- particularly among college students -- that Astonish was re-titled The Incredible Hulk, launching a series that would last until 1999.
FOUNDING MEMBER OF: The Avengers -- hence the expectation that Norton's green goliath will appear in The Avengers film being planned for 2011.
