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.
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