The Scarlet Witch reaches a major milestone when she and the Vision get married. This is followed by an extended period of self-reflection during which Wanda Maximoff finally comes to grips with the downward spiral she’s been trapped in for several years. In the run-up to her rather outré wedding, Wanda is sinking under the weight of an intense romantic rivalry, a bitter estrangement from the people she considers her family, and her deep-seated fears and insecurities as both a mutant and a superhero. Before her life can come completely unglued, though, she finds a mentor in the kindly old witch Agatha Harkness, who will eventually grow into a much-needed mother-figure to her. By taking up the study of witchcraft, Wanda discovers a road to recovery.
Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale.) Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.
Here, then, is the sixth installment of… The True History of the Scarlet Witch!
January 1967 – The Scarlet Witch is proud when the Vision once again steps up to serve a term as Avengers chairman. However, Wanda continues to feel intense jealousy toward Mantis, who makes little secret of her attraction to their synthezoid teammate. Mantis has clearly written off her lover, the Swordsman, as a weakling, despite the rigorous training regimen he maintains in a pathetic attempt to impress her. Wanda worries that the naïve Vision will eventually be ensnared by Mantis’s exotic charms. Vision repeatedly insists that there’s nothing going on between him and Mantis and that Wanda’s suspicions are unfounded. This merely triggers a series of arguments that leave the couple feeling increasingly estranged. To make matters worse, Vision retreats into his role as team leader, leaving Wanda feeling anxious and lonely.
As a result, Wanda spends much of her free time with Robert Frank, a.k.a. the Whizzer, the heroic super-speedster of World War II, whose convalescence at Avengers Mansion continues. Dr. Donald Blake pays periodic visits to the mansion to check in on Frank, who is slowly regaining his strength after undergoing open-heart surgery last month. Wanda enjoys listening to the Whizzer’s tales of his adventures in the 1940s as a member of the Liberty Legion, the Invaders, and the postwar All-Winners Squad, fighting alongside the love of his life, Madeline Joyce Frank, a.k.a. Miss America. Having accepted that the Whizzer and Miss America are her long-lost parents, Wanda considers using the surname Frank rather than Maximoff. She has left messages for her twin brother Pietro, a.k.a. Quicksilver, regarding the matter, but he has refused to respond owing to his objections to her relationship with the Vision.
March 1967 – Wanda celebrates her 17th birthday. Whereas before she’d always claimed to have lost track of how old she is, not wanting the Avengers to treat her as a junior member, her history with the Whizzer has enabled her teammates to figure it out, and they are astonished to realize she was just 13 when she joined the team. Nevertheless, Wanda feels that she’s now old enough that it doesn’t matter as much. Her feelings are hurt when Pietro again makes no attempt to contact her on their birthday, but the Vision tries his best to cheer her up.
April 1967 – When his term as team chairman ends, Vision attempts to convince the Scarlet Witch to assume the role. Wanda declines, though, coming up with a series of excuses that the Vision dismisses out of hand. This leads to a fierce argument between them that leaves Wanda seething. Finally, Vision turns to his other teammates. Captain America flatly refuses to serve, and Iron Man says he’s too busy at Stark Industries right now. Vision is relieved when Thor agrees to take it on again. As a prince of Asgard, Thor seems to enjoy being in charge of the team, though he clearly finds many of the routine administrative duties rather tedious.
The Avengers discuss the ongoing problem of Black Spectre, a subversive organization that keeps getting away with offensive pranks and outrageous sabotage, such as inciting a race riot at the Statue of Liberty, installing a swastika atop the Washington Monument, draping Philadelphia’s Independence Hall in black shrouds, and carving Adolf Hitler’s face into Mount Rushmore. S.H.I.E.L.D., which assists the government with repairing all the damage, assures the Avengers that it’s doing all it can to stop Black Spectre. Vision doesn’t consider the group to be an Avengers-level threat, and Thor concurs.
May 1967 – The Avengers receive a message from Black Spectre claiming that they have an atomic bomb hidden somewhere under Manhattan, which they threaten to detonate if the Avengers interfere with their overthrow of the U.S. government. Soon after, the terrorist group invades Washington, D.C. and storms the White House, only to be defeated by the Black Widow and Daredevil. Wanda is relieved when the bomb threat turns out to be a hoax, but she soon becomes infuriated when the government reveals the two co-leaders of Black Spectre to be mutants, triggering a wave of anti-mutant hysteria.
June 1967 – Wanda returns from an evening out at the theater to learn that Steve Rogers has decided he can no longer continue serving as Captain America, a decision he’s wrestled with for months, ever since his battle with the Secret Empire at the White House. Although the Vision, Thor, Iron Man, and others tried to talk him out of it, Steve has resigned from the team and locked his Captain America costume and shield in a vault underneath the mansion. Wanda is somewhat surprised but knows this isn’t the first time Steve has tried to give up his costumed identity.
Scarlet Witch and Vision are sitting down to dinner at Avengers Mansion with Thor, Iron Man, the Swordsman, and Mantis when the Inhumans Gorgon and Lockjaw suddenly materialize in the room. Gorgon is annoyed that the Avengers are not ready to leave for the Great Refuge to attend the wedding of Crystal and Quicksilver, but this is the first the team has heard of it. Wanda is very upset to learn that Pietro has neglected to invite them but decides that they will attend in any case. Iron Man sets up a video link to the Inhumans’ royal palace so the Whizzer will be able to watch the ceremony, since he now believes Quicksilver to be his son. The Avengers then fly around the world to the Himalayas in a Quinjet while Gorgon and Lockjaw teleport home. When they arrive, they are greeted by the rest of the royal family—Black Bolt, Medusa, Crystal, Karnak, and Triton—as well as the Thing, the Human Torch, Mister Fantastic, and Susan Richards. Mister Fantastic introduces the Avengers to Agatha Harkness, an elderly woman who helps take care of his comatose two-year-old son, Franklin Richards. When Mantis asks about what appears to be a huge, grotesque statue in the center of the city, Medusa explains that it is actually a giant android called Omega, which Black Bolt’s brother, Maximus the Mad, created in order to weaponize the Inhumans’ prejudice against their servant class, the Alpha Primitives. After being deactivated, the android was left in a public square as a memorial. Triton insists that Black Bolt has instituted many reforms since that fateful day.
Several hours later, Scarlet Witch and Vision join the others for a royal banquet in a large stadium, from which Quicksilver is conspicuously absent. To cheer up Crystal and entertain the crowds, Thor, Iron Man, the Thing, the Human Torch, and Medusa put on an impromptu exhibition of their superhuman powers. However, Iron Man and Medusa fall under some form of mind control and attack the section of the stands where the Alpha Primitives are seated. The pair is quickly subdued and then lapses into unconsciousness. The Alpha Primitives start yelling accusations at Black Bolt, only to be shouted down by the Inhumans around them. The Alpha Primitives then leave the stadium in protest, and the festivities are quickly brought to a close. Wanda realizes the situation in the Great Refuge is less rosy than the royal family made it seem. Later, she finally finds Pietro complaining about her to Crystal and is annoyed by his sexist attitude. Not wanting to get in the middle of the siblings’ argument, Crystal goes for a walk. Wanda and Pietro rehash their disagreement about the Vision until they are interrupted by the Swordsman and Mantis, who are raising the alarm that Omega has come to life and kidnapped Crystal.
Scarlet Witch, Vision, and Quicksilver rejoin the others, whereupon Black Bolt suggests, through Triton, that the Avengers, being impartial observers, may have better luck questioning the Alpha Primitives about Omega’s reactivation. Thor concurs, so Quicksilver leads his former teammates into the caverns where the Alpha Primitives live, only to lose his temper and attack the brutes, demanding that they hand over Crystal at once. Mantis forces Quicksilver to stand down, but they both suddenly fall unconscious. Thor quickly determines that their symptoms match those of Iron Man and Medusa and calls for the Avengers to retreat to the surface. The Alpha Primitives become a rampaging mob, but Thor keeps them at bay with bolts of lightning from his hammer. Outside, the Avengers find the other heroes carrying Maximus on a stretcher. Though he appears to be unconscious as well, Maximus leaps up as soon as the Alpha Primitives emerge from the caverns, grabs a blaster, and opens fire on them. In the ensuing melee, Maximus, Gorgon, Karnak, Triton, the Swordsman, and the Human Torch abruptly fall unconscious as well. Finally, Omega strides across the plaza to the remaining heroes and reveals himself to be Ultron-7 in disguise. The murderous robot explains that Maximus brought the severed head of Ultron-6 to the Great Refuge after the Vision defeated him a few years ago and eventually fused his circuits with the Omega android, giving him Omega’s psychic abilities, which he has used to incapacitate the unconscious heroes. Ultron-7 then turns those abilities against all his enemies, intent on destroying their minds. His scheme backfires, though, as his psychic energies inadvertently awaken Franklin Richards from his coma. The boy lashes out at the source of the attack with his mysterious mutant powers, obliterating Ultron-7’s computerized brain. Scarlet Witch and the others then look on happily as the Richards family is at last reunited.
The next day, as heralds fly over the Great Refuge blowing their horns to summon the guests to the wedding ceremony, Scarlet Witch nervously meets up with the other Avengers. She worries that Pietro will make an unpleasant scene and spoil the day. Vision suggests they remain in the back of the venue so as not to draw attention to themselves, and Wanda agrees. She is filled with conflicting emotions as she watches Pietro and Crystal joined in matrimony according to Inhuman custom—hope and pride but also a deep sense of loss. At the conclusion of the ceremony, Lockjaw teleports the newlyweds off to their honeymoon. At no point did Pietro even acknowledge Wanda’s presence. A huge celebration follows, though Wanda’s heart is not in it and she retires early to her guest quarters. Vision follows and does what he can to be supportive.
The Avengers then return to New York, arriving at the mansion shortly before midnight. The Fantastic Four stop by on their way home to say goodnight. However, a sudden storm forms overhead, unleashing a series of deadly lightning bolts that strike the roof. Thor immediately launches himself into the sky and tries to dispel the storm, without success. Wanda is startled when Agatha Harkness reveals herself to be a powerful sorceress by dissipating the storm with a magical incantation. Agatha then informs the Fantastic Four that she will no longer be serving as Franklin’s nanny, for the time has come for her to take on a new charge—the Scarlet Witch. Like the rest of the Avengers, Wanda is shocked but admits that she has long wanted to study true witchcraft and accepts Agatha as her tutor. As the Fantastic Four depart and the Avengers enter the building, Thor authorizes Agatha to take up residence there. Wanda escorts her to an unoccupied room, where they are joined by Agatha’s black cat, Ebony. Vision appears in the doorway and asks for a moment of Wanda’s time to discuss an important matter, but Agatha insists it can wait until morning. Wanda defers to her new mentor, and the Vision, betraying no hint of how he feels about it, turns and walks away.
Agatha immediately closes the door and casts a spell to seal the room, which merely adds to Wanda’s growing apprehension. Ebony hisses loudly as an ugly, hunchbacked little man teleports into the room and introduces himself as Necrodamus, saying he’s come to steal Agatha’s soul. Telling Wanda to keep back, Agatha counters Necrodamus’s initial attack, but he just uses her eldritch energies to transform himself into a larger, more muscular form. Ebony likewise transforms into a panther of monstrous proportions and pounces on the wizard, only to be quickly defeated. Scoffing at Agatha’s bravado, Necrodamus strikes her down, leaving Wanda to face him alone. Wanda tries to use her mutant hex power against him, but he shrugs off its effects and pummels her into unconsciousness. However, she comes to a moment later and finds Ebony staring at her with a strange light in his eyes. Realizing that Necrodamus is kneeling over her holding a small metal box covered with occult engravings, Wanda focuses her hex power on the box, shattering it. Necrodamus screams in horror as all the souls trapped in the box break free and carry him off into another dimension. Wanda is nearly swept away with them, but Ebony holds onto her by the cape until the dimensional portal closes. Seeing that Agatha has fully recovered, Wanda accuses her of setting the whole thing up as a test of her abilities. Agatha denies it with a sly smile. Emerging from the bedroom, Wanda and Agatha are drawn outside by a commotion in the street. Meeting up with the other Avengers, they find an intensely bright light shining down on the mansion from what appears to be a new star in the sky. Suddenly, their old foe, Kang the Conqueror, materializes and announces that the star is a signal indicating that the 20th century is ripe for conquest.
Using 41st-century robots called “Macrobots,” Kang easily defeats the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, Thor, Iron Man, the Swordsman, Mantis, and Agatha Harkness and takes them prisoner. The time-traveling despot then explains that the “newborn star” heralds the appearance of the legendary Celestial Madonna, who is to mate with the most powerful man in the world and produce a child who will conquer the universe. Kang is determined to be that man and to rule the heavens through the child. Due to strange disturbances in the timestream in the late 20th century, he was unable to determine the exact date the star would manifest itself, so he left a temporal monitor behind during his first incursion four and a half years ago. And although the historical records of the 20th century that have survived to Kang’s era are fragmentary at best, the positioning of the star above Avengers Mansion suggests that the Celestial Madonna is either the Scarlet Witch, Mantis, or Agatha Harkness. In order to solve that riddle, Kang teleports his prisoners to a laboratory hidden inside an ancient Egyptian pyramid, derisively leaving the Swordsman behind. He then conducts a battery of medical tests on the women while the Vision, Thor, and Iron Man are held by a paralysis beam that renders them helpless. Wanda assumes that she must be the Celestial Madonna, since Agatha is too old and Mantis could never be worthy of such an honor.
Fortunately, the Swordsman immediately mounts a rescue mission, apparently led to the pyramid by Agatha’s telepathy. Kang dismisses the threat of the Swordsman, though, revealing that he designed the pyramid himself while ruling Egypt as the pharaoh Rama-Tut and left a vampire named Amenhotep behind to guard it. Upon entering, the Swordsman inadvertently releases the vampire, though it soon stumbles out into the sunlight and is disintegrated. Unconcerned, Kang seals the Vision, Thor, and Iron Man inside Macrobot exoskeletons, revealing his plan to send them out to kill key government personnel in the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People’s Republic of China, after which a strategically placed neutron bomb will set off a global nuclear war. With that, Kang loads all his captives into his time-capsule and flies to the United Nations building in New York City. With the time-capsule rendered invisible by a cloaking device, Kang dispatches the Macrobot containing the Vision, only to watch him be defeated by the Swordsman, who has been joined by Hawkeye and a mysterious stranger. Deciding to cut his losses, Kang pilots the time-capsule to Peking, China, where he sends out the Macrobot containing Iron Man. Again, his scheme is foiled by the Swordsman, Hawkeye, and their unknown companion, now joined by the Vision. Kang is distracted momentarily when the Scarlet Witch and Mantis start arguing over which of them deserves the Vision’s love. Mantis accuses Wanda of being emotionally abusive and neglectful, but Wanda throws it right back in her face, given her own treatment of the Swordsman. Enraged, Kang tells both women to shut up and decides to abandon his plan to go to Moscow. Instead, he sends the Macrobot containing Thor out to recapture the Vision and Iron Man. As the cloaking device is deactivated, Vision is able to phase inside and free Kang’s trio of captives. Scarlet Witch and Mantis immediately join the battle, though they bicker constantly.
Scarlet Witch slows down Thor’s Macrobot by casting a hex that causes the ground beneath it to erupt with molten lava, allowing her teammates to hit it with a coordinated attack. However, while Mantis is perched on the Macrobot’s shoulders, Wanda casts another hex that draws a meteor out of orbit and brings it crashing down on their foe. Leaping to safety at the last second, Mantis accuses the Scarlet Witch of recklessly endangering her life, but Wanda ignores her. The mystery man is able to open the damaged Macrobot, releasing the thunder god. The enigmatic stranger then confronts Kang, who reveals him to be his own future self, living once again as Pharaoh Rama-Tut. As the two men start fighting each other, a strange wave of hallucinatory images wash over the Avengers—dreamlike images of the past, present, and future. Suddenly, Kang realizes that Mantis is the Celestial Madonna and announces that if he can’t have her, no one will. He fires his ray gun at Mantis, but the Swordsman leaps in front of her and is mortally wounded. Rama-Tut tackles Kang, and as they struggle, they inadvertently activate the time-capsule, which dematerializes. The Avengers are shocked and horrified by this sudden turn of events. The Swordsman dies in Mantis’s arms, cursing himself as a failure. The sorrowful Avengers honor their fallen teammate, then take his body back to New York. When they arrive at the mansion, the butler, Edwin Jarvis, informs them that the Whizzer has moved on, showing them a morose farewell note he left behind. Wanda is very upset by it, feeling completely abandoned by her family. Thor encourages everyone to get some much-needed rest.
July 1967 – Over the next few days, Thor agrees to serve another term as Avengers chairman and Hawkeye continues to hang around, though he won’t commit to formally rejoining the team. He’s not shy, though, about claiming credit for convincing Steve Rogers to adopt a new costumed identity. Mantis requests permission to take the Swordsman’s body to Vietnam for burial, since she has decided to return home rather than remain with the Avengers. Thor grants her request, offering to have the team accompany her and try to unravel some of the secrets of her past. Mantis is touched by such generosity. Scarlet Witch begs off, saying that Agatha is insistent that she continue her education in witchcraft without delay. Vision is also reluctant to go, concerned that he has had panic attacks in the heat of battle a few times now—most recently against Kang—but Thor and Iron Man assure him that they will look out for him. Hawkeye agrees to go along, so the five heroes are soon aboard a Quinjet on their way to South Vietnam. Wanda is worried about the Vision and Mantis being off on a mission together without her, but Agatha tells her they have a great deal of work to do.
Wanda and Agatha again sequester themselves in one of the mansion’s large bedrooms, leaving strict orders with Jarvis that they are not to be disturbed under any circumstances. Under Ebony’s watchful eyes, Agatha spends the following several days tutoring Wanda in the basics of witchcraft and sorcery. Though she gets off to a shaky start, Wanda proves an apt pupil and soon manages to cast a spell, augmented by her mutant hex power, that causes a chair to walk around the room as if it were humanoid. Excited by her success, Wanda loses focus, causing the chair to turn and attack her. Agatha easily breaks the spell animating the chair and admonishes Wanda never to lose control of the forces she summons through magic. The elderly witch is clearly irritated when Wanda reveals that she’s eager to show off her new abilities to her teammates. Agatha mentions cryptically that the Avengers’ investigation into Mantis’s origins has apparently taken them away from Earth, but this only makes Wanda more anxious. Worried that her mentor is finding her to be a disappointment, Wanda redoubles her efforts, though the temptation to use her mutant powers as a shortcut is hard to resist.
As time passes, the tension between the two women grows. Wanda struggles to maintain the intense concentration that Agatha demands, as she frets constantly about Mantis seducing the Vision. Her spellcasting frequently fails due to negative thoughts encroaching on her mind, such as feelings of resentment toward Quicksilver; jealousy of Crystal, who has clearly replaced Wanda in Pietro’s affections; and bitterness toward the Whizzer, the father who has now abandoned her twice. The deeper Wanda digs into her psyche to push away these thoughts, the louder a malevolent voice at the back of her mind becomes. She fumes about the suicide bombers who tried to kill the Vision last year after their romance went public, noting that the Avengers never conducted a thorough investigation into who they were or where they came from. She seethes at the thought of how sexist her teammates are, how excited they are to have Mantis or the Black Widow around while treating her like a pariah, despite her saving them all from Dormammu’s plot to enslave the human race and annex Earth into his Dark Dimension. Even the much-ballyhooed Doctor Strange was no match for Dormammu, but Wanda blew the demon to smithereens without half trying. Strange barely acknowledged Wanda’s victory—perhaps he felt humiliated to be shown up by a woman in front of all his male colleagues. Perhaps, she thinks, when she has mastered the arts of sorcery, she will need to humble Doctor Strange again, to make him pay for his effrontery. But now, her efforts to achieve that mastery are being stifled by a sour-faced old witch, who despite her magical skill, is no Homo superior after all, merely a poor, doomed member of that evolutionary dead end, Homo sapiens. Feeling her face burning with righteous rage, Wanda unleashes a devastating sorcerous attack on Agatha, catching her completely off guard. Within seconds, Agatha has been subdued and Ebony has retreated under the bed. Wanda is about to deal with Agatha’s feline familiar when Jarvis knocks on the door and asks to have a word with her. Wanda roars at the butler to get away from there if he values his wretched life. She is shocked by the strange, demonic quality her voice has taken on but revels in the feeling of utter invincibility washing over her.
Hearing an aircraft landing on the roof, Wanda leaves the bedroom to see if the Avengers have returned. She compels Agatha to follow along in a trance, and in the team’s communications room, she finds Jarvis talking about her with Captain Marvel’s friend Moondragon, whom she met late last year. Wanda castigates the cretinous servant for discussing her affairs with outsiders and threatens to fire him. Moondragon intervenes, suggesting that Wanda accompany her to Vietnam to try to find out where the Avengers disappeared to. Wanda refuses to delay her studies of the occult for such a trivial matter, and when Moondragon insolently tries to read her mind, she uses her magic-enhanced hex power to punish the interloper. Sneering at Moondragon and Jarvis, Wanda goes back upstairs, taking Agatha with her. Shortly afterward, Moondragon’s aircraft lifts off and flies away. For the next hour or so, Wanda tortures Agatha while interrogating her about the Elder Goddess Gaea. Caught in a magical trap, Ebony is powerless to intervene. Finally, having learned what she wished to know, Wanda opens a portal to a distant subterranean cavern and marches Agatha through it. They are greeted by their master, the Dread Dormammu, and his sister, the Unspeakable Umar.
Once Agatha has been imprisoned in a narrow crevice in the cavern wall, Umar chains Wanda to a large slab of rock by the wrists and ankles. Wanda suddenly finds her mind clearing of Dormammu’s malign influence and realizes she’d been possessed. She quickly determines that neither her mutant hex power nor her newly acquired magical skills are effective against Dormammu’s sorcery. Dormammu reveals that he has already imprisoned Gaea to keep her from interfering with the reintegration of his corporeal form. By completing the process on Earth rather than in the Dark Dimension, Dormammu is essentially staking a claim to the planet. He will then be able to wreak terrible vengeance on the Scarlet Witch. Completely helpless, Wanda starts to fear the worst, but her heart soars when the Vision appears in the cavern and challenges Dormammu on her behalf. Dormammu laughs and tries to convince the Vision that Wanda isn’t worth saving, given how easily he could corrupt her spirit. Undeterred, Vision fights his way through a horde of demons that Dormammu conjures up, whereupon the villain releases Wanda from her chains while again seizing control of her mind. Wanda viciously attacks the Vision with her hex power but is unable to counter his ability to vary his density. She then switches tactics and causes all the energy to drain out of the solar jewel on his forehead. Umar laughs with sadistic glee as the Vision quickly grows too weak to stand. He pleads with Wanda to remember the love they once shared, but she remains impassive until he finally collapses at her feet.
Coming to her senses, Wanda recoils in horror at what she was made to do. She surreptitiously reverses the spell, causing the dissipated energy to seep back into the solar jewel, while casting another spell to free Agatha from confinement. Thus, when Dormammu unleashes a magical attack on the defiant mutant, Agatha is able to block it. Wanda then uses her powers to cool down the pool of lava Dormammu is standing in. She’s noticed that he’s stood in that same spot since she arrived and has deduced that he needs the heat from the lava to regenerate himself. Dormammu’s panicked reaction proves her hypothesis was correct. He cries out to his sister for help, but the Vision knocks Umar out before she can do anything. His scheme unraveling, Dormammu surrenders and tells the Scarlet Witch to name her terms. She demands that Dormammu allow her, the Vision, and Agatha to leave without fear of retribution; that he release Gaea from imprisonment; and that he abandon his plans to conquer Earth’s dimension. Seething with rage, Dormammu agrees and teleports the three captives back to Avengers Mansion. Wanda asks Agatha if she can have a few minutes to speak with the Vision before resuming her lessons. Agatha merely chuckles and says that, after twice saving the world from Dormammu, Wanda doesn’t need anybody’s permission to do anything. As she leaves the room, Agatha assures Wanda that, from now on, her magical education will continue at her own pace.
Finally alone together, Vision reveals the true depth of his feelings for Wanda, assuring her that when Mantis threw herself at him, he had no desire to reciprocate. Then, summoning up all his courage, he asks Wanda to marry him. Despite her heart swelling with love, Wanda catches herself and asks for reassurance that he’s not asking just because she’s the first woman he ever had feelings for. He explains in his calm, measured way that he feels such a deep connection to Wanda because she truly understands what it means to be an Avenger, and everything they’ve experienced together over the last three years has forged a bond between them. But more importantly, he says, his most recent experiences have revealed to him facts about his mysterious past that have completely changed how he sees himself. Whereas before, he was merely a being of synthetic flesh and computerized components, he now understands himself to be a man, created by a human father to live a human life. Seeing an uncharacteristic expressiveness in the Vision’s face, Wanda declares that “love is for souls, not bodies” and enthusiastically accepts his marriage proposal. Their passionate kissing is interrupted a moment later when a man in strange but regal clothes materializes in the room. Vision recognizes him as “Immortus” and credits him with providing the new insights into his past. Wanda is grateful to Immortus, who says he has come to take them to their teammates. He invites Agatha to accompany them, and when the elderly witch agrees, he teleports them all to an abandoned temple in the jungles of Vietnam.
There, they find Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Moondragon, Libra (Mantis’s father), and the glowing corpse of the Swordsman, which has been reanimated by an extraterrestrial entity called a Cotati, some kind of plant-based lifeform. They are frantic because Kang has just kidnapped Mantis and spirited her away in his time machine. However, Immortus coolly informs them that he’s tricked Kang by having Mantis swap places with the shape-changing Space Phantom. He then opens a large, ornate box, revealing Mantis within. Mantis steps out of the box and announces that she has accepted her destiny as the Celestial Madonna and will enter into a marital union with the Elder Cotati in order to produce a new lifeform—a hybrid of plant and animal who enjoys the best of both worlds. Wanda is thrilled by this news and announces her own engagement to the Vision. Immortus magnanimously offers to officiate the double-wedding by the power vested in him as the sovereign of the timeless dimension of Limbo. The two couples agree to proceed without delay. Thor, as Avengers chairman, makes a motion that the team officially induct Mantis as a full member, to honor her and their time together. The other Avengers agree, and Mantis is truly touched. Even Wanda is willing to forgive and forget, given the joyous resolution of their rivalry. Everyone then adjourns to the garden, where Mantis presents Wanda with a lovely bouquet of flowers. Wanda notices for the first time the beauty and serenity of the temple grounds. The two couples come together, and Immortus conducts a brief ceremony that Wanda considers to be pitch perfect. Afterwards, Mantis and her husband transform into pure energy and ascend into the sky. Wanda and the Vision decide on a more traditional honeymoon in French Polynesia. Moondragon flies the Avengers to Saigon to pick up their Quinjet, and the Scarlet Witch and the Vision part company with them there. Agatha returns to New York with the Avengers.
Shortly after arriving in French Polynesia, Wanda and the Vision hear reports of weird occurrences all around the world and wonder what’s going on. They worry that their honeymoon will need to be cut short, but then the Fantastic Four announce that it was all part of an alien invasion plot that they have foiled. Relieved, the newlyweds turn their attention to frolicking on the beach.
August 1967 – While they’re island hopping throughout French Polynesia, Vision gradually opens up to Wanda about the strange sequence of events that led him to his new understanding of himself. After transporting the Avengers from Vietnam to the Labyrinths of Limbo, Kang the Conqueror set a gang of undead henchmen on them. Among the group were Wonder Man, on whose brain patterns the Vision’s own artificial mind is based, and the original Human Torch of the World War II era. When the Vision was nearly destroyed in battle with the Ghost of the Flying Dutchman, he was saved by the Human Torch, who was himself an android. In the process, the Torch discovered that he and the Vision were, in fact, the same android at two different points in history. This finally explains the Vision’s recent claustrophobic panic attacks—he’s been reacting to traumas suffered by the Torch during his earlier existence. Kang was finally driven off, but not before the Vision was further damaged at the hands of Wonder Man. Fortunately, Immortus stepped in and restored the Vision to full functionality. Then, as a reward for saving his realm from Kang, Immortus offered to send the team on a trip through the past to learn the secrets of the Vision’s origins as well as the history of the Celestial Madonna. Since the Vision’s story involved very recent events, it was decided that he should travel alone, with the aid of a telepathic device called a synchro-staff, in order to protect the integrity of the timestream. The rest of the team accompanied Mantis.
The synchro-staff led the Vision to New York City in 1939 to witness the Human Torch’s unveiling by his creator, Phineas T. Horton, though he remained in a ghostly state and could only observe. The reaction to Horton’s artificial man was predictably negative, especially as a flaw in the design caused him to burst into flames upon contact with air. Horton was pressured into containing his creation until a means could be found to control his flame, and so the android spent weeks trapped inside a tube submerged in concrete. When he finally broke free, the android inadvertently caused a good deal of property damage as he explored the city. Realizing this, he doused himself in a swimming pool on a large estate. However, he became trapped there while the pool’s owner, a notorious racketeer, tried to figure out a way to exploit him. It was experiences such as these, Vision explains, that triggered his panic attacks while fighting Dormammu, Zodiac, and Kang over the last year or so. Wanda is very sympathetic and glad to finally understand what the Vision has been going through.
After ten years of fighting crime alongside his sidekick Toro, a mutant with similar powers, the Human Torch was ambushed by a gang of mobsters who neutralized his flame with an experimental solution provided by the Soviet Union. Believing the paralyzed Torch to be dead, the criminals buried him in the Nevada desert. He was revived in 1953 by an atomic bomb test and soon rescued Toro from the Soviets, who had brainwashed him into blowing up American ammo dumps in Korea. They then resumed their crime-fighting crusade, but the radiation that had freed the Torch slowly caused him to lose control over his powers. By 1955, he realized he was dying and, after saying goodbye to Toro, retreated to the desert, where he attempted to commit suicide. However, rather than being destroyed, he was merely rendered inert again and remained there, covered by the drifting sands, until being discovered by the Mad Thinker eight years later.
The Mad Thinker used the Torch to attack his namesake, the Human Torch of the Fantastic Four, who was in the area experimenting with his own flame powers. However, when the rest of the Fantastic Four arrived on the scene, the Torch was deactivated again by the Mad Thinker’s A.I. assistant, the supercomputer known as Quasimodo. Unable to resuscitate him, Mister Fantastic decided it would be best to leave the Torch where he was, letting the villain’s secret base serve as his tomb. Unfortunately, five months later, the Torch was found there by Ultron-5, who had learned the location of the base from the Mad Thinker. Back in his own laboratory in Cresskill, New Jersey, Ultron-5 labored for weeks to reactivate the Torch, his efforts always ending in failure. Finally, he tracked down Horton, who was working as a television repairman in Stamford, Connecticut, and forced him to help. Following some of the earliest programming he’d received from his creator, Hank Pym, Ultron-5 was intent on converting the android Torch into a “synthezoid”—a sophisticated synthesis of android and robot—while incorporating density-altering technology confiscated from the evil genius Egghead. However, Horton could not bring himself to erase the Torch’s personality, as Ultron-5 had instructed him to do—after so many years of loneliness, he realized that he thought of the Torch like a son, the only legacy of his wasted life. Thus, when he was reactivated in his new form, the Torch went berserk and drove Ultron-5 away, though not before the murderous robot mortally wounded Horton. In the elderly man’s last moments, he and the Torch were reconciled and regretted their long estrangement. The Torch truly came to see Horton as his father and grieved for him.
Determined to bring Ultron-5 to justice, the Torch chased him down and attacked him, but without his familiar flame powers, he was quickly defeated and deactivated. Ultron-5 then erased the Torch’s mind and replaced it with the brain patterns taken from Wonder Man, which he’d found in Hank Pym’s lab. Thus, when the synthezoid was next reactivated, the Vision was truly born. Having learned all there was to learn, the ghostly Vision was then returned to the present, whereupon the synchro-staff dematerialized. However, he had somehow been diverted to the cavern where Wanda and Agatha were being held prisoner by Dormammu and Umar. Wanda assumes that that’s one more thing they have to thank Immortus for and marvels at what a benefactor he has been to them. Vision concurs, admitting that, now that he knows he wasn’t created out of whole cloth by Ultron-5 merely to serve his evil schemes but has instead an honorable heritage as one of the greatest heroes of World War II, a life defined by courage, camaraderie, and compassion, he finally feels worthy of Wanda’s love. With tears streaming down her cheeks, Wanda kisses her husband and holds him tightly, hoping that one day she’ll be able to honor Horton’s legacy by giving the Vision children of his own.
September 1967 – Having plenty of time to rest and reflect, Wanda comes to realize that, if she’s going to continue studying witchcraft, she needs to purge herself of all the toxic negativity she’s been carrying around the last few years. She sees how Dormammu took all the hatred, bitterness, and resentment in her heart and used it against her. But even before that, she recognizes, it did so much damage to her relationships with the other Avengers. She understands that such emotional baggage will only inhibit her ability to work spells and will ultimately lead her down the road to corruption, as it did Necrodamus. Determined not to fall into that trap, Wanda decides the first step is to forgive Pietro for cutting her out of his life. She hopes that, in time, her brother will overcome his bigotry toward the Vision and see him for the wonderful man that he is.
After spending the last two weeks of their honeymoon in Tahiti, Wanda and the Vision return to Avengers Mansion and settle into their new routine as a married couple. They decide to continue living in their adjoining rooms but install a connecting door between them. Hawkeye and Moondragon have both become active members of the team and have taken up residence in the mansion as well. Furthermore, Hercules has moved back in, along with an Asgardian woman named Krista. Hercules and Krista spend a lot of time together, and Wanda finds them to be enjoyable company. She’s sad to learn, though, that Thor is spending most of his time at the hospital where his former love, Jane Foster, lies dying of a mysterious malady. Wanda starts traveling to Whisper Hill in upstate New York once a week to continue her magical training with Agatha Harkness. She is impressed with Agatha’s creepy old manse, which seems the perfect spot for an exploration of the occult. Pleased with Wanda’s new attitude, Agatha is happy to continue their lessons, and they essentially start over at the beginning.
October–November 1967 – Having taken over as team chairman, Iron Man recruits Krista to provide combat training to the Scarlet Witch and Moondragon. Iron Man makes a point to oversee their sessions personally, though Wanda suspects he’s merely ogling them. He and Hawkeye seem to find Moondragon irresistibly attractive for reasons Wanda can’t understand. Though Moondragon is insufferably arrogant, Wanda isn’t bothered by her too much, especially as she shows no interest whatsoever in the Vision. And Wanda must admit that she enjoys the physicality of such fight training, as well as the positive effect it has on her marital relations.
December 1967 – For about 18 hours, Scarlet Witch and Vision find themselves trapped within force-field bubbles. Try as they might, they are unable to escape. Finally, the force fields vanish as mysteriously as they appeared. The couple then learns that while they were trapped, Loki led an invasion force of Asgardian warriors against Washington, D.C., only to be repelled by Thor and the U.S. Army. They return to Avengers Mansion, where they find that Krista has gone home and Hercules is off on some kind of quest with Thor’s friend Sif. However, the Grand Vizier of Asgard’s royal court has decided to spend some time on “Midgard,” and he takes a room at the mansion. The Grand Vizier seems genuinely curious about humanity, and Wanda enjoys talking with him.
Steve Rogers shows up at Avengers Mansion one night and retrieves his old costume and shield from the storage vault, ready to take up the mantle of Captain America again. He then sets out to hunt down his nemesis, the Red Skull, and the other Avengers are relieved that their teammate’s identity crisis is over at last. Nearly a week later, Scarlet Witch and Vision attend the Avengers’ Sixth Annual Christmas Charity Benefit with Iron Man, Hawkeye, and Moondragon. Thor puts in a brief appearance, and the Grand Vizier seems to find the whole affair delightful. Wanda feels a tinge of regret that she has not had the chance to even inform Pietro of her marriage, but she’s determined to give her twin brother whatever space he needs to grow up a little.
Notes:
January–May 1967 – Black Spectre wreaks havoc in the United States in Daredevil #109–112 and Marvel Two-In-One #3, during which the Avengers remain behind the scenes.
June 1967 – The Scarlet Witch is behind the scenes when Captain America, disillusioned after the Secret Empire affair, calls it quits in Captain America #176. Scarlet Witch’s adventures then resume in Avengers #127 and following. The battle with Ultron-7 crosses over into Fantastic Four #150, where the wedding of Quicksilver and Crystal is depicted in abbreviated fashion. Kang’s first attempt to capture the Celestial Madonna culminates in Giant-Size Avengers #2. The timestream disturbances in the late 20th century that Kang refers to are the result of the “time bubble” (which stretches from 1995 to 2010) that Thor and Iron Man (among others) will investigate in Avengers #296–297 and Fantastic Four #337–341.
July 1967 – Wanda succumbs to demonic possession in Giant-Size Avengers #3, as Dormammu seeks revenge for the defeat she handed him back in Avengers #118. She and Vision then face down Dormammu and Umar in Giant-Size Avengers #4, which ends with the big double-wedding. On the splash page of Iron Man #74, Scarlet Witch and Vision are erroneously shown instead of Moondragon. Once back in Manhattan, Agatha tells the Avengers that Wanda “will never be a great witch, let alone a sorceress, but she will be very good.” Presumably, Agatha sought out Wanda mainly because she needed her help to fight off Necrodamus and then to rescue Gaea from Dormammu, rather than because she believed Wanda to be a promising student of witchcraft. The way writer Steve Englehart seems to conceptualize witches suggests that Agatha would derive much of her magical power from Gaea. Thus, while Gaea was being held captive, Agatha was unusually vulnerable. However, Agatha unwittingly plays into the hands of the arch-demon Chthon, who has been trying to turn Wanda to the occult for several years in a gambit to escape imprisonment within Wundagore Mountain. This brings us up to the first couple pages of Avengers #137. The Fantastic Four repel an alien invasion in Giant-Size Fantastic Four #3, during which the Scarlet Witch and the Vision are behind the scenes.
August 1967 – As revealed in Avengers West Coast #50, the Vision and the Original Human Torch were always two separate entities, at least as far as the Original Marvel Universe is concerned. This means that the events the Vision witnessed in Avengers #133–135 actually occurred in an alternate timeline, one selected specifically by Immortus to convince the Vision that he was indeed worthy of marrying the Scarlet Witch, as part of the scheme to manipulate her that was finally exposed in Avengers West Coast #61–62. With access to innumerable parallel realities as the ruler of the dimension of Limbo, Immortus was aware that, if the Vision did not overcome his insecurities and propose to Wanda at this time, he would most likely lose her to Wonder Man after the latter’s resurrection next year. Sharing the same brain patterns, Vision and Wonder Man both fall in love with Wanda, which will become an ongoing subplot in the Avengers titles. Presumably, a romance with Wonder Man would have precluded Wanda from having the eventual mental breakdown that Immortus is counting on. Therefore, Immortus stepped in to convince the Vision that he had started life as a world-renowned crime-fighter and war hero, as learning the truth of his origins would have had the same effect on the Vision as remaining ignorant of them. For in fact, Vision was created by Ultron-5 out of the remains of another of Phineas T. Horton’s androids—Adam-II, a villain who fought the All-Winners Squad while trying to assassinate congressional candidate John F. Kennedy in What If? #4.
Like the rest of the so-called Legion of the Unliving, the Original Human Torch who appears in Avengers #131–132 and Giant-Size Avengers #3 is not the real one but merely a simulacrum created by Kang using Immortus’s time-manipulation devices. As such, he says what Immortus needs him to say. Immortus’s synchro-staff then takes the Vision on a trip through history to witness events from Marvel Comics #1, Young Men #24, Fantastic Four Annual #4, and Sub-Mariner #14. Vision’s recent panic attacks were actually caused directly by Immortus in furtherance of his master plan, not due to any shared history with the android Torch. The timeline diverges when Ultron-5 discovers the inert Torch in the Mad Thinker’s abandoned laboratory. In the OMU, the Torch had already been buried in Pleasantville’s Quaker Hill Cemetery, as shown in Avengers West Coast #50. As a result, Ultron-5 instead obtained the remains of Adam-II, which Horton had stashed away back in 1946. Ultron had originally been created to assist Hank Pym and Bill Foster with the development of a synthezoid, and Pym had confiscated density-altering technology from Egghead in the aftermath of Tales to Astonish #61. This is what drove Ultron-5 to make the modifications to the android that he did. When Horton, still very much alive, saw the disassembled Vision in West Coast Avengers #44, he did not recognize it as his work due to the presence of robotic components. Horton’s research was limited to androids—beings of synthetic flesh and blood. This was true of both the Human Torch and Adam-II (who was killed in a car crash). Additionally, it would seem that the Horton in the parallel world Immortus chose never became the stepfather of Frankie Raye, as seen in Fantastic Four #238, and lived a much lonelier life.
December 1967 – Vision is among the various superheroes seen trapped within Loki’s magical spheres in Thor #233, though the Scarlet Witch remains behind the scenes. She is still behind the scenes when Steve Rogers becomes Captain America again in Captain America #183.
Jump Back: Secrets of the Scarlet Witch – Part Five
Next Issue: The Black Widow Returns!
Saturday
OMU: Power Man -- Year Three
The next year in the life of Luke Cage is remarkable for how ordinary it is. As Power Man, he fights a few new villains and has a couple of grudge matches with old ones. Bits of new information are added to his tragic backstory. He has the requisite romantic ups-and-downs. He meets some more of his fellow costumed crime-fighters—and his book is used as a launching pad for Marvel’s newest black superhero. But none of it seems to amount to much—which may be the point. Luke is a workaday hero trying to make ends meet in a decaying city, spending his time in greasy diners, filthy alleyways, dilapidated buildings, and moonlit construction sites. It’s only the crime lords who seem to enjoy any luxury. Everyone else, good guys and bad, struggles on the edge of poverty and despair. Perhaps Power Man is, at its heart, a story of perseverance.
Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale). Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.
Now continuing… The True History of Luke Cage, Power Man!
January 1967 – Luke Cage pays a visit to Reva Connors’ grave in a cemetery in Harlem, telling his deceased girlfriend about his faltering relationship with Dr. Claire Temple. Claire soon turns up, having learned that Luke was there from his friend David “D.W.” Griffith, and assures him that she doesn’t want their romance to end. Luke and Claire kiss and make up, though he still worries that his status as a fugitive will always cast a shadow over them. When they head back to Midtown Manhattan later, Luke saves businessman Maxwell Plumm from falling to his death after being thrown from the skeletal structure of a new skyscraper by a masked construction worker calling himself the Steeplejack. Though the Steeplejack gets away, Plumm explains that he knows the villain’s true identity; he’s a former employee named Jake Mallard who wants revenge for the accidental deaths of his two brothers on that very construction site. Luke hands Plumm a business card and suggests he hire him to take care of the Steeplejack. Luke then escorts Claire back to her storefront clinic near Times Square.
At the clinic, Luke and Claire find Dr. Noah Burstein, the man responsible for Luke’s superhuman powers. Burstein is glad to see they have reconciled but agrees that Luke’s criminal past will always be a threat to their future unless he can clear his name. Claire wonders if there’s any way for Luke to prove he was innocent of the drug-possession charges that led to his conviction, but Luke is convinced the only person who could provide such proof is the man who framed him, Willis Stryker, and he’s dead. However, Burstein suggests that Luke find out which rival gang Stryker stole the drugs from that he planted in Luke’s apartment—perhaps they might have some kind of records that would help exonerate him. Though it’s been nine years, Luke decides it’s worth looking into, and he spends the rest of the day talking to his various informants, including the notoriously unreliable Flea.
In the evening, Plumm hires Luke to guard the construction site, so he heads over there around midnight and finds the Steeplejack sabotaging the building’s steel girders with a homemade acetylene torch. To Luke’s surprise, the Steeplejack proves to be a tough customer, but he quickly falls victim to his own sabotage and plunges to his death. When the Steeplejack hits the ground, the chemical tanks strapped to his back explode, incinerating his body. Satisfied that he’s earned his pay, Luke heads home to his rooms above the Gem Theater on W. 42nd Street.
February 1967 – Luke is curious when D.W. presents him with a special-delivery package that’s just arrived, though he becomes suspicious when he sees there’s no return address. Before he can open the package, he is called away to a meeting with Flea at a phone booth on a corner in Hell’s Kitchen. When he arrives, Luke finds Flea lying in a nearby alley, having been fatally poisoned. Flea manages to get out one word before he dies—“Cottonmouth.” Once Flea’s body has been taken away in an ambulance, Luke returns to his office and opens the package. Two cottonmouth snakes leap out and bite him, though their fangs cannot penetrate his impervious skin. Luke grabs the snakes and beats them to death. A pair of burly men called Mike and Ike then burst into the room and announce they work for the man who sent the package. Their attempt to intimidate Luke fails, and he beats them up and forces them to reveal that their employer is the notorious Midtown drug lord called Cottonmouth. Luke realizes that Stryker must have stolen the heroin used to frame him from Cottonmouth’s gang.
Luke drags Mike and Ike to the skyscraper where their employer has his offices and confronts Cottonmouth and his diminutive assistant, Slick. Angry about Flea’s murder, Luke tries to punch Cottonmouth in the face, only to discover that the gangster has super-strength to go along with his weirdly reptilian eyes. Luke is caught off guard when Cottonmouth apologizes for having Flea killed, saying he wouldn’t have done it if he’d known Flea was working for Luke, as he wants Luke to join his organization. Offering his guest a glass of wine, Cottonmouth says he sent over the snakes merely as a test of the “Hero for Hire’s” resourcefulness and admits to being suitably impressed. Hoping to gather the evidence needed to clear his name, Luke agrees to throw in with Cottonmouth. However, Slick points out that their men won’t accept Luke unless he first proves himself, suggesting he steal back a shipment of heroin that was hijacked a week ago by their rival, the Harlem crime boss named Morgan. Familiar with Morgan’s operation, Luke agrees to retrieve the heroin singlehandedly. He heads up to Harlem, fights his way through Morgan’s heavily armed henchmen, and promptly returns to Midtown with the stolen drugs. Cottonmouth and Slick are delighted and heartily welcome Luke into their gang.
Over the next couple weeks, Luke learns everything he can about Cottonmouth’s operation from top to bottom, though he’s unable to find any written records detailing their activities. To keep Claire safe, Luke stays away from the clinic and has no contact with her or Burstein. He tells D.W. only that he’s working undercover on a big case.
March 1967 – Luke finally has the chance to search Cottonmouth’s office one night, hoping to find the records in his desk. He’s flummoxed, though, when he finds nothing and wonders how Cottonmouth can run such a complex organization without any written records. He decides the time has come to call in the NYPD narcotics squad but is caught in the act by Cottonmouth and Slick. Cottonmouth is outraged by the betrayal and attacks, pitting his super-strength against Luke’s. As they fight, Slick moves around them, trying to get a clear shot at Luke with his pistol. However, Luke inadvertently knocks Cottonmouth into Slick, sending the little man crashing through a window. Cottonmouth is horrified as Slick falls 35 stories to his death, since he relied on Slick’s photographic memory in lieu of keeping written records. Enraged that his investigation has come to nothing, Luke finally defeats Cottonmouth and turns him over to the police.
The following evening, Luke eagerly goes to visit Claire at the clinic, only to learn from Burstein that she’s left town, possibly for good. He is stunned when Burstein gives him a note Claire left saying she’s gone to Los Angeles and doesn’t want Luke to follow her. Boiling with anger, Luke rips up the note and storms out of the clinic.
April–June 1967 – Increasingly bitter that Claire has left him, Luke struggles to get enough paying clients to make ends meet, even though he receives a good deal of positive media coverage for smashing Cottonmouth’s crime ring. As a result of the publicity, most New Yorkers finally start thinking of him as a superhero called Power Man rather than just Luke Cage, Hero for Hire.
July 1967 – Luke is hired by J.C. Pennysworth, the African-American Chief Operations Officer of Richmond Enterprises, to protect a skyscraper construction site from a gang of extortionists called the Wrecking Crew. The villains have already demolished two of the company’s other new buildings, and Mayor John V. Lindsay has refused to pay their multi-million-dollar ransom. Shortly after arriving at the construction site at W. 29th St. and Broadway, Luke meets two other superheroes, Doctor Strange and Nighthawk, who have come as a personal favor to the owner of the company, Kyle Richmond. Though Luke initially mistakes the interlopers for the extortionists, the three heroes agree to team up when the building is suddenly destroyed by the real Wrecking Crew—the Wrecker, Thunderball, Bulldozer, and Piledriver. The ensuing battle goes sideways when the Hulk arrives on the scene and wreaks havoc. The fighting stops when Thunderball finds a small adamantium capsule in the rubble—the real reason they demolished the building—and announces that the gamma bomb it was supposed to contain has gone missing. The villains take advantage of the heroes’ shock, bludgeon them into unconsciousness, and escape.
After they all come to, Luke joins Doctor Strange, Nighthawk, and the Hulk as they track the Wrecking Crew uptown to Harlem, where one of Luke’s young fans informs them that the villains have invaded the Harlem Boys Club. Ignoring Doctor Strange’s words of caution, Hulk storms into the building and attacks the Wrecking Crew, followed by Nighthawk and Luke. Fortunately, the fight moves out into the street before any harm is done. The Wrecking Crew is soon defeated, and the heroes turn their attention to locating and defusing the gamma bomb. Determining that the boy they met earlier was unwittingly carrying the bomb in his baseball mitt, the heroes track him down. Doctor Strange then uses his magic amulet to hypnotize the Hulk, causing him to change back into Bruce Banner, who created the first gamma bomb. Using a bomb-disposal kit magically purloined from a military base, Banner is able to defuse the bomb, whereupon he immediately becomes the Hulk again. The heroes breathe a sigh of relief, though the Hulk is none too happy that Doctor Strange made him fall asleep. Luke worries that he won’t be paid for his night’s work since he failed to prevent the skyscraper from being destroyed. However, a couple days later, he receives a portion of his fee from Kyle Richmond himself for helping recover the gamma bomb. For reasons he doesn’t quite understand, Luke receives the lion’s share of the credit for capturing the Wrecking Crew.
Luke is baffled by a midsummer snowstorm in New York City. Reports of bizarre weather come in from around the globe, but the cause remains a mystery. Near the end of the month, more strange occurrences are reported after Luke wakes up and discovers that everyone in the city passed out two days ago. The Fantastic Four soon announce that these later phenomena were part of an alien invasion plot that they’ve foiled.
August 1967 – A panic in the Gem Theater leads Luke into a vicious fight with Erik Josten, a minor super-villain who called himself “Power Man” and fought the Avengers a few times. Having recently gotten out of prison, Josten is furious that Luke has appropriated his code name and is determined to take it back by force. Their battle causes extensive damage to the theater, but Luke doesn’t take it too seriously until he finds a young girl hiding behind her seat. Enraged by Josten’s utter disregard for the girl’s safety, Luke escorts her out of the theater and then kicks the villain’s ass. Mocking his claims of having defeated the Avengers, Luke tosses Josten into the street and threatens to give him a worse beating if he ever tries calling himself “Power Man” again. As Josten is picked up by the police, Luke takes the little girl to a nearby ice cream parlor.
Later, Luke returns to the theater to survey the damage with D.W., who believes their insurance will pay for the necessary repairs, though he’ll be out of work while the building is closed. Luke tells D.W. that he’s planning to go to Los Angeles to track down Claire, as he’s learned that she’s been sending Burstein postcards from a hotel in Pomona. He just needs to scrape together the bus fare. Heading up to his office, Luke is ambushed by Stiletto and his new partner, Discus, who tosses around razor-sharp discs, though they can’t lacerate Luke’s invulnerable skin. The fight soon carries them outside and down the street to a Nathan’s hot-dog restaurant. There, Luke beats both of his foes into submission, only to have Tyler Stuart, the former warden of Seagate Prison, turn up and reveal that Stiletto and Discus are his sons. All too familiar with the state of America’s prisons, Stuart doesn’t want his boys incarcerated, though he doesn’t condone their vigilante actions. Luke admits that Stuart was the only warden who ever treated him fairly, and since all three of them know he’s really the escaped convict Carl Lucas, he decides to let them slip away before the police arrive. However, he warns Stuart to keep his sons away from him in the future.
Luke is caught by surprise when a powerful earthquake suddenly strikes New York City. He goes out into the neighborhood around Times Square and helps people trapped in quake-damaged buildings. It is soon reported that the tremors were caused by a pair of disgruntled scientists, who have been taken into custody.
September 1967 – When Luke is finally ready to head out to Los Angeles, D.W. decides to accompany him, seeing his temporary unemployment as a chance to visit Hollywood. Luke is glad to have the company for the long, cross-country trip. Unfortunately, their bus breaks down halfway, and the passengers are split up onto different lines. After a few stops, Luke and D.W. find themselves the only passengers left on their new bus. As they’re passing through Arizona, the bus is ambushed by a group of men in militaristic uniforms with automatic weapons. The driver is shot dead, causing the bus to crash into a stand of pine trees. Not sure whether D.W. has survived, Luke smashes his way out of the wreck and beats up their assailants. He discovers that the gunmen work as police officers in a nearby gated community called Security City and uses their own handcuffs to shackle them to the bus. After D.W. has come to, the two friends hike out to Security City and find it to be more like a military encampment than a small town. They force their way through the main gate and head toward city hall, facing fierce resistance from the heavily armed citizens. Since D.W. is not bulletproof, Luke surrenders. They are led at gunpoint to a meeting with the head of the city council, who turns out to be Luke’s old foe Gideon Mace. Having survived their last encounter, Mace gloats over finally besting Luke and brags about his scheme to manipulate the carefully selected residents of Security City to create a new social order with himself at the top. However, D.W. has activated the building’s sound system, causing Mace’s ranting to be broadcast through the loudspeakers outside. As a result, the citizenry riots, furious at having been played for fools. Luke knocks out Mace with a punch in the head and leads D.W. to safety outside the settlement, leaving behind the bloody insurrection.
Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Luke and D.W. bribe a clerk at the hotel in Pomona to learn that Claire has been spending most of her time at a circus at the county fairgrounds. Heading over there to look for her, Luke is called upon to save the life of a hapless trapeze artist, Luigi Gambonno. Somewhat grudgingly, his identical twin, Ernesto Gambonno, offers Luke and D.W. free admission to the circus. The two friends soon find Claire, leading to an awkward reunion as she reveals that she came to California to help her ex-husband, a scientist named Bill Foster whose association with the former Avenger Henry Pym has left him stuck being 15 feet tall. Feeling like a freak, Foster has taken a job at the circus to fund his research into a cure. Claire explains that she wanted Luke to stay away so Foster, who aspires to be a superhero, wouldn’t discover that he’s a fugitive from the law. Luke reacts to these revelations with anger, so when Foster arrives wearing his superhero costume, the two rivals for Claire’s affections get into a bitter brawl. The fight ends abruptly when they are both lassoed with electrified cables that shock them into unconsciousness. Luke comes to sometime later and discovers that they’ve stumbled upon the notorious Circus of Crime. Seeing Claire being manhandled by Ernesto and Luigi Gambonno, Strongman, and the crafty Clown, Luke overcomes the Ringmaster’s hypnosis and attacks them. The Ringmaster commands the still-hypnotized Foster to stop Luke. However, Luigi Gambonno feels indebted to Luke for saving his life earlier and snatches the Ringmaster’s top hat, using it to free Foster from his trance. Live Wire refuses to use his electrified lasso to kill Foster, infuriating the Ringmaster. D.W., who’s been hiding in the shadows, then uses the top hat to hypnotize the Ringmaster and Princess Python as Luke and Foster defeat the others. While the Circus of Crime is turned over to the police, Claire decides that she’d rather be with Luke and tries to let her ex-husband down easy. Luke is overjoyed to be reunited with Claire after their six-month separation. He and Claire then join D.W. for a tour of Hollywood before returning to New York.
Back in his office above the closed-for-renovations theater, Luke is aggravated that someone in the building next door set up a gymnasium in his absence, leading to near constant thumping on the shared wall between them. Finally, a flabby, stumblebum masked wrestler comes crashing through the wall, causing Luke to completely lose his temper. Calling the intruder fat and stupid, Luke roughs him up until his manager, Bernie Steinsinger, intervenes and makes the wrestler apologize for his clumsiness. Steinsinger promises to pay to have the damage repaired. Luke feels bad after he calms down and realizes the wrestler is mentally disabled, probably from too many blows to the head in the course of his career. A few hours later, though, the wrestler returns, now a heavily muscled powerhouse calling himself “X,” and fights with Luke again. Luke’s office suffers extensive damage before the battle moves out onto 42nd Street. Though he lacks Luke’s superhuman strength, “X” is more than a match for him due to his superior fighting techniques. As their brawl drags on, “X” becomes increasingly reckless and murderous. Finally, he inadvertently hits Steinsinger in the head with a broken brick, mortally wounding him. The shock brings “X” to his senses, and he begs Luke to help his fallen friend. Luke calls an ambulance to the scene, and when it arrives, “X” suddenly reverts to his former flabby physique. The police agree to allow the remorseful wrestler to accompany Steinsinger to the hospital. Luke is left bewildered by the senselessness of it all.
October 1967 – Late in the month, Luke and D.W. celebrate the reopening of the Gem Theater. The building’s owner, D.W.’s uncle, has also gotten Luke’s office repaired. Hearing someone sneaking around upstairs, Luke charges up there to check it out and encounters a white-haired intruder with surprising strength and stamina. Luke is unnerved by the man’s fiery red eyes just before he leaps out through the window and seemingly turns into a bat. Luke then goes into his office, followed cautiously by D.W., where they discover $100 on the desk and a stop-me-before-I-kill-again message written on the wall in blood. The message is signed “Janos Trevorik,” a name Luke is able to find in the phone book. Incredulous, Luke wonders if he’s just been hired by a vampire.
In the morning, Luke goes to Janos Trevorik’s address and meets his attractive landlady, Hazel Donovan. Recognizing Power Man, she agrees to let him into Trevorik’s apartment, since the man owes her money. They are shocked to discover a coffin in the main room, along with a vast collection of occult artifacts. Poking around the room, Luke finds brochures for a group called the Magical Society that operates out of a place in Greenwich Village. He decides to look into it and leaves his business card with the distraught Donovan. At the Magical Society, Luke meets its suave, young director, R. Lambert Martinson, who fuels Luke’s suspicion that Trevorik may be a vampire. Using a list provided by Martinson, Luke spends the rest of the day visiting other members of the society. They all confirm Martinson’s description of Trevorik as a nocturnal creep with red eyes and preternaturally pale skin. After nightfall, another encounter with the man who broke into his office convinces Luke that he’s dealing with one of the undead. Freaked out, Luke rousts D.W. out of bed to see if he has any information on vampires. D.W. offers a couple of books on vampires in the movies, and Luke decides they will have to do. They spend the next few hours poring over the books, trying to learn as much vampire lore as they can.
Just before dawn, Luke receives a frantic phone call from Hazel Donovan claiming that Trevorik is trying to break into her apartment. Luke snaps a baluster out of the staircase and races to the scene. When he arrives, Donovan says Trevorik just ran off to an abandoned brownstone on the corner. Luke gives chase, kicking down the door and entering the dilapidated building. After a couple of shadowy brushes with his foe, Luke finds Trevorik raving like a maniac in a room on the second floor. Luke punches him in the face, knocking him to the floor, and then forces open the shutters, flooding the room with early morning light. As Trevorik recoils from the sunlight, Luke gets ready to stab him in the heart with the wooden baluster. However, at the last moment, he notices that Trevorik is wearing completely different shoes than he was before. Taking a closer look at Trevorik, Luke realizes he is not a vampire but merely an albino. A minute or two later, Luke discovers Martinson hiding in a closet and roughs him up. Trevorik comes to his senses and reveals that Martinson and Donovan conspired to trick Luke into murdering him so they could seize his extremely valuable collection of occult artifacts. Martinson had drugged Trevorik and disguised himself during Luke’s earlier encounters with the “vampire.” Trevorik commends Luke for being smarter than Martinson and Donovan gave him credit for. The conspirators are arrested by the police, and Luke takes the grateful Trevorik out for breakfast. Luke is embarrassed that he could be fooled into thinking that vampires were real, but Trevorik insists that such creatures do, in fact, exist. Luke wonders if his new friend is putting him on.
December 1967 – For about 18 hours, Luke finds himself trapped within a force-field bubble. Try as he might, he is unable to escape. Finally, the force field vanishes as mysteriously as it appeared. He then learns that, while he was trapped, Loki led an invasion force of Asgardian warriors against Washington, D.C., only to be repelled by Thor and the U.S. Army.
Luke continues to work routine cases while he and Claire rebuild their romantic relationship. He’s gratified that she chose him over her ex-husband, whom Luke thinks was a bit of a jerk, and he forgives her for taking off for California without a word of explanation. He’s also glad that his efforts to rebrand himself as Power Man have largely been successful, though acting as a superhero isn’t particularly lucrative. He hopes that things will only get better in 1968.
Notes:
January 1967 – Luke Cage’s adventures resume in Power Man #18 and following. Luke is no doubt infuriated by the race riot that occurs at the Statue of Liberty on New Year’s Day, as revealed in Daredevil #109, which was engineered by the subversive organization called Black Spectre.
July 1967 – Power Man joins forces with the Hulk, Doctor Strange, and Nighthawk against the Wrecking Crew in Defenders #17–19. At this point, the Defenders are still largely avoiding publicity, and Luke may be unaware that his colleagues even consider themselves members of a regular team, since none of them mention it. The unseasonable snowstorm results from Dormammu imprisoning Gaea in Doctor Strange v.2 #8–9. The people of New York City are then rendered insensate for two days by alien invaders in Giant-Size Fantastic Four #3.
August 1967 – Earthquakes strike Manhattan in Marvel Team-Up #28. Power Man remains behind the scenes.
September 1967 – Interestingly, during Power Man #24–25, Bill Foster is referred to only as “Goliath” and not as “Black Goliath,” except non-diagetically in the story title and on the cover. He adopts the “Black Goliath” moniker during his next appearance, in Black Goliath #1, where he also reveals that he’d lied to Claire about being trapped at 15 feet and needing to work at the circus to fund his research. It was merely a ploy to try to get her to come back to him. An odd bit of trivia: though they are two completely different people, the Wrecking Crew’s Thunderball and the Circus of Crime’s crafty Clown apparently have the same name: Eliot Franklin. The masked wrestler, Willie Dance, unwittingly drinks a variant of the super-soldier serum that was stolen from its inventor by a petty crook. While fleeing the police, the thief hid the canister in Dance’s locker room, thinking it must be valuable. Dance mistakes it for a protein shake. Since the serum is not followed by Abraham Erskine’s “vita-ray” treatment, Dance becomes mentally unstable, as is usually the case, until the effects wear off.
December 1967 – Various superheroes are seen trapped within Loki’s magical spheres in Thor #233. When the Falcon goes missing, Nomad (the hero formerly known as Captain America) stops by the Gem Theater to see if Power Man knows anything about it. However, Luke is out working on a case. The story in Captain America #183 claims that Luke is in Los Angeles while the building is closed for repairs, but that happened a few months ago. This brings us up to Power Man #27.
Jump Back: Power Man – Year Two
Next Issue: Secrets of the Scarlet Witch – Part Six
Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale). Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.
Now continuing… The True History of Luke Cage, Power Man!
January 1967 – Luke Cage pays a visit to Reva Connors’ grave in a cemetery in Harlem, telling his deceased girlfriend about his faltering relationship with Dr. Claire Temple. Claire soon turns up, having learned that Luke was there from his friend David “D.W.” Griffith, and assures him that she doesn’t want their romance to end. Luke and Claire kiss and make up, though he still worries that his status as a fugitive will always cast a shadow over them. When they head back to Midtown Manhattan later, Luke saves businessman Maxwell Plumm from falling to his death after being thrown from the skeletal structure of a new skyscraper by a masked construction worker calling himself the Steeplejack. Though the Steeplejack gets away, Plumm explains that he knows the villain’s true identity; he’s a former employee named Jake Mallard who wants revenge for the accidental deaths of his two brothers on that very construction site. Luke hands Plumm a business card and suggests he hire him to take care of the Steeplejack. Luke then escorts Claire back to her storefront clinic near Times Square.
At the clinic, Luke and Claire find Dr. Noah Burstein, the man responsible for Luke’s superhuman powers. Burstein is glad to see they have reconciled but agrees that Luke’s criminal past will always be a threat to their future unless he can clear his name. Claire wonders if there’s any way for Luke to prove he was innocent of the drug-possession charges that led to his conviction, but Luke is convinced the only person who could provide such proof is the man who framed him, Willis Stryker, and he’s dead. However, Burstein suggests that Luke find out which rival gang Stryker stole the drugs from that he planted in Luke’s apartment—perhaps they might have some kind of records that would help exonerate him. Though it’s been nine years, Luke decides it’s worth looking into, and he spends the rest of the day talking to his various informants, including the notoriously unreliable Flea.
In the evening, Plumm hires Luke to guard the construction site, so he heads over there around midnight and finds the Steeplejack sabotaging the building’s steel girders with a homemade acetylene torch. To Luke’s surprise, the Steeplejack proves to be a tough customer, but he quickly falls victim to his own sabotage and plunges to his death. When the Steeplejack hits the ground, the chemical tanks strapped to his back explode, incinerating his body. Satisfied that he’s earned his pay, Luke heads home to his rooms above the Gem Theater on W. 42nd Street.
February 1967 – Luke is curious when D.W. presents him with a special-delivery package that’s just arrived, though he becomes suspicious when he sees there’s no return address. Before he can open the package, he is called away to a meeting with Flea at a phone booth on a corner in Hell’s Kitchen. When he arrives, Luke finds Flea lying in a nearby alley, having been fatally poisoned. Flea manages to get out one word before he dies—“Cottonmouth.” Once Flea’s body has been taken away in an ambulance, Luke returns to his office and opens the package. Two cottonmouth snakes leap out and bite him, though their fangs cannot penetrate his impervious skin. Luke grabs the snakes and beats them to death. A pair of burly men called Mike and Ike then burst into the room and announce they work for the man who sent the package. Their attempt to intimidate Luke fails, and he beats them up and forces them to reveal that their employer is the notorious Midtown drug lord called Cottonmouth. Luke realizes that Stryker must have stolen the heroin used to frame him from Cottonmouth’s gang.
Luke drags Mike and Ike to the skyscraper where their employer has his offices and confronts Cottonmouth and his diminutive assistant, Slick. Angry about Flea’s murder, Luke tries to punch Cottonmouth in the face, only to discover that the gangster has super-strength to go along with his weirdly reptilian eyes. Luke is caught off guard when Cottonmouth apologizes for having Flea killed, saying he wouldn’t have done it if he’d known Flea was working for Luke, as he wants Luke to join his organization. Offering his guest a glass of wine, Cottonmouth says he sent over the snakes merely as a test of the “Hero for Hire’s” resourcefulness and admits to being suitably impressed. Hoping to gather the evidence needed to clear his name, Luke agrees to throw in with Cottonmouth. However, Slick points out that their men won’t accept Luke unless he first proves himself, suggesting he steal back a shipment of heroin that was hijacked a week ago by their rival, the Harlem crime boss named Morgan. Familiar with Morgan’s operation, Luke agrees to retrieve the heroin singlehandedly. He heads up to Harlem, fights his way through Morgan’s heavily armed henchmen, and promptly returns to Midtown with the stolen drugs. Cottonmouth and Slick are delighted and heartily welcome Luke into their gang.
Over the next couple weeks, Luke learns everything he can about Cottonmouth’s operation from top to bottom, though he’s unable to find any written records detailing their activities. To keep Claire safe, Luke stays away from the clinic and has no contact with her or Burstein. He tells D.W. only that he’s working undercover on a big case.
March 1967 – Luke finally has the chance to search Cottonmouth’s office one night, hoping to find the records in his desk. He’s flummoxed, though, when he finds nothing and wonders how Cottonmouth can run such a complex organization without any written records. He decides the time has come to call in the NYPD narcotics squad but is caught in the act by Cottonmouth and Slick. Cottonmouth is outraged by the betrayal and attacks, pitting his super-strength against Luke’s. As they fight, Slick moves around them, trying to get a clear shot at Luke with his pistol. However, Luke inadvertently knocks Cottonmouth into Slick, sending the little man crashing through a window. Cottonmouth is horrified as Slick falls 35 stories to his death, since he relied on Slick’s photographic memory in lieu of keeping written records. Enraged that his investigation has come to nothing, Luke finally defeats Cottonmouth and turns him over to the police.
The following evening, Luke eagerly goes to visit Claire at the clinic, only to learn from Burstein that she’s left town, possibly for good. He is stunned when Burstein gives him a note Claire left saying she’s gone to Los Angeles and doesn’t want Luke to follow her. Boiling with anger, Luke rips up the note and storms out of the clinic.
April–June 1967 – Increasingly bitter that Claire has left him, Luke struggles to get enough paying clients to make ends meet, even though he receives a good deal of positive media coverage for smashing Cottonmouth’s crime ring. As a result of the publicity, most New Yorkers finally start thinking of him as a superhero called Power Man rather than just Luke Cage, Hero for Hire.
July 1967 – Luke is hired by J.C. Pennysworth, the African-American Chief Operations Officer of Richmond Enterprises, to protect a skyscraper construction site from a gang of extortionists called the Wrecking Crew. The villains have already demolished two of the company’s other new buildings, and Mayor John V. Lindsay has refused to pay their multi-million-dollar ransom. Shortly after arriving at the construction site at W. 29th St. and Broadway, Luke meets two other superheroes, Doctor Strange and Nighthawk, who have come as a personal favor to the owner of the company, Kyle Richmond. Though Luke initially mistakes the interlopers for the extortionists, the three heroes agree to team up when the building is suddenly destroyed by the real Wrecking Crew—the Wrecker, Thunderball, Bulldozer, and Piledriver. The ensuing battle goes sideways when the Hulk arrives on the scene and wreaks havoc. The fighting stops when Thunderball finds a small adamantium capsule in the rubble—the real reason they demolished the building—and announces that the gamma bomb it was supposed to contain has gone missing. The villains take advantage of the heroes’ shock, bludgeon them into unconsciousness, and escape.
After they all come to, Luke joins Doctor Strange, Nighthawk, and the Hulk as they track the Wrecking Crew uptown to Harlem, where one of Luke’s young fans informs them that the villains have invaded the Harlem Boys Club. Ignoring Doctor Strange’s words of caution, Hulk storms into the building and attacks the Wrecking Crew, followed by Nighthawk and Luke. Fortunately, the fight moves out into the street before any harm is done. The Wrecking Crew is soon defeated, and the heroes turn their attention to locating and defusing the gamma bomb. Determining that the boy they met earlier was unwittingly carrying the bomb in his baseball mitt, the heroes track him down. Doctor Strange then uses his magic amulet to hypnotize the Hulk, causing him to change back into Bruce Banner, who created the first gamma bomb. Using a bomb-disposal kit magically purloined from a military base, Banner is able to defuse the bomb, whereupon he immediately becomes the Hulk again. The heroes breathe a sigh of relief, though the Hulk is none too happy that Doctor Strange made him fall asleep. Luke worries that he won’t be paid for his night’s work since he failed to prevent the skyscraper from being destroyed. However, a couple days later, he receives a portion of his fee from Kyle Richmond himself for helping recover the gamma bomb. For reasons he doesn’t quite understand, Luke receives the lion’s share of the credit for capturing the Wrecking Crew.
Luke is baffled by a midsummer snowstorm in New York City. Reports of bizarre weather come in from around the globe, but the cause remains a mystery. Near the end of the month, more strange occurrences are reported after Luke wakes up and discovers that everyone in the city passed out two days ago. The Fantastic Four soon announce that these later phenomena were part of an alien invasion plot that they’ve foiled.
August 1967 – A panic in the Gem Theater leads Luke into a vicious fight with Erik Josten, a minor super-villain who called himself “Power Man” and fought the Avengers a few times. Having recently gotten out of prison, Josten is furious that Luke has appropriated his code name and is determined to take it back by force. Their battle causes extensive damage to the theater, but Luke doesn’t take it too seriously until he finds a young girl hiding behind her seat. Enraged by Josten’s utter disregard for the girl’s safety, Luke escorts her out of the theater and then kicks the villain’s ass. Mocking his claims of having defeated the Avengers, Luke tosses Josten into the street and threatens to give him a worse beating if he ever tries calling himself “Power Man” again. As Josten is picked up by the police, Luke takes the little girl to a nearby ice cream parlor.
Later, Luke returns to the theater to survey the damage with D.W., who believes their insurance will pay for the necessary repairs, though he’ll be out of work while the building is closed. Luke tells D.W. that he’s planning to go to Los Angeles to track down Claire, as he’s learned that she’s been sending Burstein postcards from a hotel in Pomona. He just needs to scrape together the bus fare. Heading up to his office, Luke is ambushed by Stiletto and his new partner, Discus, who tosses around razor-sharp discs, though they can’t lacerate Luke’s invulnerable skin. The fight soon carries them outside and down the street to a Nathan’s hot-dog restaurant. There, Luke beats both of his foes into submission, only to have Tyler Stuart, the former warden of Seagate Prison, turn up and reveal that Stiletto and Discus are his sons. All too familiar with the state of America’s prisons, Stuart doesn’t want his boys incarcerated, though he doesn’t condone their vigilante actions. Luke admits that Stuart was the only warden who ever treated him fairly, and since all three of them know he’s really the escaped convict Carl Lucas, he decides to let them slip away before the police arrive. However, he warns Stuart to keep his sons away from him in the future.
Luke is caught by surprise when a powerful earthquake suddenly strikes New York City. He goes out into the neighborhood around Times Square and helps people trapped in quake-damaged buildings. It is soon reported that the tremors were caused by a pair of disgruntled scientists, who have been taken into custody.
September 1967 – When Luke is finally ready to head out to Los Angeles, D.W. decides to accompany him, seeing his temporary unemployment as a chance to visit Hollywood. Luke is glad to have the company for the long, cross-country trip. Unfortunately, their bus breaks down halfway, and the passengers are split up onto different lines. After a few stops, Luke and D.W. find themselves the only passengers left on their new bus. As they’re passing through Arizona, the bus is ambushed by a group of men in militaristic uniforms with automatic weapons. The driver is shot dead, causing the bus to crash into a stand of pine trees. Not sure whether D.W. has survived, Luke smashes his way out of the wreck and beats up their assailants. He discovers that the gunmen work as police officers in a nearby gated community called Security City and uses their own handcuffs to shackle them to the bus. After D.W. has come to, the two friends hike out to Security City and find it to be more like a military encampment than a small town. They force their way through the main gate and head toward city hall, facing fierce resistance from the heavily armed citizens. Since D.W. is not bulletproof, Luke surrenders. They are led at gunpoint to a meeting with the head of the city council, who turns out to be Luke’s old foe Gideon Mace. Having survived their last encounter, Mace gloats over finally besting Luke and brags about his scheme to manipulate the carefully selected residents of Security City to create a new social order with himself at the top. However, D.W. has activated the building’s sound system, causing Mace’s ranting to be broadcast through the loudspeakers outside. As a result, the citizenry riots, furious at having been played for fools. Luke knocks out Mace with a punch in the head and leads D.W. to safety outside the settlement, leaving behind the bloody insurrection.
Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Luke and D.W. bribe a clerk at the hotel in Pomona to learn that Claire has been spending most of her time at a circus at the county fairgrounds. Heading over there to look for her, Luke is called upon to save the life of a hapless trapeze artist, Luigi Gambonno. Somewhat grudgingly, his identical twin, Ernesto Gambonno, offers Luke and D.W. free admission to the circus. The two friends soon find Claire, leading to an awkward reunion as she reveals that she came to California to help her ex-husband, a scientist named Bill Foster whose association with the former Avenger Henry Pym has left him stuck being 15 feet tall. Feeling like a freak, Foster has taken a job at the circus to fund his research into a cure. Claire explains that she wanted Luke to stay away so Foster, who aspires to be a superhero, wouldn’t discover that he’s a fugitive from the law. Luke reacts to these revelations with anger, so when Foster arrives wearing his superhero costume, the two rivals for Claire’s affections get into a bitter brawl. The fight ends abruptly when they are both lassoed with electrified cables that shock them into unconsciousness. Luke comes to sometime later and discovers that they’ve stumbled upon the notorious Circus of Crime. Seeing Claire being manhandled by Ernesto and Luigi Gambonno, Strongman, and the crafty Clown, Luke overcomes the Ringmaster’s hypnosis and attacks them. The Ringmaster commands the still-hypnotized Foster to stop Luke. However, Luigi Gambonno feels indebted to Luke for saving his life earlier and snatches the Ringmaster’s top hat, using it to free Foster from his trance. Live Wire refuses to use his electrified lasso to kill Foster, infuriating the Ringmaster. D.W., who’s been hiding in the shadows, then uses the top hat to hypnotize the Ringmaster and Princess Python as Luke and Foster defeat the others. While the Circus of Crime is turned over to the police, Claire decides that she’d rather be with Luke and tries to let her ex-husband down easy. Luke is overjoyed to be reunited with Claire after their six-month separation. He and Claire then join D.W. for a tour of Hollywood before returning to New York.
Back in his office above the closed-for-renovations theater, Luke is aggravated that someone in the building next door set up a gymnasium in his absence, leading to near constant thumping on the shared wall between them. Finally, a flabby, stumblebum masked wrestler comes crashing through the wall, causing Luke to completely lose his temper. Calling the intruder fat and stupid, Luke roughs him up until his manager, Bernie Steinsinger, intervenes and makes the wrestler apologize for his clumsiness. Steinsinger promises to pay to have the damage repaired. Luke feels bad after he calms down and realizes the wrestler is mentally disabled, probably from too many blows to the head in the course of his career. A few hours later, though, the wrestler returns, now a heavily muscled powerhouse calling himself “X,” and fights with Luke again. Luke’s office suffers extensive damage before the battle moves out onto 42nd Street. Though he lacks Luke’s superhuman strength, “X” is more than a match for him due to his superior fighting techniques. As their brawl drags on, “X” becomes increasingly reckless and murderous. Finally, he inadvertently hits Steinsinger in the head with a broken brick, mortally wounding him. The shock brings “X” to his senses, and he begs Luke to help his fallen friend. Luke calls an ambulance to the scene, and when it arrives, “X” suddenly reverts to his former flabby physique. The police agree to allow the remorseful wrestler to accompany Steinsinger to the hospital. Luke is left bewildered by the senselessness of it all.
October 1967 – Late in the month, Luke and D.W. celebrate the reopening of the Gem Theater. The building’s owner, D.W.’s uncle, has also gotten Luke’s office repaired. Hearing someone sneaking around upstairs, Luke charges up there to check it out and encounters a white-haired intruder with surprising strength and stamina. Luke is unnerved by the man’s fiery red eyes just before he leaps out through the window and seemingly turns into a bat. Luke then goes into his office, followed cautiously by D.W., where they discover $100 on the desk and a stop-me-before-I-kill-again message written on the wall in blood. The message is signed “Janos Trevorik,” a name Luke is able to find in the phone book. Incredulous, Luke wonders if he’s just been hired by a vampire.
In the morning, Luke goes to Janos Trevorik’s address and meets his attractive landlady, Hazel Donovan. Recognizing Power Man, she agrees to let him into Trevorik’s apartment, since the man owes her money. They are shocked to discover a coffin in the main room, along with a vast collection of occult artifacts. Poking around the room, Luke finds brochures for a group called the Magical Society that operates out of a place in Greenwich Village. He decides to look into it and leaves his business card with the distraught Donovan. At the Magical Society, Luke meets its suave, young director, R. Lambert Martinson, who fuels Luke’s suspicion that Trevorik may be a vampire. Using a list provided by Martinson, Luke spends the rest of the day visiting other members of the society. They all confirm Martinson’s description of Trevorik as a nocturnal creep with red eyes and preternaturally pale skin. After nightfall, another encounter with the man who broke into his office convinces Luke that he’s dealing with one of the undead. Freaked out, Luke rousts D.W. out of bed to see if he has any information on vampires. D.W. offers a couple of books on vampires in the movies, and Luke decides they will have to do. They spend the next few hours poring over the books, trying to learn as much vampire lore as they can.
Just before dawn, Luke receives a frantic phone call from Hazel Donovan claiming that Trevorik is trying to break into her apartment. Luke snaps a baluster out of the staircase and races to the scene. When he arrives, Donovan says Trevorik just ran off to an abandoned brownstone on the corner. Luke gives chase, kicking down the door and entering the dilapidated building. After a couple of shadowy brushes with his foe, Luke finds Trevorik raving like a maniac in a room on the second floor. Luke punches him in the face, knocking him to the floor, and then forces open the shutters, flooding the room with early morning light. As Trevorik recoils from the sunlight, Luke gets ready to stab him in the heart with the wooden baluster. However, at the last moment, he notices that Trevorik is wearing completely different shoes than he was before. Taking a closer look at Trevorik, Luke realizes he is not a vampire but merely an albino. A minute or two later, Luke discovers Martinson hiding in a closet and roughs him up. Trevorik comes to his senses and reveals that Martinson and Donovan conspired to trick Luke into murdering him so they could seize his extremely valuable collection of occult artifacts. Martinson had drugged Trevorik and disguised himself during Luke’s earlier encounters with the “vampire.” Trevorik commends Luke for being smarter than Martinson and Donovan gave him credit for. The conspirators are arrested by the police, and Luke takes the grateful Trevorik out for breakfast. Luke is embarrassed that he could be fooled into thinking that vampires were real, but Trevorik insists that such creatures do, in fact, exist. Luke wonders if his new friend is putting him on.
December 1967 – For about 18 hours, Luke finds himself trapped within a force-field bubble. Try as he might, he is unable to escape. Finally, the force field vanishes as mysteriously as it appeared. He then learns that, while he was trapped, Loki led an invasion force of Asgardian warriors against Washington, D.C., only to be repelled by Thor and the U.S. Army.
Luke continues to work routine cases while he and Claire rebuild their romantic relationship. He’s gratified that she chose him over her ex-husband, whom Luke thinks was a bit of a jerk, and he forgives her for taking off for California without a word of explanation. He’s also glad that his efforts to rebrand himself as Power Man have largely been successful, though acting as a superhero isn’t particularly lucrative. He hopes that things will only get better in 1968.
Notes:
January 1967 – Luke Cage’s adventures resume in Power Man #18 and following. Luke is no doubt infuriated by the race riot that occurs at the Statue of Liberty on New Year’s Day, as revealed in Daredevil #109, which was engineered by the subversive organization called Black Spectre.
July 1967 – Power Man joins forces with the Hulk, Doctor Strange, and Nighthawk against the Wrecking Crew in Defenders #17–19. At this point, the Defenders are still largely avoiding publicity, and Luke may be unaware that his colleagues even consider themselves members of a regular team, since none of them mention it. The unseasonable snowstorm results from Dormammu imprisoning Gaea in Doctor Strange v.2 #8–9. The people of New York City are then rendered insensate for two days by alien invaders in Giant-Size Fantastic Four #3.
August 1967 – Earthquakes strike Manhattan in Marvel Team-Up #28. Power Man remains behind the scenes.
September 1967 – Interestingly, during Power Man #24–25, Bill Foster is referred to only as “Goliath” and not as “Black Goliath,” except non-diagetically in the story title and on the cover. He adopts the “Black Goliath” moniker during his next appearance, in Black Goliath #1, where he also reveals that he’d lied to Claire about being trapped at 15 feet and needing to work at the circus to fund his research. It was merely a ploy to try to get her to come back to him. An odd bit of trivia: though they are two completely different people, the Wrecking Crew’s Thunderball and the Circus of Crime’s crafty Clown apparently have the same name: Eliot Franklin. The masked wrestler, Willie Dance, unwittingly drinks a variant of the super-soldier serum that was stolen from its inventor by a petty crook. While fleeing the police, the thief hid the canister in Dance’s locker room, thinking it must be valuable. Dance mistakes it for a protein shake. Since the serum is not followed by Abraham Erskine’s “vita-ray” treatment, Dance becomes mentally unstable, as is usually the case, until the effects wear off.
December 1967 – Various superheroes are seen trapped within Loki’s magical spheres in Thor #233. When the Falcon goes missing, Nomad (the hero formerly known as Captain America) stops by the Gem Theater to see if Power Man knows anything about it. However, Luke is out working on a case. The story in Captain America #183 claims that Luke is in Los Angeles while the building is closed for repairs, but that happened a few months ago. This brings us up to Power Man #27.
Jump Back: Power Man – Year Two
Next Issue: Secrets of the Scarlet Witch – Part Six
Friday
OMU: Hulk -- Year Six
The next year’s worth of the Hulk’s adventures is chronicled primarily by writer Len Wein, who handles the character’s solo series and, with some help from Steve Gerber and others, the team book The Defenders and its quarterly companion title Giant-Size Defenders. Wein explores the Hulk’s childlike mentality as he suffers through a series of traumatic experiences in the USA, the USSR, Canada, and Scotland and contrasts it with Bruce Banner’s bitter cynicism. We also reach the end of artist Herb Trimpe’s landmark run on Hulk as he brings back a succession of former adversaries such as Doc Samson, the Gremlin, the Shaper of Worlds, the Wendigo, and Zzzax. This “greatest hits” approach nicely sums up Trimpe’s free-wheeling, bombastic approach to the series.
Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale.) Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.
Continuing on with… The True History of the Incredible Hulk!
January 1967 – The Hulk’s voyage home from Counter-Earth comes to a violent conclusion as he smashes out of his space rocket soon after it enters the original Earth’s atmosphere over North America. Having detected the unauthorized craft, the United States Air Force blows it out of the sky seconds later with a pair of interceptor missiles. The shockwave from the explosion alters the Hulk’s downward trajectory, causing him to crash-land in the hills outside the small mining town of Lucifer Falls, West Virginia. Knocked unconscious, Hulk changes back into Bruce Banner and is soon taken in by a local family, Clay and Belinda Brickford and their children Clay-Boy, Allison, and Jimmy-Jack. During a simple yet hearty supper, Bruce is astonished when the Hulk’s old foe, the Missing Link, enters the house dressed as a coal miner. Though Bruce doesn’t remember their previous encounter, something about the deformed brute makes him very uneasy. He tries to suppress his misgivings when he sees that the Brickfords are happy to see the Missing Link, whom they call “Lincoln.”
The next morning, Bruce accompanies Clay and Lincoln to the coal mines to earn his keep and is surprised to find that Lincoln actually enjoys the work. The other miners do not share his enthusiasm, though, and are anxious about losing their jobs when the mine is inevitably tapped out. Bruce works alongside them for the next two weeks, and although it is a far cry from the research laboratories he’s used to, life in an Appalachian coal mine proves not to be quite the hellish existence he’d always imagined it would be. He is cheered by Lincoln’s good-natured outlook and comes to see the weird-looking fellow as a kindly soul. They spend their weekends hiking in the hills and fishing, genuinely enjoying each other’s company.
After church on Sunday, Bruce grows concerned when Jimmy-Jack suddenly becomes deathly ill while playing with Lincoln. Recognizing the boy’s symptoms as consistent with radiation poisoning, Bruce borrows Clay’s truck and drives to the nearest city to purchase a Geiger counter. That night, he checks the areas where the children tend to play but finds nothing out of the ordinary. Next, he surreptitiously scans all the members of the Brickford family while they’re sleeping, again with no results. Filled with dread, he checks Lincoln and discovers that his new friend is dangerously radioactive. Returning to his own bedroom, Bruce becomes depressed about having to destroy Lincoln’s idyllic life.
In the morning, Bruce takes Lincoln aside before they go down into the mine and informs him that he’s the source of Jimmy-Jack’s radiation sickness. If he doesn’t leave Lucifer Falls and seek treatment, Bruce warns, Lincoln could end up poisoning the entire town. Not really comprehending what he’s being told, Lincoln shoves Bruce away, his superhuman strength sending Bruce crashing through the boarded-up entrance to a mine shaft. Plunging into the blackness, Bruce turns into the Hulk and smashes his way back to the surface. Only vaguely remembering each other, Hulk and the Missing Link get into a fight that wrecks the entire mining operation. They inadvertently trigger an explosion that causes a huge cave-in, sending the combatants deep underground. There, Lincoln finally realizes that Bruce was right—the radiation in his body is rapidly approaching critical mass. Before Hulk realizes what’s happening, the Missing Link explodes with the force of a small nuclear bomb. However, as Hulk slowly digs his way out of the rubble, the Missing Link’s body reforms again, his deadly radiation completely spent, and he joins his co-workers in fleeing the devastation. Confused, Hulk wanders off into the Appalachian countryside.
February 1967 – Hulk makes his way back to New York City, despite his antipathy for the place, and falls asleep in an alley. He wakes up as Bruce Banner and, worried about freezing to death, decides to seek refuge with the Fantastic Four, whose Baxter Building headquarters is only a few blocks away. When he arrives, the building’s doorman at first assumes he’s a vagrant but then remembers that he’s visited the world-famous heroes before. Thus, he calls up to the team’s headquarters and receives permission to put Bruce on their private express elevator. In the tower, Bruce is greeted by the Thing, who offers him some coffee. Bruce explains that he’s come hoping Mister Fantastic has made some progress on finding a way to cure him of being the Hulk. The Thing is clearly somewhat bitter about his teammate’s repeated failures to cure him of his own monstrous form but mentions that Mister Fantastic developed something called a “psi-amplifier” last week. Bruce is excited, having been thinking along the same lines, and asks to see it. Though Mister Fantastic is out of town with the Human Torch and Medusa, the Thing nevertheless escorts him to the lab. A cursory examination convinces Bruce that he may be able to modify the psi-amplifier to cure both of them by harnessing the different forms of radiation in their bodies (cosmic rays versus gamma rays) to cancel each other out. Thus, the Thing allows him to work on it all night without interruption. Eight hours later, Bruce is ready to test his modifications and calls the Thing to the lab. Once they’re both wired up to the machine, Bruce activates it, but the initial jolt of energy causes the Thing to cry out in pain. Panicking, the exhausted, stressed-out Bruce suddenly changes into the Hulk.
Assuming he’s been captured again, Hulk goes berserk and destroys the psi-amplifier machine, but something goes terribly wrong, and when the smoke clears, he finds that his mind has somehow been transferred into the Thing’s body—and vice-versa. Hulk doesn’t really understand what’s happening, though, and while he is aware that he seems to be covered in orange crusty stuff, he’s too enraged to think much about it. He’s also distracted by the ugly, green brute who keeps talking about Banner while trying to restrain him. After wrecking the lab, Hulk throws his unknown enemy off the building. Then, seeing a tall, muscular figure apparently helping his foe, Hulk races down into the alley and punches the stranger in the face. It is only then Hulk realizes that the interloper is not a man, as he had first assumed, but a woman—Thundra. Blaming the green monster for making him hit a woman, Hulk renews his attack. The brawl between the two behemoths continues for several minutes, until they crash through the sidewalk and land in the path of an oncoming subway train. Hulk is unconcerned, still focused on his stunned enemy. At the last moment, Thundra leaps down through the hole and stops the train, causing a huge wreck that injures most of the passengers and crew. Wanting to be left alone, Hulk slams his fists into the ground, creating a shockwave that knocks Thundra off her feet and causes further damage to the train. The green brute tries again to subdue the Hulk, but their running battle takes them to Madison Square Garden in Hell’s Kitchen, where they interrupt a boxing match. The audience panics and bolts for the exits, creating a human stampede. Just then, Mister Fantastic, the Human Torch, and Medusa arrive on the scene, having returned to the city and tracked the combatants to the arena. Hulk is momentarily distracted by the Human Torch, enabling the green brute to get in a solid punch that knocks him down. His foe then pours on the blows, using all the fighting skill he can muster. After another minute or two of furious battle, Hulk is surprised when Mister Fantastic injects his foe with a powerful tranquilizer. However, as his enemy loses consciousness, Hulk also feels disoriented for a few seconds before passing out. Reverting to Bruce Banner, he soon comes around and confirms Mister Fantastic’s assumptions about what happened—somehow his transformation forced both minds back into their proper bodies. Bruce elects to leave the city before he causes any more destruction. Evidently feeling bad that he’s been too depressed lately to make any headway in finding a cure for the Hulk, Mister Fantastic gives Bruce some warm clothes to wear.
March 1967 – Hulk seeks refuge from his persecutors in northern Quebec, Canada, where he soon becomes infuriated by a disembodied voice that won’t stop bothering him. While trying to locate the source of the annoyance so he can smash it, Hulk comes upon a primitive dwelling made of stone slabs where he finds Marie Cartier and Georges Baptiste, whom he vaguely recognizes as friends of his. Cartier, dressed in the animal skins of a sorceress, is very welcoming and provides Hulk with a delicious meal, which he devours hungrily. However, a large bowl of broth makes the Hulk unexpectedly sleepy, so Cartier leads him to a pair of stone beds and has him lie down. Hulk falls asleep almost immediately. When he wakes up sometime later, Hulk feels groggy and decides to see if there’s any more food. In the outer chamber, he is surprised to find the Wendigo looming over Cartier and Baptiste. Assuming his friends are in danger, Hulk attacks the shaggy creature. Their battle demolishes part of the hovel but then drags on under the light of the moon with neither one able to gain the upper hand. Suddenly, they are interrupted by a snarling little man in a yellow-and-blue costume calling himself the Wolverine. Armed with long metal claws protruding from the backs of his hands, Wolverine forces the Hulk and the Wendigo apart, saying he’s been sent by Canada’s government to deal with the green-skinned invader. However, since the Wendigo is the more immediate threat, Wolverine teams up with the Hulk to take the monster down. After receiving a pummeling from the Hulk, the Wendigo gets slashed to ribbons by Wolverine’s claws and passes out from loss of blood. Hulk is annoyed when Wolverine suddenly turns on him, and the ensuing duel continues until dawn. Finally, they both stagger woozily for a moment, then drop to the ground unconscious.
When Hulk comes to, he finds Cartier trying to drag him across the ground and realizes she must have gassed him and his diminutive foe. Feeling betrayed, he pulls away from her and grows angry when she denies plotting against him. Seeing Wolverine chained up behind Cartier, Hulk pushes past her, yanks him up into the air, and slams him down onto the rocky ground. Surprisingly, Wolverine does not appear to be injured. Instead, he breaks out of his chains and attacks the Hulk yet again, as the distraught Cartier runs back to her hovel. Her blood-curdling scream a moment later distracts Wolverine, allowing the Hulk to finally knock him out with a punch in the head. Turning back toward the hovel, Hulk sees the Wendigo racing off into the forest but decides not to pursue him. Inside, he finds Cartier in shock as a naked man stirs on one of the stone beds. Concerned, Hulk puts his hand on Cartier’s shoulder as she breaks down in grief and despair. Hearing a disturbance outside, Hulk emerges from the hovel to see a large troop-transport helicopter descending on the scene. A voice blares from a loudspeaker, excoriating Wolverine for failing in his mission to capture the Hulk. The little costumed man objects strenuously as he boards the helicopter. A squad of Royal Canadian Air Force commandos then keep the Hulk busy until a gas attack can render him unconscious. He soon wakes up to find himself in a titanium cage suspended beneath the helicopter as it speeds over the forest. Furious, Hulk breaks free, disappears into the woods, and makes his way south into Vermont.
After nightfall, the sound of a harmonica leads Hulk to a small campfire where he finds an old man in tattered clothing who introduces himself in a thick Louisiana accent as “Crackajack” Jackson. Invited to keep the man company, Hulk sits down and gobbles up a plate of baked beans warmed over the fire. Crackajack then plays his harmonica again for a little while before falling asleep. Hulk sits awake all night, watching over his new friend. In the morning, Crackajack leads the Hulk to a nearby lake where they spend a few hours fishing. Crackajack talks incessantly about his life as a musician in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, among other random topics. His constant stream of chatter annoys the Hulk, who believes it’s scaring away the fish. After eating the fish they’ve caught, Hulk and Crackajack continue down a path through the woods. The old man reveals that he’s on his way to visit his son, Leroy, and invites the Hulk to accompany him. With nothing better to do, Hulk agrees, and during their day-long trek, he decides that Crackajack is pleasant company. As night falls again, the unlikely pair makes camp, and Crackajack cooks up more baked beans, teaching Hulk how to eat them with a fork. Discovering that the Hulk is illiterate, Crackajack teaches him the alphabet and how to write his name in the dirt with a stick. Hulk enjoys these lessons and the gentle encouragement of his raggedy teacher. Crackajack stresses the importance of a man’s name, one of his favorite old chestnuts, and declares himself to be the Hulk’s friend. In his own sullen way, Hulk concurs.
Early the next morning, Crackajack leads the Hulk to the state prison where his son is incarcerated after forcing their way past some state troopers cordoning off the area. Crackajack says he was too embarrassed to admit that his son was in jail, but Hulk isn’t bothered by it. He carries Crackajack over the wall into the prison yard, where they find Leroy Jackson and another inmate, their wrists connected by a glowing cable, fighting with the guards. Shocked to see his father after so many years, Leroy yells at Crackajack bitterly, unloading all the pent-up rage from his neglected childhood. Crackajack tries to placate his son but inadvertently touches the strange cable and is instantly electrocuted. As Crackajack falls to the ground dead, Hulk attacks the two convicts, intent on avenging his friend. However, they prove to be super-strong and highly resistant to injury, and their cable makes a formidable weapon. They manage to wrap the cable around the Hulk’s neck and nearly choke him to death before he breaks free. Hulk snaps the cable in half, which causes the two convicts to collapse to the ground, screaming and raving like madmen. Disturbed, Hulk takes Crackajack back into the woods and buries him in a shallow grave. Remembering how important his friend’s name was to him, Hulk does his best to inscribe it on a slab of granite broken off a nearby cliff. After setting up the makeshift tombstone, the sorrowful Hulk wanders off into the forest.
Hulk makes his way to Chicago, Illinois, falls asleep in an alley, and changes back into Bruce Banner. After scavenging some clothes from a garbage can, Bruce secures a job as a janitor at Soul-Star Research, Ltd. While sweeping the floors, he is surprised to find the firm’s three owners—Alexandria Knox, Stan Landers, and Mark Revel—working late. They give him permission to sweep up as long as he stays quiet and keeps out of their way. Nevertheless, Bruce overhears them discussing a problem with their device and figures out the answer. When he offers his solution, Revel is annoyed but Knox realizes he’s correct. The three scientists question their janitor and are startled to discover that he is the noted physicist Bruce Banner. Having studied his work, they invite Bruce to watch the first test of their device, which is designed to collect trace brainwave patterns from the atmosphere so they can be decoded and analyzed. Unfortunately, the device reconstitutes the sizzling energy form of Zzzax before exploding. Knox is knocked out, and Landers runs over to help her, only to be grabbed by Zzzax and incinerated. The stress triggers Bruce’s transformation into the Hulk, and the green behemoth immediately attacks the glowing monster. However, Zzzax stuns the Hulk with a powerful discharge of electricity and, having absorbed Landers’s consciousness, carries Knox out into the rainy streets. Revel pleads with the Hulk to save Knox, so he reluctantly pursues Zzzax to the roof of the Richard J. Daley Center. Once there, though, Hulk finds that his blows have little effect on Zzzax, while Zzzax’s lightning bolts cause him intense pain. While they are fighting, a helicopter piloted by Revel emerges from the thunderstorm. Revel fires a spear gun at Zzzax, the spear connected to the helicopter by a copper cable. Thus, when the helicopter ascends into the storm and is struck by lightning, the current is conducted down into Zzzax’s form, destroying him. The helicopter plummets to the street, but Hulk saves Revel in the nick of time. Satisfied that the battle is over, Hulk stalks off into the rain-slicked city to lick his wounds.
April 1967 – Hulk spends the month wandering around the American Midwest, keeping a low profile.
May 1967 – Hulk is ambling through some woods when he is contacted telepathically by Doctor Strange, who requests his help at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. Strange’s astral form then leads the Hulk to a spot outside the caverns where the Valkyrie and Nighthawk are waiting with a man in a wheelchair named Charles Xavier. Back in his physical form, Strange leads the group into the caves, illuminating the way with light from his magic amulet. Within moments, they are ambushed by a seemingly invincible cyclops, but Xavier reveals the monster to be merely an illusion. However, they are all knocked unconscious by a blast of energy, and when they wake up, they find themselves trapped within a field of magnetic force. Flanked by his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants—the Blob, Mastermind, Unus the Untouchable, and Lorelei—the notorious super-villain Magneto rants and raves about a humanoid figure forming in a tank of chemicals behind him. He tells the Defenders a preposterous story of being trapped at the center of the earth by the Avengers until, several months later, a passing comet shifted the planet’s magnetic fields enough that he could make his way to Subterranea, where he translated books left behind by ancient aliens and thus learned the secret of genetically engineering a being powerful enough to enable him to conquer the world. When the villains return to their diabolical scheme, Xavier reveals himself to be a powerful telepath and harnesses the Defenders’ combined psychic energy to disrupt the field imprisoning them. They quickly defeat Magneto’s minions but are unable to prevent him from bringing his new creation to life. Gleefully, Magneto dubs the giant, brutish creature “Alpha, the Ultimate Mutant.”
Doctor Strange attempts to incapacitate Alpha with blasts of mystical energy, but Alpha erects a force field to protect himself, a field potent enough to repel the Hulk as well. Magneto then causes part of the cavern to collapse, trapping everyone underground, only to have Alpha teleport the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants away. Hulk and Valkyrie dig an escape tunnel, and the Defenders slowly make their way to the surface. Once there, Xavier does a telepathic scan to locate their foes, and after a few minutes of intense concentration, he finds them in New York City. Strange conjures up a portal through which the five heroes return to Manhattan. They are astonished to see the United Nations Building floating about half a mile above the city, presumably more of Alpha’s handiwork. Flying up to the building, the Defenders and Xavier fight their way past concrete automatons and confront Magneto and his minions in the general assembly chamber, where they are holding the assembled delegates prisoner. The heroes are surprised to see that Alpha has changed, having developed heightened intelligence and a less brutish appearance. He seems to visibly evolve every time he uses his powers and quickly surpasses mainstream humanity to take on a superior form. Noting Alpha’s reluctance to harm the Defenders, Xavier convinces him to judge for himself which of the two groups acts out of evil intent. Alpha does so, reading everyone’s innermost thoughts and motivations, and then condemns Magneto’s group as being little more than selfish children. The heroes are shocked when Alpha unleashes a beam of psychic energy that reduces Magneto, the Blob, Mastermind, Unus, and Lorelei to the equivalent of nine-month-old babies. Alpha then undoes the damage he caused to the United Nations Building and erases all memory of the traumatic event from the minds of the people affected by it. Continuing to evolve, Alpha bids farewell to the Defenders and Xavier before ascending into the sky, having decided to leave Earth to seek his destiny among the stars. Xavier takes charge of the babies, assuring the Defenders that they will be well cared for at the Mutant Research Centre in Scotland.
Thoroughly confused by what just happened, Hulk stomps off through Midtown Manhattan in search of solitude, only to be harassed by the NYPD and the National Guard. After a destructive fight, Hulk loses the government forces in the labyrinthine alleyways of the city. There, he is met by a cute little girl calling herself Laurie, who leads him to a tenement building on the Lower East Side with a cement stairway that goes down to a weird door with a sinister gargoyle looming over it. Beyond the door are more stairs that take them into the bowels of the earth. Hulk is concerned that the little girl considers this dank and dismal place home. Moving through a series of caverns, the little girl suddenly reveals herself to be a demon named Laurox the Lecherous and conjures up about half a dozen gigantic Bruce Banners to attack the Hulk. Bewildered, Hulk tries to defend himself but is no match for his laughing foes. As the savage beating drags on, Hulk’s rage becomes so overwhelming that his rational mind starts to buckle under the strain. After several hours, a strange man with a golden trident, Daimon Hellstrom, suddenly appears and blasts the giant Banners with mystical flames. He is followed by Doctor Strange, Valkyrie, and Nighthawk. Seeing his friends, Hulk rallies and smashes the Banners, causing them to crumble into lifeless stone. Without warning, the floor dissolves, sending everyone tumbling into an enormous throne room. Strange recognizes the figure on the throne as Asmodeus, a devil-worshiper who died a few years ago. Asmodeus reveals that he struck a bargain with the arch-demon Satannish to be returned to life in exchange for their five souls. Luckily, Hellstrom proves immune to Asmodeus’s eldritch power, protected by his golden trident, and saves the lives of the Defenders. Asmodeus panics as his time runs out, whereupon Satannish destroys him. The Defenders and Hellstrom abruptly find themselves in a vacant lot on the Lower East Side. Strange thanks Hellstrom on behalf of the entire team before they go their separate ways. He then offers the Hulk refuge in his Sanctum Sanctorum, and the beleaguered brute is glad to accept.
June 1967 – Hulk spends a quiet month with Doctor Strange, the Valkyrie, Clea, and Wong at the Sanctum Sanctorum. Nighthawk drops by several times and annoys everyone talking about the big plans he has for the Defenders.
July 1967 – Hulk, Doctor Strange, and Valkyrie join Nighthawk at the Defenders’ new headquarters, a secluded former riding academy on Long Island that Nighthawk has purchased in his civilian identity as businessman Kyle Richmond. Knowing that her flying horse, Aragorn, will be well looked after there, Valkyrie announces that she’s taking a leave of absence to try to find out more about the life of Barbara Norriss, whose body she inhabits due to the Enchantress’s sorcery. To aid her, Strange casts a spell on the Valkyrie’s sword so it will be invisible when not in use. The spell also enables her to magically switch from civilian clothes to her Asgardian garb when the sword is drawn from its scabbard. Hulk becomes very upset by the Valkyrie’s departure, throws a temper tantrum, and leaps away to be by himself for a while. Back in Manhattan about half an hour later, Hulk is hit by a car driven by the Chameleon, but the spy quickly disguises himself as Rick Jones and convinces the jade giant to break his friend Joe Cord out of prison. Thus, Hulk smashes into the Manhattan House of Detention for Men, commonly known as “the Tombs,” and searches for Cord. Despite interference from Spider-Man, Hulk finds Cord, breaks open his cell, and carries him to a nearby street corner where “Rick” is waiting. Cord is confused at first, until Spider-Man arrives and unmasks the Chameleon. Hulk is furious at having been deceived, but then numerous prison guards, backed up by the police, surround them. Hulk watches in confusion as the Chameleon pushes Cord into his car and drives off, running over a policeman, only to be stopped by Spider-Man’s webbing. Nevertheless, the Chameleon and Cord try to escape on foot and are shot down by the police. Cord dies in the Chameleon’s arms, after which the wounded spy is taken into custody. Spider-Man tries to explain the situation to the Hulk but doesn’t get very far before a radio bulletin reports that Doctor Strange and Nighthawk are fighting the Wrecking Crew at a construction site at W. 29th St. and Broadway. Once Spider-Man points him in the right direction, Hulk sets off to help his friends.
When he arrives, Hulk sees Doctor Strange and Nighthawk alongside Power Man, battling the Wrecker, Thunderball, Bulldozer, and Pilediver on the site of a demolished building. However, the entire area is sealed within a mystic force field, which the Hulk pounds on until it collapses. Doctor Strange falls to the ground unconscious at the same instant, but the jade giant takes little notice. As the Hulk joins the fight, the villains quickly decide to retreat with their loot—an adamantium capsule roughly the size of a football that they’ve dug out of the rubble. However, Thunderball is shocked to discover that the capsule is empty, revealing that it should contain a compact gamma bomb that he created, based on Bruce Banner’s research, when working for Kyle Richmond’s corporation. The crooks take advantage of the heroes’ alarm about the missing bomb, beat them into unconsciousness, and escape. When they come to, Hulk follows Doctor Strange, Nighthawk, and Power Man to Harlem, led there by faint mystic emanations from the Wrecker’s enchanted crowbar. They eventually come across a frightened boy name Joey who reports that the Wrecking Crew has invaded the Harlem Boys Club. Ignoring Strange’s words of caution, Hulk immediately charges in and attacks the villains, followed by Nighthawk and Power Man. Fortunately, the fight moves out into the street before the building is destroyed. The Wrecking Crew is quickly defeated, and Strange then asks the kids in the clubhouse about the bomb. They realize it must be the metal sphere Joey was carrying in his baseball mitt. The Defenders quickly track Joey down, whereupon Strange uses his magic amulet to change the Hulk back into Bruce Banner so he can defuse the bomb. Despite being under enormous stress, Bruce is successful, thanks to a set of tools Strange teleports in from Hulkbuster Base. As everyone breathes a sigh of relief, Bruce changes back into the Hulk, who is none too happy that Strange made him go to sleep. The sorcerer assures him that it was for a good cause. Grumbling, Hulk wanders off, heading north, and soon loses himself in the woods of Connecticut.
In a Connecticut suburb, Hulk spots some children playing in their front yard. Wanting to join in, he approaches them, but their terrified father runs out of the house, yelling in panic. Angered, Hulk lashes out, creating a shockwave that wrecks the house. The little girl who lives there drives the green behemoth away with her screaming and crying. Choking back tears, Hulk leaps away and soon cries himself to sleep in a secluded alley in Greenwich Village. When he wakes up, he has changed back to Bruce Banner. Feeling utterly drained physically and emotionally, Bruce staggers to Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum, where he collapses on the threshold. Valkyrie carries him to a guest room upstairs and puts him to bed. Shortly after midnight, Bruce suddenly turns back into the Hulk, caught in the grip of a mystically induced madness, and rampages through the streets alongside many other similarly afflicted rioters. Valkyrie tries to stop the Hulk, but he smacks her down. Fortunately, the spell of madness is short lived, and Hulk is left feeling awful for hitting his friend. Doctor Strange is frustrated that they have no clue as to who was responsible. Nighthawk arrives and reports that he fought with a looter in Midtown who appeared to have the head of a man and the body of a gorilla, theorizing that the two bizarre events could be connected. Strange is baffled.
A couple days later, Nighthawk recruits the Hulk, Doctor Strange, the Valkyrie, the Sub-Mariner, and Daredevil to fight for the earth in another elaborate game set up by the Grandmaster, the enigmatic alien who originally gave him his super-powers. The seemingly omnipotent Grandmaster assures them that he has no interest in Earth, so if they win, the world will be left alone. However, if his mysterious opponent should win, the human race shall be enslaved and the planet stripped of its resources. The Grandmaster, whom Nighthawk describes as a “galactic gambling addict,” then splits them into teams of two and teleports them to distant planets to fight to the death against his own hand-picked mercenaries. Hulk and Doctor Strange find themselves in a dilapidated, vaguely medieval city populated by a humanoid race, where they face off against a little yellow alien calling himself Grott the Man-Slayer and a cyborg from the 31st century named Korvac. While Grott attacks the Hulk with his psychokinetic powers, Korvac uses his technology to instantly analyze and counter Strange’s sorcery. Finding his spells useless, Strange defeats Korvac with an unexpected punch in the face. Hulk weathers Grott’s assault, then knocks him out with a flick of his mighty fingers. Having won the match, the two Defenders are teleported back to the Grandmaster’s space station, where he declares himself the game’s winner. However, he then announces that he’s changed his mind, having realized that Earth would be the ideal breeding ground for gladiators to amuse him for generations to come. Enraged, the Defenders attack him, only to be easily repulsed. However, Daredevil challenges the Grandmaster to decide Earth’s fate on a coin toss. When Daredevil wins the toss, the Grandmaster concedes defeat and teleports them all back to Nighthawk’s penthouse apartment in Manhattan. Strange expresses his gratitude to Daredevil, though he has some reservations about risking the future of the human race on the toss of a coin. Enigmatically, Daredevil insists the outcome was never in doubt. He then exits through a window, and the Sub-Mariner, not happy to be among the Defenders again, departs as well. When Strange and the Valkyrie return to the Sanctum Sanctorum, Hulk strikes out on his own.
Hulk slips out of New York by climbing inside a military cargo truck transporting chemicals out west. He dozes fitfully for about 17 hours until the soldiers, hearing strange noises in the storage trailer, pull over to check on the cargo. Hulk gets mad that his slumber has been disturbed and lashes out at the startled soldiers. They open fire on him, but he forces them to scatter as he crushes the truck, puncturing its liquid storage tanks. The strange chemical brew douses the Hulk and soaks into his skin as he storms off into the countryside. Before long, he is attacked by a skull-headed demon on a motorcycle shooting flames out of its hands that cause the jade giant excruciating pain. When the apparition vanishes into thin air, Hulk sets out to track it down and get revenge. He soon finds the demon, called the Ghost Rider, participating in a motorcycle race across the desert and disrupts the event. Ghost Rider tries to keep the Hulk away from the other contestants by shooting fire out of his hands again, though the eldritch flames cause much less pain this time. Finally, Ghost Rider creates a wall of fire around the Hulk that quickly burns up all the oxygen inside it, causing him to pass out. When Hulk regains consciousness, he finds all the motorcyclists have ridden off somewhere. Frustrated, Hulk wanders off, bemoaning how he’s attacked everywhere he goes, and eventually reaches a wide river. There, his own shadow starts beating on him, but the Hulk soon realizes it’s really some kind of creature made of darkness. The shadow creature identifies itself as Warlord Kaa, the leader of a failed alien invasion who’s been marooned in orbit for the last six and a half years. Kaa explains that the chemicals the Hulk spilled on himself have enabled Kaa to siphon the Hulk’s power into his shadowy manifestation. Feeling violated, Hulk retaliates, but since they’re evenly matched, the battle drags on for the next 11 hours. Kaa eventually grows frustrated that the Hulk never seems to tire out. As the sun starts to set, they stumble into an oil field and wreck much of it with their incessant fighting. However, when the installation’s lights come on automatically, Kaa realizes too late that his shadow form is being dissolved by the diffuse lighting. He tries to send his mind back to his physical body inside his orbiting spaceship but is unable to muster the necessary concentration. His foe thus disintegrated, Hulk strides off into the gathering dusk and falls asleep on a bed of prairie grass.
At dawn, Bruce Banner wakes up and wanders across the prairie until coming upon Interstate 40, where he manages to hitch a ride in an 18-wheeler heading west. About six hours later, Bruce hops out of the truck at a rest area outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, and hitchhikes out to Hulkbuster Base, where he is reunited with General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, his daughter Betty Talbot, and her husband Major Glenn Talbot, who survived his brush with death last year. Another soldier, Air Force Colonel John D. Armbruster, immediately shoots Bruce with a tranquilizer gun, knocking him out. Bruce comes to the next morning and finds himself wearing oversized shackles and locked in a steel cell. Bruce learns from General Ross and Colonel Armbruster that the President of the United States is due to visit the base that very day, so they couldn’t take any chances with the Hulk being on the loose. Bruce ignores them, feeling betrayed. When the two men depart, Betty peers at Bruce through the heavy bars on the door. Tearfully, she expresses her regret about hurting him, abandoning him to marry Glenn Talbot, saying she couldn’t wait for him any longer and couldn’t share him with the Hulk. Bruce reacts bitterly, complaining that the Hulk ruined his career, destroyed his life, and has left him in chains, and still all anybody talks about is the Hulk, as though no one gives a damn about Bruce Banner anymore. Betty insists that she still cares for him, but Bruce rejects her pity, coldly calling her “Mrs. Talbot.” He then barks at her that he doesn’t have any friends. Upset and angry, Betty walks away. Bruce tries to call her back, overcome with anguish, but it’s too late.
Later, the ceiling of the cell retracts, revealing some gawkers up on a walkway. General Ross introduces Bruce to President William E. Miller as Betty and Glenn Talbot look on. Bruce mistakenly thinks Miller is still the vice president and is insolent toward him. Just as Talbot moves up close behind the President, Armbruster comes charging in and tackles Talbot. They fall over the railing, but before they hit the ground, a bomb in Talbot’s chest explodes, killing both men. As the charred corpses land in the cell, Bruce feels his transformation coming on. He yells at Ross to get Betty to safety. Ross hesitates, though, choosing to first order that the ceiling of the cell be closed. However, Hulk breaks out of his chains and leaps up through the closing metal shutters. He lands on the walkway just as Ross hustles the President into an elevator. Hulk is enraged to see that General Ross is still persecuting him, but he’s distracted when he notices Betty sobbing on the floor. Hulk tries to comfort Betty, but then soldiers enter with guns drawn. Hulk swats the soldiers away, then grabs Betty and smashes his way up the elevator shaft to the surface. There, he is confronted by Ross in a kind of ‘Hulkbuster’ armor, the HS-1000. Despite the suit’s fearsome armaments, Hulk topples it and starts tearing it apart, determined to get at Ross. Betty begs him to stop, distracting the Hulk long enough for Ross to knock him out with a “gamma blaster” ray.
August 1967 – Hulk comes to several days later to find himself in the shattered remains of a tank of extremely cold fluid. He rips the oxygen mask off his face, realizing he’s been held prisoner since his fight with General Ross. Breaking out of the complex, Hulk discovers that Hulkbuster Base is being completely wrecked by a man in glowing armor who calls himself the Devastator. Keeping out of the Hulk’s reach, the Devastator blasts him with searing energy bolts from his gauntlets. Hulk is able to withstand the barrage long enough to grab his overconfident foe’s gauntlets and crush them. When the Devastator then tries to continue using his damaged weapons, he is incinerated. Hulk stumbles away across the tarmac before collapsing into unconsciousness, whereupon he changes back into Bruce Banner. When he wakes up a few minutes later, Bruce is shocked to learn from General Ross and Betty that the autopsy conducted on Glenn Talbot revealed him to be an impostor. They have hope that the real Talbot is still alive, a prisoner of the Soviet Union.
The next day, Bruce and General Ross are taken to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s west-coast headquarters near Las Vegas, where they meet with Nick Fury and several high-ranking agents. Fury introduces them to Clay Quartermain, who he has assigned to act as liaison officer to the Air Force’s Hulkbuster unit. They then review satellite photos of a secret Soviet installation in Siberia known as Bitterfrost. The agency’s intelligence reports indicate that, if Glenn Talbot is still alive, he would most likely be found there. Given Colonel Armbruster’s botched incursion into the Soviet Union last year, Fury is determined to get the rescue operation right this time, despite the fragile geopolitical situation. When the top-secret mission is ready to depart 36 hours later, Bruce stows away aboard the S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft, feeling the least he can do to make up to Betty all the grief he’s caused her over the last five years is to help reunite her with her husband. The plane comes under attack after entering Soviet airspace, and the weapons pod Bruce is hiding in is ejected. As it plummets to the ground, Bruce turns into the Hulk, bursts out of the pod, and lands on his feet not far from the Bitterfrost installation. He heads over there, hoping to learn where he is, only to be fired upon by the guards in the citadel’s towers. Enraged, Hulk hurls a boulder at them, then smashes through the wall and enters the facility. He is immediately intercepted by eight soldiers in bulky suits of armor. As they fight, Hulk hears them chattering to each other in Russian, but he can’t understand them. He spots the Gremlin, the deformed scientist he met last year, yelling orders to his troops. They manage to outmaneuver the Hulk and stun him with their energy rifles.
When he regains his senses, Hulk finds himself being released from one of the Gremlin’s sinister devices. General Ross, Clay Quartermain, and a few S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are holding the Gremlin, his technicians, and, oddly enough, Glenn Talbot at gunpoint. They march their prisoners toward their extraction point, convincing the Hulk to follow by telling him they need to rescue Betty. However, the Gremlin summons a monstrous creature he’s created through genetic engineering, a sort of cross between a large dog and a triceratops that speaks in rhyming Russian. Recognizing it as the kind of threat only he can deal with, Hulk immediately attacks the creature, which the Gremlin calls Droog. The Gremlin then shoots Talbot with a ray gun, causing him to collapse, and gets away. Hulk insists that Ross and the others go save Betty while he smashes the monster, so they leave with Talbot’s body. For the next 20 minutes, Hulk and the talkative Droog engage in a savage, destructive battle that rages through the installation’s lowest levels. Finally, a tremendous explosion overhead buries the two combatants in pulverized rubble.
Hulk finally digs himself free and finds he is in the crater left behind by the explosion that vaporized the entire Bitterfrost installation. Droog is nowhere to be found, so Hulk wanders off across the frozen tundra, making his way south. After several days of trekking across Siberia, Hulk comes to a lake surrounded by pine trees, where a little girl is singing while she plays. Captivated by the sweet music, Hulk tries to keep hidden but accidentally steps on a branch, alerting her to his presence. To the Hulk’s surprise, the girl turns out to be blind. Despite the language barrier, they establish that his name is Hulk and her name is Katrina. Suddenly, Hulk is shot in the back by Katrina’s frightened father, though the bullets can’t penetrate his thick, green skin. An older man named Palkov prevents the situation from escalating and convinces the others to bring the Hulk back to their village. There, Palkov makes Hulk understand that he’s trying to cure Katrina’s blindness in his makeshift laboratory, but the village is under some kind of threat. Hulk is sympathetic, especially after Palkov gives him dinner. After watching Palkov putter around his lab for a few hours, Hulk falls asleep. He is awakened in the middle of the night by a horde of Subterraneans and drives them off, though they manage to steal Palkov’s research. Hulk chases them to a cave in the woods where he is taken prisoner by their master, the Mole Man, who wants Palkov’s blindness cure for himself. Hulk breaks free, seizes a syringe full of the medicine, and fights his way through thousands of Subterraneans to get back to the surface. To cut off his pursuers, Hulk causes a massive cave-in. He then returns to the village, where Palkov injects Katrina with the drug. After many hours, her vision begins to return. Seeing the Hulk for the first time, Katrina smiles and speaks softly to him, then gives him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Astonished that she’s not terrified of him, Hulk is overcome with emotion and retreats into the wilderness, tears streaming down his cheeks.
September 1967 – Hulk makes his way westward across Russia, getting into occasional skirmishes with both the Soviet military and the local wildlife. One day, he comes upon a golden man in a toga who introduces himself as Glorian and offers to take the Hulk across his rainbow bridge to the land of his dreams. Though suspicious, Hulk consents, and Glorian’s rainbow transports them to a small planetoid with an Earth-like environment but unspoiled by human civilization. After Glorian has departed, Hulk finds both Crackajack Jackson and Jarella waiting for him and is overjoyed to be reunited with his dear friends. However, their idyll is destroyed when Tribbitite slavers descend on them, take them prisoner, and transport them to the Tribbitite imperial throneworld. There, Emperor Torkon II gloats about having captured the Hulk, who foiled his plan to invade Earth five-and-a-half years ago. Torkon at first decides to force the Hulk to walk the treadmills that keep their society running until he dies of exhaustion but then changes his mind when his scientists discover that the Hulk’s paradise planet was created by the Shaper of Worlds. Wanting the Shaper of Worlds to alter reality in his empire’s favor, Torkon threatens to kill Jarella and Crackajack unless the Hulk hunts down the enigmatic alien for him. Grumbling, Hulk agrees to do so. With a nulltron bomb strapped to his back, Hulk is returned to the planetoid in an automated spacecraft. No sooner has Hulk located the Shaper of Worlds than the nulltron bomb explodes, knocking them both unconscious.
Hulk wakes up to find he’s been left behind on the now barren world. Luckily, Glorian turns up and asks him what’s going on. Learning that the Shaper of Worlds has been abducted, Glorian creates another rainbow to take them to Emperor Torkon’s palace. There, Glorian tries to convince Torkon to release the Shaper, only to be shot in the back by one of the palace guards. Believing Glorian dead, the Shaper is overcome with grief and loses control over the illusions he’d been maintaining, revealing both Jarella and Crackajack to be slug-like aliens. Realizing he’d been duped, Hulk goes berserk and starts tearing up the palace. Neither Torkon nor his guards can contain the Hulk’s rampage, but the Shaper intervenes and offers to return him to his little paradise with his friends restored to him. Hulk rejects the offer, saying paradise is no good if it’s just an illusion. Torkon interjects, begging the Shaper to bestow his gifts on the Tribbitite Empire instead. The Shaper flatly refuses and, seeing that the Hulk isn’t going to change his mind, teleports him back to Earth. Hulk rematerializes in Russia, some ways south of the Arctic Circle, and continues on his westward journey.
October 1967 – While swimming across a lake in Scotland, Hulk gets tangled in a fishing net, which leads to him meeting local fisherman Angus MacTavish and his wife Sarah. MacTavish recruits the Hulk to help him hunt down the legendary monster of Loch Fear, which has plagued the area for generations. However, after a delicious meal, Hulk falls asleep in the MacTavishes’ guest room and changes back into Bruce Banner. Harsh voices in the house soon wake Bruce, and he is confused to find the MacTavishes being held at gunpoint. The gunmen then march both men across the dark moors to the bleak castle inhabited by the local laird, Black Jamie Macawber, who is intent on preventing MacTavish from killing the lake monster, as the local economy has become dependent on the tourism associated with it. Imprisoned with MacTavish in the castle’s tower, Bruce eventually turns back into the Hulk and breaks free. MacTavish immediately embarks on his monster hunt, and the Hulk insists on joining him. With a homemade harpoon launcher affixed to his fishing boat, MacTavish pilots them out into the middle of Loch Fear. Before long, the monster surfaces, breaking the fishing boat in two and revealing itself to be some kind of gigantic mutant plesiosaur. Even so, MacTavish manages to fire his harpoon, which is wrapped in dynamite, into the creature’s shoulder. Macawber arrives in a speedboat, determined to subdue the plesiosaur with a powerful sedative so he can turn it into the world’s greatest tourist attraction. At MacTavish’s urging, Hulk grabs Macawber just as the dynamite explodes. Macawber’s chemical tanks rupture, and the sedative gas triggers the Hulk’s transformation. Bruce falls into the water as Macawber and the Loch Fear monster are somehow instantly petrified, which Bruce and MacTavish discover as they are washed up on the shore of the lake. In a celebratory mood, MacTavish invites Bruce to stay on in their community, but Bruce decides it would be better for everyone if he moved on. MacTavish gives Bruce some of his clothes and helps him book passage on a ship, the HMS Black Watch, bound for America.
During the ocean crossing, Bruce discovers the ship’s crew dumping drums of radioactive waste in contravention of international law. Caught red-handed, the sailors gang up on Bruce, intending to throw him overboard. However, they merely succeed in causing him to change into the Hulk and go on a rampage that sinks the ship. As the panicked sailors clamber into their lifeboats, Hulk swims away into the darkness and eventually arrives in the New York City harbor. Climbing onto a pier on Manhattan’s lower west side, Hulk startles some longshoremen, who summon the police. After a brief confrontation, Hulk loses himself in the back alleys of one of the city’s grimier neighborhoods. Several hours later, a S.H.I.E.L.D. drone aircraft flies overhead, with a voice blaring from a loudspeaker ordering the Hulk to surrender. Annoyed, Hulk throws a trash dumpster at the drone, destroying it. He is then tackled by Doc Samson, who has regained his super-strength. Samson says they need Bruce’s help at the Air Force’s Project Greenskin, but this merely enrages the Hulk, who considers Banner to be his greatest enemy. Reveling in his gamma-spawned power, Samson presses his attack, confident that he is a match for the Hulk. Their destructive battle leads them to the top of the New York Telephone Company Building, where the Hulk hands Samson a decisive defeat. Roaring in victory, Hulk leaps away, leaving the city far behind.
November 1967 – Hulk slowly makes his way across the middle of the United States, causing occasional chaos and destruction while evading the Hulkbusters’ attempts to capture him. Late in the month, he wanders into San Francisco, California, where he finds refuge in an abandoned tenement.
December 1967 – For about 18 hours, Hulk finds himself trapped within a magical force-field bubble in downtown San Francisco. Try as he might, he is unable to escape. Finally, the force field vanishes as mysteriously as it appeared. Unnerved by the experience, Hulk leaves the city and makes his way back towards the east coast.
Feeling himself summoned by Doctor Strange, Hulk heads to Roosevelt Hospital in Midtown Manhattan, where he meets up with the Valkyrie. She informs him that Nighthawk was injured in an explosion and has just come out of surgery. Hulk is determined to visit his sick friend, but the Valkyrie restrains him until Doctor Strange enters with the surgeon who saved Nighthawk’s life. Strange assures the Hulk that his friend will recover but insists he needs uninterrupted rest. Hulk relents and accompanies Strange and the Valkyrie back to the Sanctum Sanctorum for the rest of the night. In the morning, the trio returns to the hospital, but Hulk’s friends convince him to remain outside with Aragorn so as not to disturb the other patients. Shortly, Strange and Valkyrie return and lead the Hulk to the remote Crayton Observatory in search of the Squadron Sinister, whom Nighthawk believes may have caused the explosion. There, they discover that Hyperion, Doctor Spectrum, and the Whizzer did indeed survive the battle with Nebulon last year. Though the Defenders have the element of surprise, the Squadron Sinister quickly turns the tables by using a new weapon that forces the Hulk to change back into Bruce Banner. Bruce is disoriented for a moment before lapsing into unconsciousness.
Sometime later, Bruce is shocked awake by a jolt of searing agony and immediately turns into the Hulk again. Breaking out of some shackles, Hulk finds that the former Avenger known as Yellowjacket has come to free the Defenders from their imprisonment in the observatory’s basement. His cellular-disruptor gun has enabled the Hulk to shatter his own bonds, but he needs the green goliath’s strength to release Doctor Strange and the Valkyrie from theirs. Once the Hulk has done so, Yellowjacket informs them that the Squadron Sinister had nothing to do with the explosion that injured Nighthawk—it was actually set off by his old arch-enemy Egghead, who was targeting Nighthawk’s girlfriend. Nevertheless, the four heroes race back to Roosevelt Hospital to stop the Squadron Sinister from taking revenge on Nighthawk for betraying them. There, Strange and Valkyrie rescue Nighthawk from Doctor Spectrum while Yellowjacket defeats the Whizzer. Hulk knocks Hyperion out by creating a powerful shockwave that also shatters Doctor Spectrum’s power prism. Strange then casts a spell that causes the Squadron Sinister to lose all memory of their villainous identities, ensuring they will pose no further threat to Nighthawk.
Doctor Strange and Valkyrie convince the Hulk to spend some more time with them at the Sanctum Sanctorum. Clea and Wong are delighted to host their brutish friend again, though two of Strange’s acolytes, Lord Phyffe and Rama Kaliph, need to be reassured that they’re not in danger. Once the Hulk accepts them as friends, the two adepts become very curious about him. Nighthawk makes a rapid recovery due to his super-powers and resumes his crime-fighting crusade, though he’s depressed that his girlfriend has dumped him. For his part, Hulk enjoys the holiday season in New York, as his friends enable him to take a break from all his troubles.
Notes:
January 1967 – The Hulk’s adventures continue in Hulk #179 and following. Lucifer Falls is established as being in West Virginia in Rom, Spaceknight #29. In fact, the nearby city where Bruce buys his Geiger counter is most likely Clairton, which Rom will make his base of operations in just a couple of years.
February 1967 – For their fourth battle royal, the Hulk and the Thing switch it up in Giant-Size Super-Stars #1.
March 1967 – The man in the hovel is Marie Cartier’s brother Paul. He’s been saved from the curse of the Wendigo by Georges Baptiste, who’s taken it upon himself out of love for Marie. It was her disembodied voice that led the Hulk to her hovel, where she planned to use a magic spell to transfer the curse from Paul to the Hulk. However, Georges found he couldn’t allow such a horror to be inflicted on an innocent pawn. Convicts Leroy “Hammer” Jackson and Johnny Anvil, who received their glowing cable from an alien visitor, will recover and become minor super-villains known as Hammer & Anvil until being murdered by the Scourge of the Underworld.
May 1967 – Hulk is reunited with his Defenders teammates to take on the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants at the behest of Professor X in Defenders #15–16. Xavier seeks outside help because the X-Men are off on their mission to Krakoa, as seen in Giant-Size X-Men #1. Magneto’s odyssey through the bowels of the earth is a delusion; following his defeat at the hands of the Avengers (in Avengers #111), he was held in a telepathically induced coma in the basement of the X-Men’s headquarters. However, his deranged mind rejects this humiliating reality in favor of a nonsensical sci-fi fantasy. See my Magneto chronology for further discussion. The Defenders then team up with Daimon Hellstrom, the so-called “Son of Satan,” in Giant-Size Defenders #2.
July 1967 – Hulk appears at the beginning of Defenders #17 before moving into Marvel Team-Up #27. The Defenders’ battle with the Wrecking Crew then spans Defenders #18–19. Hulk catches up with his teammates again in Defenders #21. The temporary spell of madness and the apelike looter are indeed connected, as both are part of a scheme by the freakish small-time crooks known as the Headmen—Arthur Nagan, Jerry Morgan, and Chondu the Mystic. Daredevil helps the Defenders defeat the Grandmaster and his mystery opponent (Doctor Doom’s Prime Mover robot) in Giant-Size Defenders #3. Hulk is then drawn into conflict with Ghost Rider in Ghost Rider #11. A demon called Inferno ambushes the Hulk with an illusory Ghost Rider to get him mad and then leads him to the real one, hoping Johnny Blaze will be killed in the ensuing fight. Warlord Kaa first appeared during Marvel’s “Atlas” era in Strange Tales #79, which (based on the cover date) falls on my OMU timeline in December 1960.
October 1967 – Hulk’s battle with Doc Samson brings us up to Hulk #193. In the story, the fight concludes atop the World Trade Center, but in 1967 it hadn’t been built yet, so I swapped it for the New York Telephone Company Building, an older skyscraper on an adjacent lot.
December 1967 – Hulk is among the various superheroes seen trapped within Loki’s magical spheres in Thor #233. While Earth’s champions are thus imprisoned, Loki leads an invasion force of Asgardian warriors against Washington, D.C., only to be repelled by Thor and the U.S. Army. The Defenders team up with Yellowjacket against the Squadron Sinister in Giant-Size Defenders #4.
Jump Back: The Hulk – Year Five
Next Issue: Power Man – Year Three
Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale.) Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.
Continuing on with… The True History of the Incredible Hulk!
January 1967 – The Hulk’s voyage home from Counter-Earth comes to a violent conclusion as he smashes out of his space rocket soon after it enters the original Earth’s atmosphere over North America. Having detected the unauthorized craft, the United States Air Force blows it out of the sky seconds later with a pair of interceptor missiles. The shockwave from the explosion alters the Hulk’s downward trajectory, causing him to crash-land in the hills outside the small mining town of Lucifer Falls, West Virginia. Knocked unconscious, Hulk changes back into Bruce Banner and is soon taken in by a local family, Clay and Belinda Brickford and their children Clay-Boy, Allison, and Jimmy-Jack. During a simple yet hearty supper, Bruce is astonished when the Hulk’s old foe, the Missing Link, enters the house dressed as a coal miner. Though Bruce doesn’t remember their previous encounter, something about the deformed brute makes him very uneasy. He tries to suppress his misgivings when he sees that the Brickfords are happy to see the Missing Link, whom they call “Lincoln.”
The next morning, Bruce accompanies Clay and Lincoln to the coal mines to earn his keep and is surprised to find that Lincoln actually enjoys the work. The other miners do not share his enthusiasm, though, and are anxious about losing their jobs when the mine is inevitably tapped out. Bruce works alongside them for the next two weeks, and although it is a far cry from the research laboratories he’s used to, life in an Appalachian coal mine proves not to be quite the hellish existence he’d always imagined it would be. He is cheered by Lincoln’s good-natured outlook and comes to see the weird-looking fellow as a kindly soul. They spend their weekends hiking in the hills and fishing, genuinely enjoying each other’s company.
After church on Sunday, Bruce grows concerned when Jimmy-Jack suddenly becomes deathly ill while playing with Lincoln. Recognizing the boy’s symptoms as consistent with radiation poisoning, Bruce borrows Clay’s truck and drives to the nearest city to purchase a Geiger counter. That night, he checks the areas where the children tend to play but finds nothing out of the ordinary. Next, he surreptitiously scans all the members of the Brickford family while they’re sleeping, again with no results. Filled with dread, he checks Lincoln and discovers that his new friend is dangerously radioactive. Returning to his own bedroom, Bruce becomes depressed about having to destroy Lincoln’s idyllic life.
In the morning, Bruce takes Lincoln aside before they go down into the mine and informs him that he’s the source of Jimmy-Jack’s radiation sickness. If he doesn’t leave Lucifer Falls and seek treatment, Bruce warns, Lincoln could end up poisoning the entire town. Not really comprehending what he’s being told, Lincoln shoves Bruce away, his superhuman strength sending Bruce crashing through the boarded-up entrance to a mine shaft. Plunging into the blackness, Bruce turns into the Hulk and smashes his way back to the surface. Only vaguely remembering each other, Hulk and the Missing Link get into a fight that wrecks the entire mining operation. They inadvertently trigger an explosion that causes a huge cave-in, sending the combatants deep underground. There, Lincoln finally realizes that Bruce was right—the radiation in his body is rapidly approaching critical mass. Before Hulk realizes what’s happening, the Missing Link explodes with the force of a small nuclear bomb. However, as Hulk slowly digs his way out of the rubble, the Missing Link’s body reforms again, his deadly radiation completely spent, and he joins his co-workers in fleeing the devastation. Confused, Hulk wanders off into the Appalachian countryside.
February 1967 – Hulk makes his way back to New York City, despite his antipathy for the place, and falls asleep in an alley. He wakes up as Bruce Banner and, worried about freezing to death, decides to seek refuge with the Fantastic Four, whose Baxter Building headquarters is only a few blocks away. When he arrives, the building’s doorman at first assumes he’s a vagrant but then remembers that he’s visited the world-famous heroes before. Thus, he calls up to the team’s headquarters and receives permission to put Bruce on their private express elevator. In the tower, Bruce is greeted by the Thing, who offers him some coffee. Bruce explains that he’s come hoping Mister Fantastic has made some progress on finding a way to cure him of being the Hulk. The Thing is clearly somewhat bitter about his teammate’s repeated failures to cure him of his own monstrous form but mentions that Mister Fantastic developed something called a “psi-amplifier” last week. Bruce is excited, having been thinking along the same lines, and asks to see it. Though Mister Fantastic is out of town with the Human Torch and Medusa, the Thing nevertheless escorts him to the lab. A cursory examination convinces Bruce that he may be able to modify the psi-amplifier to cure both of them by harnessing the different forms of radiation in their bodies (cosmic rays versus gamma rays) to cancel each other out. Thus, the Thing allows him to work on it all night without interruption. Eight hours later, Bruce is ready to test his modifications and calls the Thing to the lab. Once they’re both wired up to the machine, Bruce activates it, but the initial jolt of energy causes the Thing to cry out in pain. Panicking, the exhausted, stressed-out Bruce suddenly changes into the Hulk.
Assuming he’s been captured again, Hulk goes berserk and destroys the psi-amplifier machine, but something goes terribly wrong, and when the smoke clears, he finds that his mind has somehow been transferred into the Thing’s body—and vice-versa. Hulk doesn’t really understand what’s happening, though, and while he is aware that he seems to be covered in orange crusty stuff, he’s too enraged to think much about it. He’s also distracted by the ugly, green brute who keeps talking about Banner while trying to restrain him. After wrecking the lab, Hulk throws his unknown enemy off the building. Then, seeing a tall, muscular figure apparently helping his foe, Hulk races down into the alley and punches the stranger in the face. It is only then Hulk realizes that the interloper is not a man, as he had first assumed, but a woman—Thundra. Blaming the green monster for making him hit a woman, Hulk renews his attack. The brawl between the two behemoths continues for several minutes, until they crash through the sidewalk and land in the path of an oncoming subway train. Hulk is unconcerned, still focused on his stunned enemy. At the last moment, Thundra leaps down through the hole and stops the train, causing a huge wreck that injures most of the passengers and crew. Wanting to be left alone, Hulk slams his fists into the ground, creating a shockwave that knocks Thundra off her feet and causes further damage to the train. The green brute tries again to subdue the Hulk, but their running battle takes them to Madison Square Garden in Hell’s Kitchen, where they interrupt a boxing match. The audience panics and bolts for the exits, creating a human stampede. Just then, Mister Fantastic, the Human Torch, and Medusa arrive on the scene, having returned to the city and tracked the combatants to the arena. Hulk is momentarily distracted by the Human Torch, enabling the green brute to get in a solid punch that knocks him down. His foe then pours on the blows, using all the fighting skill he can muster. After another minute or two of furious battle, Hulk is surprised when Mister Fantastic injects his foe with a powerful tranquilizer. However, as his enemy loses consciousness, Hulk also feels disoriented for a few seconds before passing out. Reverting to Bruce Banner, he soon comes around and confirms Mister Fantastic’s assumptions about what happened—somehow his transformation forced both minds back into their proper bodies. Bruce elects to leave the city before he causes any more destruction. Evidently feeling bad that he’s been too depressed lately to make any headway in finding a cure for the Hulk, Mister Fantastic gives Bruce some warm clothes to wear.
March 1967 – Hulk seeks refuge from his persecutors in northern Quebec, Canada, where he soon becomes infuriated by a disembodied voice that won’t stop bothering him. While trying to locate the source of the annoyance so he can smash it, Hulk comes upon a primitive dwelling made of stone slabs where he finds Marie Cartier and Georges Baptiste, whom he vaguely recognizes as friends of his. Cartier, dressed in the animal skins of a sorceress, is very welcoming and provides Hulk with a delicious meal, which he devours hungrily. However, a large bowl of broth makes the Hulk unexpectedly sleepy, so Cartier leads him to a pair of stone beds and has him lie down. Hulk falls asleep almost immediately. When he wakes up sometime later, Hulk feels groggy and decides to see if there’s any more food. In the outer chamber, he is surprised to find the Wendigo looming over Cartier and Baptiste. Assuming his friends are in danger, Hulk attacks the shaggy creature. Their battle demolishes part of the hovel but then drags on under the light of the moon with neither one able to gain the upper hand. Suddenly, they are interrupted by a snarling little man in a yellow-and-blue costume calling himself the Wolverine. Armed with long metal claws protruding from the backs of his hands, Wolverine forces the Hulk and the Wendigo apart, saying he’s been sent by Canada’s government to deal with the green-skinned invader. However, since the Wendigo is the more immediate threat, Wolverine teams up with the Hulk to take the monster down. After receiving a pummeling from the Hulk, the Wendigo gets slashed to ribbons by Wolverine’s claws and passes out from loss of blood. Hulk is annoyed when Wolverine suddenly turns on him, and the ensuing duel continues until dawn. Finally, they both stagger woozily for a moment, then drop to the ground unconscious.
When Hulk comes to, he finds Cartier trying to drag him across the ground and realizes she must have gassed him and his diminutive foe. Feeling betrayed, he pulls away from her and grows angry when she denies plotting against him. Seeing Wolverine chained up behind Cartier, Hulk pushes past her, yanks him up into the air, and slams him down onto the rocky ground. Surprisingly, Wolverine does not appear to be injured. Instead, he breaks out of his chains and attacks the Hulk yet again, as the distraught Cartier runs back to her hovel. Her blood-curdling scream a moment later distracts Wolverine, allowing the Hulk to finally knock him out with a punch in the head. Turning back toward the hovel, Hulk sees the Wendigo racing off into the forest but decides not to pursue him. Inside, he finds Cartier in shock as a naked man stirs on one of the stone beds. Concerned, Hulk puts his hand on Cartier’s shoulder as she breaks down in grief and despair. Hearing a disturbance outside, Hulk emerges from the hovel to see a large troop-transport helicopter descending on the scene. A voice blares from a loudspeaker, excoriating Wolverine for failing in his mission to capture the Hulk. The little costumed man objects strenuously as he boards the helicopter. A squad of Royal Canadian Air Force commandos then keep the Hulk busy until a gas attack can render him unconscious. He soon wakes up to find himself in a titanium cage suspended beneath the helicopter as it speeds over the forest. Furious, Hulk breaks free, disappears into the woods, and makes his way south into Vermont.
After nightfall, the sound of a harmonica leads Hulk to a small campfire where he finds an old man in tattered clothing who introduces himself in a thick Louisiana accent as “Crackajack” Jackson. Invited to keep the man company, Hulk sits down and gobbles up a plate of baked beans warmed over the fire. Crackajack then plays his harmonica again for a little while before falling asleep. Hulk sits awake all night, watching over his new friend. In the morning, Crackajack leads the Hulk to a nearby lake where they spend a few hours fishing. Crackajack talks incessantly about his life as a musician in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, among other random topics. His constant stream of chatter annoys the Hulk, who believes it’s scaring away the fish. After eating the fish they’ve caught, Hulk and Crackajack continue down a path through the woods. The old man reveals that he’s on his way to visit his son, Leroy, and invites the Hulk to accompany him. With nothing better to do, Hulk agrees, and during their day-long trek, he decides that Crackajack is pleasant company. As night falls again, the unlikely pair makes camp, and Crackajack cooks up more baked beans, teaching Hulk how to eat them with a fork. Discovering that the Hulk is illiterate, Crackajack teaches him the alphabet and how to write his name in the dirt with a stick. Hulk enjoys these lessons and the gentle encouragement of his raggedy teacher. Crackajack stresses the importance of a man’s name, one of his favorite old chestnuts, and declares himself to be the Hulk’s friend. In his own sullen way, Hulk concurs.
Early the next morning, Crackajack leads the Hulk to the state prison where his son is incarcerated after forcing their way past some state troopers cordoning off the area. Crackajack says he was too embarrassed to admit that his son was in jail, but Hulk isn’t bothered by it. He carries Crackajack over the wall into the prison yard, where they find Leroy Jackson and another inmate, their wrists connected by a glowing cable, fighting with the guards. Shocked to see his father after so many years, Leroy yells at Crackajack bitterly, unloading all the pent-up rage from his neglected childhood. Crackajack tries to placate his son but inadvertently touches the strange cable and is instantly electrocuted. As Crackajack falls to the ground dead, Hulk attacks the two convicts, intent on avenging his friend. However, they prove to be super-strong and highly resistant to injury, and their cable makes a formidable weapon. They manage to wrap the cable around the Hulk’s neck and nearly choke him to death before he breaks free. Hulk snaps the cable in half, which causes the two convicts to collapse to the ground, screaming and raving like madmen. Disturbed, Hulk takes Crackajack back into the woods and buries him in a shallow grave. Remembering how important his friend’s name was to him, Hulk does his best to inscribe it on a slab of granite broken off a nearby cliff. After setting up the makeshift tombstone, the sorrowful Hulk wanders off into the forest.
Hulk makes his way to Chicago, Illinois, falls asleep in an alley, and changes back into Bruce Banner. After scavenging some clothes from a garbage can, Bruce secures a job as a janitor at Soul-Star Research, Ltd. While sweeping the floors, he is surprised to find the firm’s three owners—Alexandria Knox, Stan Landers, and Mark Revel—working late. They give him permission to sweep up as long as he stays quiet and keeps out of their way. Nevertheless, Bruce overhears them discussing a problem with their device and figures out the answer. When he offers his solution, Revel is annoyed but Knox realizes he’s correct. The three scientists question their janitor and are startled to discover that he is the noted physicist Bruce Banner. Having studied his work, they invite Bruce to watch the first test of their device, which is designed to collect trace brainwave patterns from the atmosphere so they can be decoded and analyzed. Unfortunately, the device reconstitutes the sizzling energy form of Zzzax before exploding. Knox is knocked out, and Landers runs over to help her, only to be grabbed by Zzzax and incinerated. The stress triggers Bruce’s transformation into the Hulk, and the green behemoth immediately attacks the glowing monster. However, Zzzax stuns the Hulk with a powerful discharge of electricity and, having absorbed Landers’s consciousness, carries Knox out into the rainy streets. Revel pleads with the Hulk to save Knox, so he reluctantly pursues Zzzax to the roof of the Richard J. Daley Center. Once there, though, Hulk finds that his blows have little effect on Zzzax, while Zzzax’s lightning bolts cause him intense pain. While they are fighting, a helicopter piloted by Revel emerges from the thunderstorm. Revel fires a spear gun at Zzzax, the spear connected to the helicopter by a copper cable. Thus, when the helicopter ascends into the storm and is struck by lightning, the current is conducted down into Zzzax’s form, destroying him. The helicopter plummets to the street, but Hulk saves Revel in the nick of time. Satisfied that the battle is over, Hulk stalks off into the rain-slicked city to lick his wounds.
April 1967 – Hulk spends the month wandering around the American Midwest, keeping a low profile.
May 1967 – Hulk is ambling through some woods when he is contacted telepathically by Doctor Strange, who requests his help at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. Strange’s astral form then leads the Hulk to a spot outside the caverns where the Valkyrie and Nighthawk are waiting with a man in a wheelchair named Charles Xavier. Back in his physical form, Strange leads the group into the caves, illuminating the way with light from his magic amulet. Within moments, they are ambushed by a seemingly invincible cyclops, but Xavier reveals the monster to be merely an illusion. However, they are all knocked unconscious by a blast of energy, and when they wake up, they find themselves trapped within a field of magnetic force. Flanked by his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants—the Blob, Mastermind, Unus the Untouchable, and Lorelei—the notorious super-villain Magneto rants and raves about a humanoid figure forming in a tank of chemicals behind him. He tells the Defenders a preposterous story of being trapped at the center of the earth by the Avengers until, several months later, a passing comet shifted the planet’s magnetic fields enough that he could make his way to Subterranea, where he translated books left behind by ancient aliens and thus learned the secret of genetically engineering a being powerful enough to enable him to conquer the world. When the villains return to their diabolical scheme, Xavier reveals himself to be a powerful telepath and harnesses the Defenders’ combined psychic energy to disrupt the field imprisoning them. They quickly defeat Magneto’s minions but are unable to prevent him from bringing his new creation to life. Gleefully, Magneto dubs the giant, brutish creature “Alpha, the Ultimate Mutant.”
Doctor Strange attempts to incapacitate Alpha with blasts of mystical energy, but Alpha erects a force field to protect himself, a field potent enough to repel the Hulk as well. Magneto then causes part of the cavern to collapse, trapping everyone underground, only to have Alpha teleport the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants away. Hulk and Valkyrie dig an escape tunnel, and the Defenders slowly make their way to the surface. Once there, Xavier does a telepathic scan to locate their foes, and after a few minutes of intense concentration, he finds them in New York City. Strange conjures up a portal through which the five heroes return to Manhattan. They are astonished to see the United Nations Building floating about half a mile above the city, presumably more of Alpha’s handiwork. Flying up to the building, the Defenders and Xavier fight their way past concrete automatons and confront Magneto and his minions in the general assembly chamber, where they are holding the assembled delegates prisoner. The heroes are surprised to see that Alpha has changed, having developed heightened intelligence and a less brutish appearance. He seems to visibly evolve every time he uses his powers and quickly surpasses mainstream humanity to take on a superior form. Noting Alpha’s reluctance to harm the Defenders, Xavier convinces him to judge for himself which of the two groups acts out of evil intent. Alpha does so, reading everyone’s innermost thoughts and motivations, and then condemns Magneto’s group as being little more than selfish children. The heroes are shocked when Alpha unleashes a beam of psychic energy that reduces Magneto, the Blob, Mastermind, Unus, and Lorelei to the equivalent of nine-month-old babies. Alpha then undoes the damage he caused to the United Nations Building and erases all memory of the traumatic event from the minds of the people affected by it. Continuing to evolve, Alpha bids farewell to the Defenders and Xavier before ascending into the sky, having decided to leave Earth to seek his destiny among the stars. Xavier takes charge of the babies, assuring the Defenders that they will be well cared for at the Mutant Research Centre in Scotland.
Thoroughly confused by what just happened, Hulk stomps off through Midtown Manhattan in search of solitude, only to be harassed by the NYPD and the National Guard. After a destructive fight, Hulk loses the government forces in the labyrinthine alleyways of the city. There, he is met by a cute little girl calling herself Laurie, who leads him to a tenement building on the Lower East Side with a cement stairway that goes down to a weird door with a sinister gargoyle looming over it. Beyond the door are more stairs that take them into the bowels of the earth. Hulk is concerned that the little girl considers this dank and dismal place home. Moving through a series of caverns, the little girl suddenly reveals herself to be a demon named Laurox the Lecherous and conjures up about half a dozen gigantic Bruce Banners to attack the Hulk. Bewildered, Hulk tries to defend himself but is no match for his laughing foes. As the savage beating drags on, Hulk’s rage becomes so overwhelming that his rational mind starts to buckle under the strain. After several hours, a strange man with a golden trident, Daimon Hellstrom, suddenly appears and blasts the giant Banners with mystical flames. He is followed by Doctor Strange, Valkyrie, and Nighthawk. Seeing his friends, Hulk rallies and smashes the Banners, causing them to crumble into lifeless stone. Without warning, the floor dissolves, sending everyone tumbling into an enormous throne room. Strange recognizes the figure on the throne as Asmodeus, a devil-worshiper who died a few years ago. Asmodeus reveals that he struck a bargain with the arch-demon Satannish to be returned to life in exchange for their five souls. Luckily, Hellstrom proves immune to Asmodeus’s eldritch power, protected by his golden trident, and saves the lives of the Defenders. Asmodeus panics as his time runs out, whereupon Satannish destroys him. The Defenders and Hellstrom abruptly find themselves in a vacant lot on the Lower East Side. Strange thanks Hellstrom on behalf of the entire team before they go their separate ways. He then offers the Hulk refuge in his Sanctum Sanctorum, and the beleaguered brute is glad to accept.
June 1967 – Hulk spends a quiet month with Doctor Strange, the Valkyrie, Clea, and Wong at the Sanctum Sanctorum. Nighthawk drops by several times and annoys everyone talking about the big plans he has for the Defenders.
July 1967 – Hulk, Doctor Strange, and Valkyrie join Nighthawk at the Defenders’ new headquarters, a secluded former riding academy on Long Island that Nighthawk has purchased in his civilian identity as businessman Kyle Richmond. Knowing that her flying horse, Aragorn, will be well looked after there, Valkyrie announces that she’s taking a leave of absence to try to find out more about the life of Barbara Norriss, whose body she inhabits due to the Enchantress’s sorcery. To aid her, Strange casts a spell on the Valkyrie’s sword so it will be invisible when not in use. The spell also enables her to magically switch from civilian clothes to her Asgardian garb when the sword is drawn from its scabbard. Hulk becomes very upset by the Valkyrie’s departure, throws a temper tantrum, and leaps away to be by himself for a while. Back in Manhattan about half an hour later, Hulk is hit by a car driven by the Chameleon, but the spy quickly disguises himself as Rick Jones and convinces the jade giant to break his friend Joe Cord out of prison. Thus, Hulk smashes into the Manhattan House of Detention for Men, commonly known as “the Tombs,” and searches for Cord. Despite interference from Spider-Man, Hulk finds Cord, breaks open his cell, and carries him to a nearby street corner where “Rick” is waiting. Cord is confused at first, until Spider-Man arrives and unmasks the Chameleon. Hulk is furious at having been deceived, but then numerous prison guards, backed up by the police, surround them. Hulk watches in confusion as the Chameleon pushes Cord into his car and drives off, running over a policeman, only to be stopped by Spider-Man’s webbing. Nevertheless, the Chameleon and Cord try to escape on foot and are shot down by the police. Cord dies in the Chameleon’s arms, after which the wounded spy is taken into custody. Spider-Man tries to explain the situation to the Hulk but doesn’t get very far before a radio bulletin reports that Doctor Strange and Nighthawk are fighting the Wrecking Crew at a construction site at W. 29th St. and Broadway. Once Spider-Man points him in the right direction, Hulk sets off to help his friends.
When he arrives, Hulk sees Doctor Strange and Nighthawk alongside Power Man, battling the Wrecker, Thunderball, Bulldozer, and Pilediver on the site of a demolished building. However, the entire area is sealed within a mystic force field, which the Hulk pounds on until it collapses. Doctor Strange falls to the ground unconscious at the same instant, but the jade giant takes little notice. As the Hulk joins the fight, the villains quickly decide to retreat with their loot—an adamantium capsule roughly the size of a football that they’ve dug out of the rubble. However, Thunderball is shocked to discover that the capsule is empty, revealing that it should contain a compact gamma bomb that he created, based on Bruce Banner’s research, when working for Kyle Richmond’s corporation. The crooks take advantage of the heroes’ alarm about the missing bomb, beat them into unconsciousness, and escape. When they come to, Hulk follows Doctor Strange, Nighthawk, and Power Man to Harlem, led there by faint mystic emanations from the Wrecker’s enchanted crowbar. They eventually come across a frightened boy name Joey who reports that the Wrecking Crew has invaded the Harlem Boys Club. Ignoring Strange’s words of caution, Hulk immediately charges in and attacks the villains, followed by Nighthawk and Power Man. Fortunately, the fight moves out into the street before the building is destroyed. The Wrecking Crew is quickly defeated, and Strange then asks the kids in the clubhouse about the bomb. They realize it must be the metal sphere Joey was carrying in his baseball mitt. The Defenders quickly track Joey down, whereupon Strange uses his magic amulet to change the Hulk back into Bruce Banner so he can defuse the bomb. Despite being under enormous stress, Bruce is successful, thanks to a set of tools Strange teleports in from Hulkbuster Base. As everyone breathes a sigh of relief, Bruce changes back into the Hulk, who is none too happy that Strange made him go to sleep. The sorcerer assures him that it was for a good cause. Grumbling, Hulk wanders off, heading north, and soon loses himself in the woods of Connecticut.
In a Connecticut suburb, Hulk spots some children playing in their front yard. Wanting to join in, he approaches them, but their terrified father runs out of the house, yelling in panic. Angered, Hulk lashes out, creating a shockwave that wrecks the house. The little girl who lives there drives the green behemoth away with her screaming and crying. Choking back tears, Hulk leaps away and soon cries himself to sleep in a secluded alley in Greenwich Village. When he wakes up, he has changed back to Bruce Banner. Feeling utterly drained physically and emotionally, Bruce staggers to Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum, where he collapses on the threshold. Valkyrie carries him to a guest room upstairs and puts him to bed. Shortly after midnight, Bruce suddenly turns back into the Hulk, caught in the grip of a mystically induced madness, and rampages through the streets alongside many other similarly afflicted rioters. Valkyrie tries to stop the Hulk, but he smacks her down. Fortunately, the spell of madness is short lived, and Hulk is left feeling awful for hitting his friend. Doctor Strange is frustrated that they have no clue as to who was responsible. Nighthawk arrives and reports that he fought with a looter in Midtown who appeared to have the head of a man and the body of a gorilla, theorizing that the two bizarre events could be connected. Strange is baffled.
A couple days later, Nighthawk recruits the Hulk, Doctor Strange, the Valkyrie, the Sub-Mariner, and Daredevil to fight for the earth in another elaborate game set up by the Grandmaster, the enigmatic alien who originally gave him his super-powers. The seemingly omnipotent Grandmaster assures them that he has no interest in Earth, so if they win, the world will be left alone. However, if his mysterious opponent should win, the human race shall be enslaved and the planet stripped of its resources. The Grandmaster, whom Nighthawk describes as a “galactic gambling addict,” then splits them into teams of two and teleports them to distant planets to fight to the death against his own hand-picked mercenaries. Hulk and Doctor Strange find themselves in a dilapidated, vaguely medieval city populated by a humanoid race, where they face off against a little yellow alien calling himself Grott the Man-Slayer and a cyborg from the 31st century named Korvac. While Grott attacks the Hulk with his psychokinetic powers, Korvac uses his technology to instantly analyze and counter Strange’s sorcery. Finding his spells useless, Strange defeats Korvac with an unexpected punch in the face. Hulk weathers Grott’s assault, then knocks him out with a flick of his mighty fingers. Having won the match, the two Defenders are teleported back to the Grandmaster’s space station, where he declares himself the game’s winner. However, he then announces that he’s changed his mind, having realized that Earth would be the ideal breeding ground for gladiators to amuse him for generations to come. Enraged, the Defenders attack him, only to be easily repulsed. However, Daredevil challenges the Grandmaster to decide Earth’s fate on a coin toss. When Daredevil wins the toss, the Grandmaster concedes defeat and teleports them all back to Nighthawk’s penthouse apartment in Manhattan. Strange expresses his gratitude to Daredevil, though he has some reservations about risking the future of the human race on the toss of a coin. Enigmatically, Daredevil insists the outcome was never in doubt. He then exits through a window, and the Sub-Mariner, not happy to be among the Defenders again, departs as well. When Strange and the Valkyrie return to the Sanctum Sanctorum, Hulk strikes out on his own.
Hulk slips out of New York by climbing inside a military cargo truck transporting chemicals out west. He dozes fitfully for about 17 hours until the soldiers, hearing strange noises in the storage trailer, pull over to check on the cargo. Hulk gets mad that his slumber has been disturbed and lashes out at the startled soldiers. They open fire on him, but he forces them to scatter as he crushes the truck, puncturing its liquid storage tanks. The strange chemical brew douses the Hulk and soaks into his skin as he storms off into the countryside. Before long, he is attacked by a skull-headed demon on a motorcycle shooting flames out of its hands that cause the jade giant excruciating pain. When the apparition vanishes into thin air, Hulk sets out to track it down and get revenge. He soon finds the demon, called the Ghost Rider, participating in a motorcycle race across the desert and disrupts the event. Ghost Rider tries to keep the Hulk away from the other contestants by shooting fire out of his hands again, though the eldritch flames cause much less pain this time. Finally, Ghost Rider creates a wall of fire around the Hulk that quickly burns up all the oxygen inside it, causing him to pass out. When Hulk regains consciousness, he finds all the motorcyclists have ridden off somewhere. Frustrated, Hulk wanders off, bemoaning how he’s attacked everywhere he goes, and eventually reaches a wide river. There, his own shadow starts beating on him, but the Hulk soon realizes it’s really some kind of creature made of darkness. The shadow creature identifies itself as Warlord Kaa, the leader of a failed alien invasion who’s been marooned in orbit for the last six and a half years. Kaa explains that the chemicals the Hulk spilled on himself have enabled Kaa to siphon the Hulk’s power into his shadowy manifestation. Feeling violated, Hulk retaliates, but since they’re evenly matched, the battle drags on for the next 11 hours. Kaa eventually grows frustrated that the Hulk never seems to tire out. As the sun starts to set, they stumble into an oil field and wreck much of it with their incessant fighting. However, when the installation’s lights come on automatically, Kaa realizes too late that his shadow form is being dissolved by the diffuse lighting. He tries to send his mind back to his physical body inside his orbiting spaceship but is unable to muster the necessary concentration. His foe thus disintegrated, Hulk strides off into the gathering dusk and falls asleep on a bed of prairie grass.
At dawn, Bruce Banner wakes up and wanders across the prairie until coming upon Interstate 40, where he manages to hitch a ride in an 18-wheeler heading west. About six hours later, Bruce hops out of the truck at a rest area outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, and hitchhikes out to Hulkbuster Base, where he is reunited with General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, his daughter Betty Talbot, and her husband Major Glenn Talbot, who survived his brush with death last year. Another soldier, Air Force Colonel John D. Armbruster, immediately shoots Bruce with a tranquilizer gun, knocking him out. Bruce comes to the next morning and finds himself wearing oversized shackles and locked in a steel cell. Bruce learns from General Ross and Colonel Armbruster that the President of the United States is due to visit the base that very day, so they couldn’t take any chances with the Hulk being on the loose. Bruce ignores them, feeling betrayed. When the two men depart, Betty peers at Bruce through the heavy bars on the door. Tearfully, she expresses her regret about hurting him, abandoning him to marry Glenn Talbot, saying she couldn’t wait for him any longer and couldn’t share him with the Hulk. Bruce reacts bitterly, complaining that the Hulk ruined his career, destroyed his life, and has left him in chains, and still all anybody talks about is the Hulk, as though no one gives a damn about Bruce Banner anymore. Betty insists that she still cares for him, but Bruce rejects her pity, coldly calling her “Mrs. Talbot.” He then barks at her that he doesn’t have any friends. Upset and angry, Betty walks away. Bruce tries to call her back, overcome with anguish, but it’s too late.
Later, the ceiling of the cell retracts, revealing some gawkers up on a walkway. General Ross introduces Bruce to President William E. Miller as Betty and Glenn Talbot look on. Bruce mistakenly thinks Miller is still the vice president and is insolent toward him. Just as Talbot moves up close behind the President, Armbruster comes charging in and tackles Talbot. They fall over the railing, but before they hit the ground, a bomb in Talbot’s chest explodes, killing both men. As the charred corpses land in the cell, Bruce feels his transformation coming on. He yells at Ross to get Betty to safety. Ross hesitates, though, choosing to first order that the ceiling of the cell be closed. However, Hulk breaks out of his chains and leaps up through the closing metal shutters. He lands on the walkway just as Ross hustles the President into an elevator. Hulk is enraged to see that General Ross is still persecuting him, but he’s distracted when he notices Betty sobbing on the floor. Hulk tries to comfort Betty, but then soldiers enter with guns drawn. Hulk swats the soldiers away, then grabs Betty and smashes his way up the elevator shaft to the surface. There, he is confronted by Ross in a kind of ‘Hulkbuster’ armor, the HS-1000. Despite the suit’s fearsome armaments, Hulk topples it and starts tearing it apart, determined to get at Ross. Betty begs him to stop, distracting the Hulk long enough for Ross to knock him out with a “gamma blaster” ray.
August 1967 – Hulk comes to several days later to find himself in the shattered remains of a tank of extremely cold fluid. He rips the oxygen mask off his face, realizing he’s been held prisoner since his fight with General Ross. Breaking out of the complex, Hulk discovers that Hulkbuster Base is being completely wrecked by a man in glowing armor who calls himself the Devastator. Keeping out of the Hulk’s reach, the Devastator blasts him with searing energy bolts from his gauntlets. Hulk is able to withstand the barrage long enough to grab his overconfident foe’s gauntlets and crush them. When the Devastator then tries to continue using his damaged weapons, he is incinerated. Hulk stumbles away across the tarmac before collapsing into unconsciousness, whereupon he changes back into Bruce Banner. When he wakes up a few minutes later, Bruce is shocked to learn from General Ross and Betty that the autopsy conducted on Glenn Talbot revealed him to be an impostor. They have hope that the real Talbot is still alive, a prisoner of the Soviet Union.
The next day, Bruce and General Ross are taken to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s west-coast headquarters near Las Vegas, where they meet with Nick Fury and several high-ranking agents. Fury introduces them to Clay Quartermain, who he has assigned to act as liaison officer to the Air Force’s Hulkbuster unit. They then review satellite photos of a secret Soviet installation in Siberia known as Bitterfrost. The agency’s intelligence reports indicate that, if Glenn Talbot is still alive, he would most likely be found there. Given Colonel Armbruster’s botched incursion into the Soviet Union last year, Fury is determined to get the rescue operation right this time, despite the fragile geopolitical situation. When the top-secret mission is ready to depart 36 hours later, Bruce stows away aboard the S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft, feeling the least he can do to make up to Betty all the grief he’s caused her over the last five years is to help reunite her with her husband. The plane comes under attack after entering Soviet airspace, and the weapons pod Bruce is hiding in is ejected. As it plummets to the ground, Bruce turns into the Hulk, bursts out of the pod, and lands on his feet not far from the Bitterfrost installation. He heads over there, hoping to learn where he is, only to be fired upon by the guards in the citadel’s towers. Enraged, Hulk hurls a boulder at them, then smashes through the wall and enters the facility. He is immediately intercepted by eight soldiers in bulky suits of armor. As they fight, Hulk hears them chattering to each other in Russian, but he can’t understand them. He spots the Gremlin, the deformed scientist he met last year, yelling orders to his troops. They manage to outmaneuver the Hulk and stun him with their energy rifles.
When he regains his senses, Hulk finds himself being released from one of the Gremlin’s sinister devices. General Ross, Clay Quartermain, and a few S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are holding the Gremlin, his technicians, and, oddly enough, Glenn Talbot at gunpoint. They march their prisoners toward their extraction point, convincing the Hulk to follow by telling him they need to rescue Betty. However, the Gremlin summons a monstrous creature he’s created through genetic engineering, a sort of cross between a large dog and a triceratops that speaks in rhyming Russian. Recognizing it as the kind of threat only he can deal with, Hulk immediately attacks the creature, which the Gremlin calls Droog. The Gremlin then shoots Talbot with a ray gun, causing him to collapse, and gets away. Hulk insists that Ross and the others go save Betty while he smashes the monster, so they leave with Talbot’s body. For the next 20 minutes, Hulk and the talkative Droog engage in a savage, destructive battle that rages through the installation’s lowest levels. Finally, a tremendous explosion overhead buries the two combatants in pulverized rubble.
Hulk finally digs himself free and finds he is in the crater left behind by the explosion that vaporized the entire Bitterfrost installation. Droog is nowhere to be found, so Hulk wanders off across the frozen tundra, making his way south. After several days of trekking across Siberia, Hulk comes to a lake surrounded by pine trees, where a little girl is singing while she plays. Captivated by the sweet music, Hulk tries to keep hidden but accidentally steps on a branch, alerting her to his presence. To the Hulk’s surprise, the girl turns out to be blind. Despite the language barrier, they establish that his name is Hulk and her name is Katrina. Suddenly, Hulk is shot in the back by Katrina’s frightened father, though the bullets can’t penetrate his thick, green skin. An older man named Palkov prevents the situation from escalating and convinces the others to bring the Hulk back to their village. There, Palkov makes Hulk understand that he’s trying to cure Katrina’s blindness in his makeshift laboratory, but the village is under some kind of threat. Hulk is sympathetic, especially after Palkov gives him dinner. After watching Palkov putter around his lab for a few hours, Hulk falls asleep. He is awakened in the middle of the night by a horde of Subterraneans and drives them off, though they manage to steal Palkov’s research. Hulk chases them to a cave in the woods where he is taken prisoner by their master, the Mole Man, who wants Palkov’s blindness cure for himself. Hulk breaks free, seizes a syringe full of the medicine, and fights his way through thousands of Subterraneans to get back to the surface. To cut off his pursuers, Hulk causes a massive cave-in. He then returns to the village, where Palkov injects Katrina with the drug. After many hours, her vision begins to return. Seeing the Hulk for the first time, Katrina smiles and speaks softly to him, then gives him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Astonished that she’s not terrified of him, Hulk is overcome with emotion and retreats into the wilderness, tears streaming down his cheeks.
September 1967 – Hulk makes his way westward across Russia, getting into occasional skirmishes with both the Soviet military and the local wildlife. One day, he comes upon a golden man in a toga who introduces himself as Glorian and offers to take the Hulk across his rainbow bridge to the land of his dreams. Though suspicious, Hulk consents, and Glorian’s rainbow transports them to a small planetoid with an Earth-like environment but unspoiled by human civilization. After Glorian has departed, Hulk finds both Crackajack Jackson and Jarella waiting for him and is overjoyed to be reunited with his dear friends. However, their idyll is destroyed when Tribbitite slavers descend on them, take them prisoner, and transport them to the Tribbitite imperial throneworld. There, Emperor Torkon II gloats about having captured the Hulk, who foiled his plan to invade Earth five-and-a-half years ago. Torkon at first decides to force the Hulk to walk the treadmills that keep their society running until he dies of exhaustion but then changes his mind when his scientists discover that the Hulk’s paradise planet was created by the Shaper of Worlds. Wanting the Shaper of Worlds to alter reality in his empire’s favor, Torkon threatens to kill Jarella and Crackajack unless the Hulk hunts down the enigmatic alien for him. Grumbling, Hulk agrees to do so. With a nulltron bomb strapped to his back, Hulk is returned to the planetoid in an automated spacecraft. No sooner has Hulk located the Shaper of Worlds than the nulltron bomb explodes, knocking them both unconscious.
Hulk wakes up to find he’s been left behind on the now barren world. Luckily, Glorian turns up and asks him what’s going on. Learning that the Shaper of Worlds has been abducted, Glorian creates another rainbow to take them to Emperor Torkon’s palace. There, Glorian tries to convince Torkon to release the Shaper, only to be shot in the back by one of the palace guards. Believing Glorian dead, the Shaper is overcome with grief and loses control over the illusions he’d been maintaining, revealing both Jarella and Crackajack to be slug-like aliens. Realizing he’d been duped, Hulk goes berserk and starts tearing up the palace. Neither Torkon nor his guards can contain the Hulk’s rampage, but the Shaper intervenes and offers to return him to his little paradise with his friends restored to him. Hulk rejects the offer, saying paradise is no good if it’s just an illusion. Torkon interjects, begging the Shaper to bestow his gifts on the Tribbitite Empire instead. The Shaper flatly refuses and, seeing that the Hulk isn’t going to change his mind, teleports him back to Earth. Hulk rematerializes in Russia, some ways south of the Arctic Circle, and continues on his westward journey.
October 1967 – While swimming across a lake in Scotland, Hulk gets tangled in a fishing net, which leads to him meeting local fisherman Angus MacTavish and his wife Sarah. MacTavish recruits the Hulk to help him hunt down the legendary monster of Loch Fear, which has plagued the area for generations. However, after a delicious meal, Hulk falls asleep in the MacTavishes’ guest room and changes back into Bruce Banner. Harsh voices in the house soon wake Bruce, and he is confused to find the MacTavishes being held at gunpoint. The gunmen then march both men across the dark moors to the bleak castle inhabited by the local laird, Black Jamie Macawber, who is intent on preventing MacTavish from killing the lake monster, as the local economy has become dependent on the tourism associated with it. Imprisoned with MacTavish in the castle’s tower, Bruce eventually turns back into the Hulk and breaks free. MacTavish immediately embarks on his monster hunt, and the Hulk insists on joining him. With a homemade harpoon launcher affixed to his fishing boat, MacTavish pilots them out into the middle of Loch Fear. Before long, the monster surfaces, breaking the fishing boat in two and revealing itself to be some kind of gigantic mutant plesiosaur. Even so, MacTavish manages to fire his harpoon, which is wrapped in dynamite, into the creature’s shoulder. Macawber arrives in a speedboat, determined to subdue the plesiosaur with a powerful sedative so he can turn it into the world’s greatest tourist attraction. At MacTavish’s urging, Hulk grabs Macawber just as the dynamite explodes. Macawber’s chemical tanks rupture, and the sedative gas triggers the Hulk’s transformation. Bruce falls into the water as Macawber and the Loch Fear monster are somehow instantly petrified, which Bruce and MacTavish discover as they are washed up on the shore of the lake. In a celebratory mood, MacTavish invites Bruce to stay on in their community, but Bruce decides it would be better for everyone if he moved on. MacTavish gives Bruce some of his clothes and helps him book passage on a ship, the HMS Black Watch, bound for America.
During the ocean crossing, Bruce discovers the ship’s crew dumping drums of radioactive waste in contravention of international law. Caught red-handed, the sailors gang up on Bruce, intending to throw him overboard. However, they merely succeed in causing him to change into the Hulk and go on a rampage that sinks the ship. As the panicked sailors clamber into their lifeboats, Hulk swims away into the darkness and eventually arrives in the New York City harbor. Climbing onto a pier on Manhattan’s lower west side, Hulk startles some longshoremen, who summon the police. After a brief confrontation, Hulk loses himself in the back alleys of one of the city’s grimier neighborhoods. Several hours later, a S.H.I.E.L.D. drone aircraft flies overhead, with a voice blaring from a loudspeaker ordering the Hulk to surrender. Annoyed, Hulk throws a trash dumpster at the drone, destroying it. He is then tackled by Doc Samson, who has regained his super-strength. Samson says they need Bruce’s help at the Air Force’s Project Greenskin, but this merely enrages the Hulk, who considers Banner to be his greatest enemy. Reveling in his gamma-spawned power, Samson presses his attack, confident that he is a match for the Hulk. Their destructive battle leads them to the top of the New York Telephone Company Building, where the Hulk hands Samson a decisive defeat. Roaring in victory, Hulk leaps away, leaving the city far behind.
November 1967 – Hulk slowly makes his way across the middle of the United States, causing occasional chaos and destruction while evading the Hulkbusters’ attempts to capture him. Late in the month, he wanders into San Francisco, California, where he finds refuge in an abandoned tenement.
December 1967 – For about 18 hours, Hulk finds himself trapped within a magical force-field bubble in downtown San Francisco. Try as he might, he is unable to escape. Finally, the force field vanishes as mysteriously as it appeared. Unnerved by the experience, Hulk leaves the city and makes his way back towards the east coast.
Feeling himself summoned by Doctor Strange, Hulk heads to Roosevelt Hospital in Midtown Manhattan, where he meets up with the Valkyrie. She informs him that Nighthawk was injured in an explosion and has just come out of surgery. Hulk is determined to visit his sick friend, but the Valkyrie restrains him until Doctor Strange enters with the surgeon who saved Nighthawk’s life. Strange assures the Hulk that his friend will recover but insists he needs uninterrupted rest. Hulk relents and accompanies Strange and the Valkyrie back to the Sanctum Sanctorum for the rest of the night. In the morning, the trio returns to the hospital, but Hulk’s friends convince him to remain outside with Aragorn so as not to disturb the other patients. Shortly, Strange and Valkyrie return and lead the Hulk to the remote Crayton Observatory in search of the Squadron Sinister, whom Nighthawk believes may have caused the explosion. There, they discover that Hyperion, Doctor Spectrum, and the Whizzer did indeed survive the battle with Nebulon last year. Though the Defenders have the element of surprise, the Squadron Sinister quickly turns the tables by using a new weapon that forces the Hulk to change back into Bruce Banner. Bruce is disoriented for a moment before lapsing into unconsciousness.
Sometime later, Bruce is shocked awake by a jolt of searing agony and immediately turns into the Hulk again. Breaking out of some shackles, Hulk finds that the former Avenger known as Yellowjacket has come to free the Defenders from their imprisonment in the observatory’s basement. His cellular-disruptor gun has enabled the Hulk to shatter his own bonds, but he needs the green goliath’s strength to release Doctor Strange and the Valkyrie from theirs. Once the Hulk has done so, Yellowjacket informs them that the Squadron Sinister had nothing to do with the explosion that injured Nighthawk—it was actually set off by his old arch-enemy Egghead, who was targeting Nighthawk’s girlfriend. Nevertheless, the four heroes race back to Roosevelt Hospital to stop the Squadron Sinister from taking revenge on Nighthawk for betraying them. There, Strange and Valkyrie rescue Nighthawk from Doctor Spectrum while Yellowjacket defeats the Whizzer. Hulk knocks Hyperion out by creating a powerful shockwave that also shatters Doctor Spectrum’s power prism. Strange then casts a spell that causes the Squadron Sinister to lose all memory of their villainous identities, ensuring they will pose no further threat to Nighthawk.
Doctor Strange and Valkyrie convince the Hulk to spend some more time with them at the Sanctum Sanctorum. Clea and Wong are delighted to host their brutish friend again, though two of Strange’s acolytes, Lord Phyffe and Rama Kaliph, need to be reassured that they’re not in danger. Once the Hulk accepts them as friends, the two adepts become very curious about him. Nighthawk makes a rapid recovery due to his super-powers and resumes his crime-fighting crusade, though he’s depressed that his girlfriend has dumped him. For his part, Hulk enjoys the holiday season in New York, as his friends enable him to take a break from all his troubles.
Notes:
January 1967 – The Hulk’s adventures continue in Hulk #179 and following. Lucifer Falls is established as being in West Virginia in Rom, Spaceknight #29. In fact, the nearby city where Bruce buys his Geiger counter is most likely Clairton, which Rom will make his base of operations in just a couple of years.
February 1967 – For their fourth battle royal, the Hulk and the Thing switch it up in Giant-Size Super-Stars #1.
March 1967 – The man in the hovel is Marie Cartier’s brother Paul. He’s been saved from the curse of the Wendigo by Georges Baptiste, who’s taken it upon himself out of love for Marie. It was her disembodied voice that led the Hulk to her hovel, where she planned to use a magic spell to transfer the curse from Paul to the Hulk. However, Georges found he couldn’t allow such a horror to be inflicted on an innocent pawn. Convicts Leroy “Hammer” Jackson and Johnny Anvil, who received their glowing cable from an alien visitor, will recover and become minor super-villains known as Hammer & Anvil until being murdered by the Scourge of the Underworld.
May 1967 – Hulk is reunited with his Defenders teammates to take on the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants at the behest of Professor X in Defenders #15–16. Xavier seeks outside help because the X-Men are off on their mission to Krakoa, as seen in Giant-Size X-Men #1. Magneto’s odyssey through the bowels of the earth is a delusion; following his defeat at the hands of the Avengers (in Avengers #111), he was held in a telepathically induced coma in the basement of the X-Men’s headquarters. However, his deranged mind rejects this humiliating reality in favor of a nonsensical sci-fi fantasy. See my Magneto chronology for further discussion. The Defenders then team up with Daimon Hellstrom, the so-called “Son of Satan,” in Giant-Size Defenders #2.
July 1967 – Hulk appears at the beginning of Defenders #17 before moving into Marvel Team-Up #27. The Defenders’ battle with the Wrecking Crew then spans Defenders #18–19. Hulk catches up with his teammates again in Defenders #21. The temporary spell of madness and the apelike looter are indeed connected, as both are part of a scheme by the freakish small-time crooks known as the Headmen—Arthur Nagan, Jerry Morgan, and Chondu the Mystic. Daredevil helps the Defenders defeat the Grandmaster and his mystery opponent (Doctor Doom’s Prime Mover robot) in Giant-Size Defenders #3. Hulk is then drawn into conflict with Ghost Rider in Ghost Rider #11. A demon called Inferno ambushes the Hulk with an illusory Ghost Rider to get him mad and then leads him to the real one, hoping Johnny Blaze will be killed in the ensuing fight. Warlord Kaa first appeared during Marvel’s “Atlas” era in Strange Tales #79, which (based on the cover date) falls on my OMU timeline in December 1960.
October 1967 – Hulk’s battle with Doc Samson brings us up to Hulk #193. In the story, the fight concludes atop the World Trade Center, but in 1967 it hadn’t been built yet, so I swapped it for the New York Telephone Company Building, an older skyscraper on an adjacent lot.
December 1967 – Hulk is among the various superheroes seen trapped within Loki’s magical spheres in Thor #233. While Earth’s champions are thus imprisoned, Loki leads an invasion force of Asgardian warriors against Washington, D.C., only to be repelled by Thor and the U.S. Army. The Defenders team up with Yellowjacket against the Squadron Sinister in Giant-Size Defenders #4.
Jump Back: The Hulk – Year Five
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