Well, given the Invincible show’s tendency to hew closely to the comics, we won’t get into the details here. But suffice to say, Mark knows he needs to take extreme action against such an imposing threat, which sets it apart from Dinosaurus’s Marvel forerunner.
Marvel’s Monster Problem
The Hulk has always been a problem for the Marvel Universe, especially as the world gets smaller. In his initial appearances by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, the Hulk is a Jekyll and Hyde analogue modeled on Frankenstein’s Monster. When the sun goes down, Banner turns into the Hulk, who creates some sort of trouble. The creative decision to tie Banner’s transformations to his anger certainly complicated things further, but Marvel found ways of keeping the audience’s sympathies with the Hulk. Most of the time, he just wants to be left alone, but he keeps getting hassled by the Captain Ahab-like Thunderbolt Ross or encounters some type of commie saboteur or supervillain, which makes his freak-outs justified.
But every once in a while, Marvel has to deal with the fact that the Hulk is a big, rampaging, and uncontrollable monster. The most famous example is the Planet Hulk and World War Hulk storylines designed by writer Greg Pak, in which the Illuminati—Marvel’s secret group of geniuses and power player such as Reed Richards and Tony Stark—send Banner off-planet, where he becomes a heroic gladiator. Pak played into the tragedy of it all and made Hulk’s vengeful return to Earth feel exhilarating and just, but it only worked at the expense of making Richards, Stark, Professor X, and other Illuminati members seem villainous—something common in those days of Civil War and Deadly Genesis, but not sustainable long-term.
The excellent Immortal Hulk series by Al Ewing and the great current Incredible Hulk run by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Nic Klein return Hulk to his monster roots, making him less of a superhero who pals around with Captain America and Spider-Man and more of a Godzilla-like beast who battles other creatures when not leveling cities.
Great as these are, the solutions are short-lived. Eventually, Marvel’s going to want Green Genes back with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and his cousin She-Hulk (the usual stand in when Bruce is indisposed) won’t cut it. Which means that they can never let the Hulk be a pure monster, nor can they kill Bruce or the Hulk for good. He’s the monster they’re stuck with.
Sincerity and Suffering
When Mark puts his hands around the neck of David Anders, we readers believe that he won’t remove them until that man is dead. And while we may be sad for Mark for having made such as choice, we won’t blame him for it either.
