Jack Kirby's Hulk shared a pile of similarities to Frankenstein's Monster. The Hulk wouldn't tap into that "misunderstood monster" angle for a few years after his first appearance (above.) Mostly the Hulk was a very socially-phobic monster. People really got under his skin, even if they weren't soldiers shooting at him. His girlfriend--or rather the Hulk's alter ego Bruce Banner's girlfriend--Betty Ross, basically gets told she's just another scummy human by the cranked-up Hulk.
Another literary feature for Kirby's Hulk: the early Hulk is a handsome dude. He wears a ripped puffy shirt and has deep circles around his eyes, just like poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in the early 1800s. Shelley also happened to be Mary Wollstonecraft's main squeeze, and she just happened to write the novel about Frankenstein.
The Hulk is philosophical as well as sexy-brooding.
In the years since 1962, Hulk's origin, and now, he's barely recognizable, or rather rarely has had any consistencency to his persona or physical nature. I prefer the early Hulk, just after the Hulk's "puffy shirt" phase and into his little purple panties phase, where he talked like a longshoreman and had a flat Boris Karloff as Frankenstein head.
No comments:
Post a Comment