“How Quickly These Bitter Seeds of Guilt...”
In the end, who among us does not choose to be a little less right to be a little less lonely?
~Robert Brault
Previously, in the HULK...
A man named Bruce Banner saved a young teenager from a gamma bomb detonation in the Arizona Desert. Selflessly tossing said teenager into a safety bunker, Bruce Banner was transformed into the horrific behemoth called: the Incredible HULK:
However, Banner has never been the most stable individual. Bruce Banner suffers Dissociative Identity Disorder, with multiple personalities to contend with, each personality less stable than the last. As a result, Bruce Banner didn’t just transform into one Incredible Hulk after the Terrible Day of the Gamma Bomb...he transformed into many.
Which Hulk he becomes on any given day, of course, is always open to interpretation:
The Savage Green Hulk - A childish, unthinking brute of unrelenting physical power. An engine of mindless destruction that gets stronger and stronger with rage.
The Cunning Grey Hulk - a sneaky, manipulative, cunning adversary whose strength pales in comparison to the Jade Giant, yet whose devious motives are always suspect.
The Idealized Professor – a bright green Hulk with the mind of Bruce Banner, the physical power of the Green Hulk and the devious, cunning tactics of the Grey Hulk. The Professor remains the most idealized version of the Hulk in Bruce Banner’s puny eyes.
The Guilt Hulk - A lizard-like creature that represents all Bruce’s hidden, repressed guilt and shame concerning Bruce’s....tortured past.
The Devil Hulk - A chained monster at the back of his mind. Enraged at the world at large, dedicated to destroying it at all costs.
The Professor had been the dominant persona for some time. However, since losing the love of his life - Betty Ross Banner - to a vindictive radiation-fueled murder by the homicidal Abomination, the Professor had retreated to a world within the safety of Bruce Banner’s mind, where he could be with the woman he’d loved for so long.
In lieu of the Professor, the Banner/Savage Hulk amalgam had joined up with the Avengers, saving the world with Banner’s undeniable genius and the Savage Hulk’s unimaginable (yet untamable) might. Things had been good for Bruce Banner - he’d found the support of his Avengers teammates, proven himself a hero and been able to turn the Savage Hulk’s ferocity toward a decent goal - helping others.
That is, until Bruce got a letter from Mr. Blue, with proof that Betty was alive - comatose, cryogenically-preserved and captive inside a secret government installation. Mr. Blue (the current alias of the Leader) was apparently the only one who could deliver Betty – alive and well - to the lovelorn Banner.
But not without a price, of course.
Isn’t that always the way these things go?
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THE PRESENT:
The Arizona Desert
The Professor’s Hideaway
The Long Night Begins
The Professor looked upon the photograph of his wife. The same photo he’d been gazing at, sullenly, for so many weeks now, remembering each and every curve of her face. Every smile. Every memory. Each and every moment he’d spent with her, before…
He’d been looking at the same photo, since Mr. Blue had given it to him all those weeks ago, as proof that the once-murdered Betty Banner was still technically alive. With Mr. Blue’s oh-so-generous assistance, she could be brought back to him once more.
Now, the only thing that the Professor had to do to get her back was to give up the secrets of Extremis. A fair trade, as Mr. Blue had put it.
Carrot and the stick.
“I’m so sorry, Betty,” he said, folding the picture up and placing it upon the workbench. He picked up the now-completed Extremis enhancile and made his way out of the lab, into the outside world. “I’m so sorry I gave up on you.”
With gamma-powered might, he shot off like a cannon toward his destination.
Yet, no matter how far he ran or how high he leapt, there would be no outrunning the pangs of guilt. A terrible guilt that had been eating away at him these past few weeks even as he worked on creating an Extremis prototype from the notes stolen from the Avengers mainframe.
A guilt worse than betraying the Avengers, and falling into league with the mysterious Mr. Blue.
It was a terrible, gnawing guilt, which threatened to destroy everything he’d held dear. For even if the Professor brought Betty back now, how could any of the four of them (Banner, Fixit, Savage or himself) explain all the things he’d done while she was away?
And all the things he would have yet to do, to get her back?
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SOMETIME IN THE PAST:
AFTER THE TIMERAFT, BEFORE THE AVENGERS
Sarasota, Florida
The King’s Coup
A Nice, Quiet Place to Brood
So what do I do now, puny Banner? The scientist thought to himself mockingly, sitting on the edge of the barstool lost in thought.
The King’s Coop was a late night dive bar in Sarasota, Florida. It was the kind of dive bar that didn’t attract too much attention. It was the kind of place people of importance would never let themselves get caught dead in. It was the kind of place where no one asked too many questions – barkeeps or patrons alike.
Fortunately, for the fugitive Doctor Banner, it was the perfect place to lay low, and drown away his sorrows in relative peace.
Except peace was the last thing his puny mind would allow him.
Bruce Banner sat in silence, his baseball cap hung low as he tugged at his second Miller High Life bottle. He let the crisp taste sit on his tongue, the bubbles giving him just that one moment of peace in the insanity which had become of his life.
The battles in space. The Negative Zone. Thiai, and her damned Timeraft. Good ol’ Thunderbolt Ross and his plan to shove me in a dark, damp hole for the rest of my miserable existence. Banner took another swig. Maybe I should have let him do just that.
“Like you ever stood a chance in Hell of that happening, ol’ pal,” Mr. Fixit rumbled merrily at him, laughing sardonically from the Hell that was Banner’s own mind. “You’re destined to be on the run - the good ol’ loner dodging the Feds - for the rest of your life. You know that?”
Bruce Banner nearly snarled and retorted verbally at the granite bully, but the realization of all the other patrons at the bar as well as those in the booths, made him think better of it.
“That’s right, Brucie. Don’t want to seem ‘crazy’ to the normal folk. Don’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves, do we?” the bully kept pushing and poking at him – ever-joyfully poking at the bear.
Banner scrapped at the wooden bar slowly with the Miller bottle, grinding his teeth in frustration yet completely unable to respond.
Suddenly, the dull tones of the piano transformed into a stronger, vibrant melancholy. Distinctive, yet enchanting just the same – an enchantment that drowned out all the shouting madness in Bruce’s twisted mind as well as all the mumbling drunkards that littered the quiet dive bar. Noticing the change, Bruce’s head popped up, and he swung his swivel barstool toward the front to see what had caused the change.
He was just in time - to see her:
Captivating.
Enchanting.
Serene.
Lovely blonde hair trimmed neatly along the sides, playful bangs cascading down across the right side of her face – giving her an air of seductive mystery. The sparkling white dress outlined her every womanly curve perfectly, a shimmering skirt flittering in the light breeze along perfectly-toned thighs. She stood proud upon the stage with glimmering white wedges, her eyes cast out among the audience, searching for someone pure to sing her heavenly tune to.
Her demure eyes reached his and - for just a perfect moment - all was right with the world. Bruce Banner lost himself in her sweet face, her intense gaze finding all the secrets in Bruce’s heart that he’d kept hidden even from himself.
The singer’s soft lips quivered. Her right eyebrow arched, ever-so-slightly - her own interest suddenly piqued as well. Bruce – the stranger in the baseball cap at the bar - had pierced her soul too, somehow seeing far into the singer’s beauteous, yet closed-to-the-world heart. Perhaps he could sense the same pangs of dark, wretched loneliness she herself had ached with for so many, many months. A loneliness that extended to her very soul – a loneliness which they were both all-too-familiar with.
The lounge singer known as Nadia Blonsky sang her heart out that night, to a room of half-aware liars and cheats, booze-hounds and hotheads, sometime-abusers and idle sadists. In a place like this, such innocence in motion as what Nadia displayed on-stage was mistaken for something altogether cheaper. In a place like this, the half-dead and already-dying would give their very souls for a night with a woman like this. They longed for lady with a body like hers.
Unluckily for them, she’d found another whom she’d rather share her soul with.
Nadia finished her set early, and sat down with the enigmatic stranger she would come to know as Bruce Banner. They would talk of their pasts, and their adventures, their dreams and desires - trying - and failing - to not let the other get too close. They’d be shocked to find that, amid a sea of desperate loners and abusive sycophants, they somehow found someone that was real. That was pure, amidst the sea of human flotsam about them.
They would be chatting there until closing time, laughing with one another like old friends. Nadia would take Bruce him home with her that night, where they would become much more than old friends.
The lovers would stay together for some time after that night.
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THE PRESENT:
The Arizona Desert
On the Way to the Waystation
Abominable Thoughts
The scaly green behemoth drooled idly, using his colossal leg muscles to charge forcefully through the desert sands.
His thick, scaly hide quivered lightly, muscles bulging with unnatural power. His veins pulsed and pumped unknown fluids throughout his body, causing them to glow with a strange blue hue. His eyes – bloodshot, pupil-less balls of cataract-white – stared vacantly at the horizon, purposed fully for their new task. Small blue-grey tendrils stuck out from the back of his bulbous head. The scaly flesh at the base of those tendrils was lumpy and irritated, as if suffering from some horrific infection even the Abomination’s mighty healing factor could not overcome. The monster’s face remained expressionless – motionless – as the muscles and sinew of his mighty body devastated whatever obstacles lay in his homicidal wake.
Inside the Abomination’s scaly, infected hide – tiny, unseen creatures conducted the beast like a marionette towards a singular purpose.
At first, Emil Blonsky – the monstrous Abomination – had struggled.
Oh, how valiantly he had struggled!
When the chitinous creatures had latched onto him - deep in the quiet ocean darkness that remained Blonksy’s singular respite from the cruel tragedy of his life – he had frantically struggled to rid himself of the monstrous things. But like an army of ants, they’d just kept coming – wave after wave of the tiny creatures.
Invading his sanctuary. Violating his body. Drilling their way through his hide with unstoppable adamantium pincers. Corrupting his thoughts with their mechanical droning. Transforming his body and forcing him to be a soldier in some unspoken war that was clearly not his own.
Or, so he thought.
In-between fits of exhaustion, as wave after wave of the chitinous creatures overtook his nervous system – Blonsky could finally could hear the simple little messages that the droning things were speaking amongst one another. As they’d leeched and nestled inside his nervous systems and sucked their ways into his brain tissues, he could finally listen to the beats of the creature’s hard-skinned drums: They’d been given a new target to apprehend.
Once Blonsky heard the name of this particular target, he gave up all resistance against the creature’s overwhelming onslaught. He’d even welcomed their assistance, despite his reservations against their currently-uneven alliance.
Emil Blonsky – the hideous Abomination – let the unseen, chitinous things beneath his skin move his body about. He let the vermin nest inside his motor functions, pulling sections of his brain over themselves, burying each other in the warm cocoon of his twisted mind. He let the vermin send his body in the right direction – toward the place where their mutual enemy lay, waiting for him to pounce.
The hideous monster simply had to wait – bide his time as the robot-things led him to their prey. Then, Blonsky could finish the job he’d started all those years ago in that surgical bay.
When the Abomination found Bruce Banner’s precious little wife, he would rip the screaming little thing apart, and paint the Arizona desert with her blood.
This time, he would leave nothing to chance.
There would be no body left to resurrect.
The Abomination was going to rip the sleeping little bitch into itty, bitty shreds, and there was nothing that putrid wretch Banner could fucking do about it.
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SOMETIME IN THE PAST:
The Uptown Apartment of Nadia Blonsky
A Quiet Bedroom Touched by Precious Moonlight
...and the Simple Peace that Never Lasts.
The sleeping beauty stirred wordlessly, snuggling closer into Bruce Banner’s bare chest. Drowsily, Bruce’s eyes began to flutter and stir, and the word “Betty” almost escaped from his lips.
He sighed, clutching Nadia to his chest once more, and gently kissed her forehead.
Betty is gone, he told himself. Bruce gazed up at the ceiling of Nadia’s bedroom – a ceiling he’d come to know so well these past few months, half-awake mind still sulking with a sweaty mixture of melancholy and shame. For some time now, she’s been gone.
Betty – my wife - is gone. She died. She died, and we had the funeral for her. We had to have a closed-casket-funeral for her, because her skin was mottled with radiation poisoning.
She is never coming back. Never. Coming. Back. Bruce. She wouldn’t want you to pine over her memory for the rest of your life. She would want this - for you to get out there, find someone new. She would want you to be happy. Wouldn’t she?
“Yeah,” a voice in his head laughed. “I mean, Betts really did love it when we were shacked up with the redhead, didn’t she?”
“Shut up,” he gritted his teeth, whispering angrily to the empty black room.
“Hhrrrmm?” the sleepy blonde in his arms murmured, her warm body pressing closer toward him. “…you say somethin’ Bruce?”
“Hmm?” he muttered, turning toward the half-awake Nadia. “No, no, no. It’s nothing. Go back to sleep, Nadia.”
She laughed huskily, and Bruce’s heart warmed with the seductive tone of her Russian accent. “ ‘kay, beloved.”
Beloved? Bruce thought to himself. That one was new. He breathed out slowly as his back straightened, rigid once he realized the other possibility: Maybe he wasn’t the only one thinking about a lost love…
Could it be true? Could we simply be looking for the missing parts of ourselves in each other?
But why? How could Nadia still love Emil? How could she miss him? From everything she’s told me about him, he was a ruthless, posturing, controlling, cold-hearted son of a bitch behind closed doors, even before he became the Abomination. She’s shown me the physical scars he’d left in his wake. On her back, her hands, her ribs, her face…
“Why’d Mom love good ol’ Brian?” a grey monotone bullied his way into his consciousness. Bruce looked upon the sleeping Nadia and resisted the urge to tell the grey bully to go fuck himself. “Why’d she stay, ‘stead of stabbing a steak knife into his gullet when she had the chance?”
Bruce shook away the uncomfortable thoughts, closing his eyes hard.
Nevertheless, he was right.
Love was a tricky, complicated thing.
One person could be everything to another: Sweet, kind, generous, gracious, accepting. Gentle and forgiving. And yet, the love that ought to coalesce between the two may never truly gain traction. The relationship that ought to form is never more than just facade. Then again, another set of lovers could lie, cheat, steal and beat the living Christ out of one another, and the passions they’d hold for each other in their hearts could fill an ocean.
Who’s to say that – despite the abuse – what Nadia felt for her husband at the time was any less real than if he were a kinder, decent soul? Who’s to say she was wrong, for loving someone that could do that to her?
Maybe, Bruce Banner grimaced, looking down upon her. That doesn’t mean you deserved that kind of cruelty. That doesn’t forgive Emil, and all the things he did to you. All the things he wasn’t for you.
That brings up an even worse question: am I any better than him? Bruce wondered idly. Aren’t I using you as a place to hang my hat? A respite, until the government watchdogs track me down again, like they always do? As a means of fighting off that terrible, soul-crushing loneliness with the pleasant company of a woman, and the manufactured laughter that comes with light conversation? For the feeling of normalcy, despite the insanity my life has always been? Aren’t I using you, Nadia, as a substitute for the woman your horrible, GODDAMN PESTILENCE of an ex-husband took from me?
“Nadia,” Bruce whispered, his arms gently stroking the blonde’s bare back, stirring her back to consciousness.
“Mm..nnnff…Bruce?” she murmured, blinking her eyes and pulling her head up slowly. The rays of the full moon gently shone in from the window, framing her eyes as the light made her blonde locks twinkle with a bright, silver sheen.
Her beautiful Russian accent made him smile, and he could feel the heat of her breath upon him. He could still remember the taste of her lips upon his. His eyes gazed gingerly upon her bare shoulder, her bra strap moving just so slightly with the ease of her delicate movements. Her lips parted ever-so-lightly, and he wondered if – just for a moment – he could just fall in love with this woman who was not his wife. If he – just for a moment – could put away the overwhelming guilt he felt with himself for putting them both in this situation.
Closing his eyes, he sighed heavily. Now was not the time for such fond, blissful thoughts.
Now was the time for the truth. Before things got any more complicated.
“Nadia, there’s something I need to tell you,” Bruce said, gazing upon Nadia’s moonlit eyes, watching them sparkle like diamonds.
She sighed knowingly, turning her head to the side as she tended to do. A subconscious gesture, but he knew it was because of the scars that Emil had left upon her.
Bruce’s face softened. He was about to leave his own green scar upon her.
“Don’t be coy, darling Bruce,” she said softly, caressing his face and blowing a soft kiss upon his lips, breaking the pregnant pause that had been hanging between them. “Say what you feel you must.”
“Nadia, I—“ he spoke. He caressed her face longingly, running his fingers across the long-healed scar from her husband’s cruel hand, feeling the raised flesh upon his fingers. He wished his fingers could heal all the unspoken scars he knew that Emil had left upon her beauteous, tender features. Bruce tried to pull the words together he knew he needed to say, when a dark shadow played across her sweetly-smiling face.
Bruce’s gaze sauntered away from the beauty toward the window sill, where the moonlight expanse was suddenly replaced by a perverse darkness.
A darkness that moved.
A darkness with scales, and reptilian features.
A darkness with reptilian eyes, narrowed into homicidal slits.
Bruce recognized the creature instantly. But it was Nadia, who recognized that look – that same, terrifying look that signaled nothing but violence and misery on the horizon in her difficult, strained marriage to Emil Blonsky.
Now was no different.
“…Emil?” she gasped.
And the peaceful noises of the night were drowned out by a jaded, jealous roar.
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SOMETIME IN THE PAST:
Outside the Uptown Apartment of Nadia Blonsky
A Noisy Bedroom Touched by Jaded, Jealous Rage
...and the Everlasting Madness that Follows.
THOOM!
Half of the building fell away in an instant. Nadia’s screams were deafening as Bruce instinctively clutched the blonde in his arms, as if to protect her. As the floor shook and disintegrated below them, the couple fell into freefall amidst a turbulent mass of falling wooden beams and debris. Bruce’s body mass tripled in an instant, his limbs providing a safe haven for the shapely singer’s form as ceiling and tile fell against them like shrapnel. Bricks and mortar, wood planks and soot slammed hard into the thick, calloused hide of the ever-expanding Bruce Banner, bouncing off his coiled muscle as if they weighed nothing. They crashed hard into the subbasement of the once-apartment building, smoke and debris billowing around them in thick, choking clouds. Nadia, shrouded in the protective arms of the incredible Hulk, coughed hard against the rising dust, belting it out like a career smoker. The behemoth protecting her simply grunted as the debris continued to collide against them, with exactly the same effect on his massive form as if it were confetti.
The rest of the building fell upon the both of them as the Abomination watched, coiling and uncoiling his massive digits in wait, like a stone-cold killer waiting for his prey to emerge from its hiding place. The mass of twisted metal shifted and sank, the beast unfazed at the severed body parts and the groaning things sticking out of the rubble that had once been humans. Emil Blonsky was rarely ever concerned with the damage he’d left in his wake. As always, he was focused on the one thing.
“Nadia,” the Abomination growled low, his homicidal eyes gazing upon the downed building with some semblance of satisfaction. “Serves you right, you cheating whore.”
His eyes narrowed further as the debris began to sift and sink in ever so slightly.
“Ah,” he grunted. “Fight left in you yet, you piece of shit?”
It shifted again, upsetting slightly toward the right as if to respond to the Abomination’s comment.
“Good,” he muttered. “ ‘cuz I’m not fucking done with you yet.”
Like a volcano, the outermost pile of debris exploded upwards, shards of shattered building bursting into the air in all directions. A green meteor flew out, trailing bits of rooftop and broken piping in its wake. The Abomination watched the meteor bound away, landing with a deafening thud about a half mile distant from the wreckage.
“No, no, no,” the Abomination growled, scaly lips curling into a sneer. “Neither of you gets away that easily.”
The homicidal monster bounded away after them.
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THE PRESENT:
The Arizona Desert
On the Way to the Waystation
Dark Thoughts, Greek Chorus
The enraged green behemoth growled angrily, using his colossal leg muscles to storm mightily across the desert sands.
The enigmatic Mr. Blue had offered the mighty Professor a trade: Give him Extremis, and he would resurrect Betty Banner. Mr. Blue had given him the picture as proof she was still alive and preserved – not buried in Arlington cemetery as he and all the other mourners had been led to believe. Blue had given him specific contact instructions for the later trade and delivery. Mr. Blue had said that certain…creatures…in the government were responsible for this act, and that Banner’s only concern was the finishing of the Extremis module.
It had taken some weeks to synthesize from the notes he’d stolen off of the Avengers Mainframe, but he’d finally created the Extremis enhancile – a simple injection module that could be used to inject the Extremis virus into a live subject. From there, Extremis would re-write the repair centers of their body, encoding the revamped DNA into the test subject. The person’s immune system would then take over, replacing the old, weak cells with the new modified matrix.
Nevertheless, in the wrong hands, Extremis could be a weapon of mass destruction.
It had taken some constant, incessant, infuriating, endless, non-stop prodding from the puny scientist but in the end, Bruce Banner had finally convinced the stubborn Professor that Mr. Blue could be trusted about as far as either of them could throw him. Well, about as far as the puny Banner could throw him. The Professor clearly had a bit of an edge in the throwing-people department.
They both realized they needed an ace in the hole if this was all going to work. They needed to know where Mr. Blue was keeping Betty.
It had taken Bruce Banner some time to ferret out Betty’s location from the image that Mr. Blue had sent. Despite the Professor’s insistence on finishing Extremis first, Banner had also spent hours upon hours analyzing and cross-referencing the markings on the room’s walls with every top secret, classified, need-to-know database he could access and, with his formidable hacking skills, had discovered Betty’s location at last: A long-decommissioned Hulkbuster base deep in the Arizona Desert called The Waystation.
Good ol’ Thunderbolt Ross himself had given the order – to cryogenically preserve Betty’s body until a cure for her radiation-poisoning could be found. Was Mr. Blue a worker at the facility? Had he taken it over, and was operating out of it covertly? Was Mr. Blue even in the facility? These were questions neither Bruce, nor the Professor could answer. All they knew was, they had to get to Betty before Mr. Blue found out they already knew her location – or all bets were off.
The Professor rubbed at the tender spot on his wrist, knowing that what laid inside was the last, best chance of seeing his wife again. The problem with freezing Betty’s body was that, by all accounts, Betty Ross Banner was still technically dead.
Enter: The Extremis Enhancile.
If the Professor could keep her body alive long enough – i.e. getting her veins pumping blood again through artificial means – he could use the Extremis enhancile to re-write her body’s immune system. The enhancile would re-make her from the inside-out: Alive, back at full health, and forever immune to radiation sickness.
Betty’s proximity to the Hulk for all those years was the initial trigger for her radiation poisoning. However, it was the blood transfusion pack that Emil Blonsky had switched out during her surgery for the first condition that killed her. So, while the Abomination murdered his wife, she never would’ve been sick in the first place if he hadn’t been for the Hulk’s gamma-irradiated body.
The guilt over bringing his wife to the operating table in the first place had almost been too much for all four of their alter egos to bear. If the Professor could set her up with a healing factor this time, almost on par with his own, perhaps he wouldn’t have to worry about...
“You know Betty just as well as I do,” Bruce Banner said, earning a disapproving grunt from the Professor-Hulk, who was still leaping tall through the Arizona Desert. “Do you think she wants a healing factor like that?”
The green goliath grinned. “Couldn’t hurt.”
“Of course not,” the scientist laughed. “Perhaps we’ll just add some wings and turn her into the Harpy again? Or turn her into a regular gamma-powered She-Hulk, like our cousin Jen. Though, Jen really has the She-Hulk thing nailed down. Maybe if we give her a different color – like a mauve, or a red hue. Yes, a Red She-Hulk!”
“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” the Professor mumbled.
“Nevertheless, you do see my point, yes?” Bruce Banner raised an eyebrow, pointing his pipe at the stubborn green giant. “Betty does not want to be anything other than a natural-born human being.”
“Look Banner, I’m not in the mood for this—!” the Professor snarled, a witty retort at-the-ready, when a second voice sounded off in his other ear:
“Ah, just let the Professor give Betts the healing factor, you twittering milksop,” the grey Hulk – Joe Fixit – harrumphed. “Dames never really know what they want.”
“Oh good, it’s the sexist, womanizing brute,” the scientist chuckled, breathing out a thin stream of smoke from his pipe. “Let’s hear his thoughts on the subject.”
“You better watch it, punk,” Fixit grumbled, tapping off the worn, ashy edge of his fat Cuban cigar and grinding his teeth with a noise akin to slabs of granite scrapping across concrete. “All I know is that, if I’d had this…Extremis whats-its…when the redhead was on death’s door…”
“…you would’ve charged in, like the Goodfella-in-Shining-Armor you are,” the Professor finished, snidely smirking towards the former legbreaker’s voice as he continued to glide across the endless desert. “Never mind what Marlo would’ve wanted.”
“…wanted Rick Jones, is what she wanted…” Bruce Banner mumbled under his breath, juuuust loud enough for the granite-faced Hulk to hear.
“The fuck’d you just say, milksop?” Fixit roared, rage boiling over, ready to wipe that smirk off Bruce Banner’s face. “I don’t remember you asking Betts if you could bang the Abomination’s wife’s blonde brains out, did you?”
“It’s about time you heard the truth, you grey simpleton,” the scientist stood up, red-faced with rage. He faced the granite beast and pointed his pipe at the towering menace. “The real Marlo Chandler chose Rick Jones over you not out of circumstance, but because he is a better human being than you. You’re a loudmouth, a brute, a bully and a pestering, posturing cretin. Don’t sully the rest of us with your own inferiority complex. Nadia’s good name need not be tarnished coming from your loud mouth. Go crawl back into my subconscious and crawl into bed with that pale imitation of Marlo Chandler you’ve invented, inside that Vegas that Never Was.”
Joe Fixit – the grey Hulk – smiled, taking off his gloves and pin-striped suit, and cracking his knuckles loudly. His face was chiseled with an undeniable, uncontainable, boiling hate. “That’s it. You’re fucking dead, twerp.”
“BOTH OF YOU - THAT’S ENOUGH!” the Professor bellowed, drowning out the noise from both sets of Banners.
Outside Banner’s mind, the sound waves from the Professor’s roar blasted across the horizon, loud enough to literally shake the desert for miles. While within his mind, both the scientist and the gray brute shook their collective heads, the Professors magnanimous growl still ringing wildly against their eardrums.
“Both of you, shut the hell up,” the Professor grunted. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”
“Hmmph!” the grey-faced brute grunted, crossing his arms and turning his back towards Banner.
“Hmmph!” Banner grunted, crossing his arms and turning his back towards the grey-faced brute.
The Professor – while still running – turned toward the stubborn ghostly apparition on his left, then towards the stubborn ghostly apparition on his right. “We. Are not. Giving. My wife. A healing factor. Green wings. Red scaly skin. OR red goddamn hair, because I know that’s what you’re thinking, Mr. Fixit!”
“GRRRR! Fine then, you idiots do whatever makes you happy. I got better places to be,” the grey brute grunted, stomping off away from the Professor before disappearing in a puff of smoke back into the Professor’s labyrinth mind. The apparition stomped off toward the glitzier, more glamorous pleasures awaiting him in of Las Vegas.
Perhaps even, toward the one redhead he would never admit he would always miss.
The Professor continued running toward the base.
“Very nicely done, Professor,” the scientist said, clapping his hands. “Bravo.”
“Shut up,” the Professor grunted, itching at the Extremis enhancile in his forearm. “You’re just as bad as he is.”
The scientist rolled his eyes, puffing away on his pipe, as they both continued to glare at the horizon. Toward the Waystation. Towards the one woman the both of them could agree they missed more than anything in the world.
“If Mr. Blue finds out we’re onto him,” Bruce Banner clicked his tongue, glancing sidelong at the stomping Professor-Hulk, “you’re going to give him the Extremis Enhancile, aren’t you?”
“We already discussed this,” the Professor grumbled.
The scientist clicked his tongue again, refusing to be deterred. “I know we’re going to go in there, guns ablazing. Busting down the front doors, trying to get to Betty before Mr. Blue can have his people surround her.”
“Your point being?”
“What if he threatens to hurt her? To kill her, even?”
“Betty is his only bargaining chip, Banner,” the Professor grunted. “Without her, we have no reason to give him Extremis.”
“You’re so adamant that it won’t come to that.”
“It won’t.”
“And if it does?”
“It won’t.”
“But if it does come to that,” Banner droned. “Would you hand over the Extremis enhancile to someone who – for all we know – is working with Hydra, or AIM, or some other sick terrorist cell ready to release it on a populated area?”
“It won’t. Come. To that,” the Professor remained resolute in his stance. ”I won’t let anything happen to Betty.”
“You never answered my question,” Bruce Banner stated, grinding his teeth against his smoker’s pipe. “About giving Mr. Blue the enhancile, if Betty’s life were put at stake.”
The Professor glared at the ghostly apparition of Bruce Banner before waving the image away with his hand, continuing to stomp hard as he made his way toward the facility.
“No,” the Professor murmured to no one, “I didn’t answer it.”
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
SOMETIME IN THE PAST:
Sarasota, Florida
The Aftermath of a Stalking Incident
A Kind of Lovers’ Quarrel
“Answer me, you piece of shit!”
CRACK!
The Savage Hulk roared as the engine block collided into his meaty skull. The unstoppable patchwork hunk of twisted metal exploded against the stubborn, gamma-powered immovable object. Skin flayed away at the superhuman effort, leaving a cascading trail of green blood flowing down the Hulk’s enraged face.
“Think you can fuck my wife and get away with it, you piece of shit?” the reptilian behemoth known as the Abomination roared, his anger – along with his voice - echoing for miles. “Think that’s gonna be okay with me, comrade?”
The Abomination gripped the gigantic engine block once more and pounded it into the Hulk’s massive chest, eliciting a howl of pain from the emerald figure.
CRUNCH!
The impact shattered apartment windows along the block, as several car alarms went off -screech as if in protest to every violent thing the psychotic Abomination was doing to the colossal Hulk.
An apelike roar of undeniable hate erupted from the Hulk as the Abomination lifted the scrap metal – the last vestiges of an engine block – high above the rampaging beast. The shards of scrap metal glistened with the Hulk’s blood and meat, readying for a killing strike. A scraping sound stirred from the pavement as the Hulk’s arms dragged themselves from the tarmac - the engine block’s remnants already moving towards Savage’s pounding, pounding skull...
KA-KOOM!
Every remaining window in the area erupted as the Hulk brought his mighty hands together in a colossal thunderclap. The thunderclap was a hurricane of sound – a thunderous smack that echoed far wider and sheared at the Abomination far more viciously than any of the colorful bouts of language that Blonsky was spouting off at the felled Banner.
The Abomination clutched fitfully at his ears – his eardrums utterly burst open - as the point-blank thunderclap reverberated for miles at a stretch. The impact had annihilated what was left of the engine, sending the remnants of scrap metal slamming violently into the Abomination’s scaly, reptilian visage. Clutching the bleeding scraps of his face, the beast stumbled off of the Hulk’s beaten body, groaning and cursing in tortured Russian. The Hulk gritted his teeth, gripping his meaty fingers into the tarmac and drug himself instinctively away from the recoiling form of the Abomination.
The mighty beasts had healing factors that would leave them undamaged and in pristine fighting form within minutes. Yet, the devastating attacks had taken their toll, and they both desperately needed those minutes to recover.
Nevertheless, these two enemies would hardly let a little thing like a bleeding chest cavity or a completely-shredded face stop such a sacred tome of hostilities blossoming so beautifully between the two of them.
“Nadia is mine, do you hear me?” the Abomination shrieked, clutching the meaty pieces of his face. “MINE!”
“Puny Banner tells Hulk to tell big, ugly green man to go fuck himself,” the Savage Hulk grunted, massaging the gaping wound in his chest. Reluctantly, he added: “Hulk…Hulk agrees with Puny Banner.”
The Abomination glanced toward Hulk as his severed eyes began growing back. “Heh, of course he does.”
“Ugly green man hurt Betty. Hulk should kill you for hurting Betty!”
“Hurt Betty? I fucking murdered that bitch, you ugly, monosyllabic moron!” the Abomination roared, slamming his fists into the shattered concrete ground below. The mini-quake bounded toward the Hulk’s general direction and missed – mostly due to the fact that Blonsky was barely able to see shapes at the moment with his newly-grown eyes, let alone make out the Hulk’s precise location.
“Hulk only ugly on outside,” the jade behemoth growled, rubbing at the multitude of itchy spots where his hide was rapidly sewing itself back together. “Emil Blonsky hurt pretty Nadia too. Emil Blonsky an Abomination…even before accident.”
The reptilian beast once known as Emil Blonsky narrowed his yellow eyes at the felled figure of the Hulk before him, clenching his wide teeth together.
“Every wife needs to learn her place,” the Abomination grunted, leveling his healed eyes at his prey. He stalked towards the Hulk, idly picking up a car and tossing it at the still-grounded beast before him. The savage monster raised a hefty hand too late, as the beautiful Cadillac collided into the Hulk’s face - which was still growing back its skin from the engine-block-beating. The Hulk howled in pain, clutching at the gaping wound as Blonsky stalked toward him.
“Nadia learned hers long ago,” he growled, tossing more metal detritus at the writhing behemoth’s injured hide as he stalked ever closer. The Abomination ripped a metal pole from the ground, crushing one end into a sharp, driving spike. The reptilian beast held the business end up toward the Hulk’s head. “She knows better than to screw around on her husband.”
“Husband?” a voice echoed from across the street. A feminine voice – angry and derisive: “HA!”
The Abomination whirled around, spotting a lithe, young blonde with a plush nighttime robe pulled tight around her shapely form, outlining her womanly curves. Her husky Russian accent was one that Blonsky was intimately familiar with. The tone was one he was also intimately familiar with. He gritted his teeth into a vicious smirk.
“My Nadia,” the green beast smiled, dropping the metal spike with a resounding clang onto the ruined tarmac that was once a city street. Licking his green lips, he walked menacingly towards the woman known as Nadia Blonsky – his wife.
“Your Nadia,” she grunted, crossing her arms amidst the sweeping winds. “I have not been your Nadia for some time now.”
The Abomination stalked closer, attempting a softer tone this time. “I do – apologize - for not finding you sooner. I—did not wish you to see me this way. Did not wish you to see me, as this monster I’ve become.”
He gestured toward himself – toward the gamma-irradiated form of the Abomination. His wife snorted mockingly, softly touching the scar she held above her brow.
“I saw the monster you were every day,” she snarled. “Every day you took your frustrations from work out on my face, I saw exactly the kind of monster you were. Just now, I see your ugliness on the outside too.”
The Abomination growled. “Do not test my patience, Nadia.”
“Or what?” she screamed, pointing an accusatory finger at the reptilian behemoth. “You’re going to teach me another one of your lessons?”
The Abomination clenched his fingers, and cracked his neck, as he continued his slow, predatory walk towards the angry young woman. “A wife should never talk back to her husband. I would think you’d have learned that lesson by now.”
“You’re so full of shit, Emil!” she roared, a lifetime’s worth of anger and frustration finally seething to the surface. “I was just a goddamn punching bag to you, not simply a wife!”
“Punching bag?” he snorted. “This is not true. Why do you wish to hurt your husband with such venom?”
“What do you call this?” Nadia opened her robe, showing Emil all the scars along her shapely figure. All the welts, the bumps, the raised bruise marks that would never heal correctly. Years and years worth of bruising and beatings, painted in permanent ink upon the beautiful canvas of her body. “True husbands do not do such things to their wives, Emil!”
The memories washed over him suddenly – all the beatings and bruisings. All their petty disagreements and venomous words. All the bad times, magnified a thousandfold upon his soul. His reptilian eyes went wide, as all the beauteous fictions he’d managed to misremember about their marriage slowly became undone.
Funny, how so many of the bad times could be forgotten, pushed out by the bloated memories of only the good? Funny, how so many paint themselves heroes in their own minds when they themselves are indeed the villains of their own stories.
Except, Emil Blonsky was no villain.
No, no, not at all.
He was merely misunderstood. A tortured soul who had not seen his wife in so long, finally allowed a once-in-a-lifetime reunion. Two windswept lovers finally reunited in a glorious, momentous occasion, filled with the sounds of bleating car alarms and shattered fire hydrants spewing geysers of water upon the city streets. He would not be denied this perfect moment, after years of imagining this reunion in his mind. He would hold his wife in his arms, and they would go home and reaffirm their love for one another.
She would tell him how much she’d missed him, and what she’d been up to in the years since they had been apart. He would bask in the sweetness of her stories, pretending her adventures in the States were a complete surprise to him. After all, a true husband would not skulk around in sewers or sleep beneath the oceans, stalking his wife from afar, would he?
All of these things would happen.
Here. Now.
Because Emil Blonsky was the hero of this story, and he deserved to finally take the spoils of his victory against that accursed Banner. Nadia simply didn’t know her place in this story yet; after all, it had been so long for her. She was so far away from their beloved homeland.
He’d have to teach the woman her place again.
That’s all.
“My dearest wife,” the reptilian beast said, mere feet from the blonde now, “it is time to go.”
“Yeah, it is,” she narrowed her eyes, defiantly. She closed her gown as he came ever closer, her point made. She waved him away. “So go.”
“Not without you, my Nadia,” he bristled.
“I am not your Nadia,” she growled, pressing her tiny finger against the Abomination’s thick flesh. “I will never again be your Nadia.”
“How quickly they forget,” the scaly monster gripped his wife’s frame with one massive hand, raising her to eye-level. “You will always be my Nadia.”
“Wrong,” she smiled craning her neck in Banner’s direction. “I will always be his Nadia.”
The reptilian monster’s eyes narrowed in rage and Nadia drew in a frightened breath, knowing that the next response in his vocabulary was a backhand full of rage. She steeled herself against the coming blow, prepared to die rather than let this Abomination violate her once more.
Emil Blonsky, not about to let some female embarrass him further, raised his hand upon her. Part of his mind wondered what would happen to her body once he struck her – the other part of him could care less. The months in traction would give her time to learn who was boss.
Let this be another lesson to you, Nadia, he thought, raised his reptilian claw, aiming at the scar he’d once sown so long ago upon her brow. A woman should always know her--
SHUCK.
The Abomination’s eyes went wide.
Nadia’s eyes popped open as her world went sideways, her lithe figure falling out of the Abomination’s claw, tumbling toward the ground.
The blonde landed roughly on the strewn tarmac of the street, the breath knocked out of her. She coughed, feeling shock at the fall but…feeling no pain.
No pain, she thought, confused. Impossible. The blow should have crippled me.
She peered up from the dusty ground, tracing her gaze across the thick scaly legs of her husband and brought her view up toward his massive chest. A chest which now – suddenly – had a gigantic metal pole sticking through it. Sharpened at one end, Nadia recognized it as the exact same metal pole the Abomination had dropped next to the injured form of the Incredible Hulk.
Nadia gasped once more as she beheld a colossal form behind the Abomination’s pierced chest - the colossal form of the Savage Hulk. The massive, apelike behemoth had driven the massive metal post straight through the Abomination’s chest – just missing the beast’s heart by inches. In Savage’s eyes, she saw an insane, bottomless fury.
But this was unlike the fury she’d seen in her husband’s eyes. This was a pure kind of fury. Righteous. Altruistic. The kind of fury thrust upon the good men of the world when the bad men hold all the cards. The kind of fury that good men have when they witness pain and injustice around them, while they themselves are helpless to end the cruelty and injustice that brought that pain to light.
Except, this Savage Hulk was far from helpless.
The Abomination shook, frozen in horror as his punctured organs spouted their fluids richly and freely upon his well-muscled chest. He looked down at the metal pike sticking out of his body as he heard a voice behind him. A low, guttural, ominous growl that sounded nothing like what he knew to be the Savage Hulk.
It was a commanding voice, a warning voice. A voice that itself was its own force of nature. It was a sound that shook Emil Blonsky to his very core:
“No more hitting.”
The Abomination gasped as a gigantic hand clamped itself around his face, craning his neck back hard. As the Hulk pulled the reptilian beast’s head backwards, he launched the mound of violent muscle that was his knee squarely into the back of the Abomination’s skull.
THUNK.
The Abomination’s eyes went wide and rolled back, as the shockwave echoed across the shattered city block. Emil Blonsky’s face went slack and he crashed hard into the pavement, the Hulk’s knee having delivered the final knockout blow to the back of his head.
With a mighty bellow, the Savage beast picked up Emil’s Blonsky’s unconscious body and launched it skyward, angrily watching the abusive husband taper off into the distance until he was a long-forgotten memory.
Suddenly, the Hulk felt a gentle touch upon his thick, calloused hide.
He turned around, gazing into the tiny face of the lovely Nadia Blonsky, who seemed to gaze so deeply into his soul just as another beautiful woman had once done long before her.
“Betty?” he murmured gently, his gigantic green finger gently brushing away the strands of blonde hair away from her face. He murmured once more, just as softly, realizing his mistake. “Not Betty.”
“No,” she smiled up at the behemoth, watching him shrink and shrivel slowly down into her knight in shining armor. Slowly collapsing upon himself until he was the simple fugitive she’d let into her doorstep so many months ago. The man who’d been filling the loneliness of her soul with his warmth, his charm and his kindness.
She clutched him to her, reveling in the warmth of his naked body. They held each other on that destroyed stretch of street for some time, as if it was the last time.
A teardrop fell upon her beauteous cheek as her lips parted slightly.
“No, not Betty,” she said in a hushed, choked whisper. “Not your Betty.”
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
THE PRESENT:
The Arizona Desert
Arriving at the Waystation
The Long Night Ends
“Betty,” the Professor whispered gently to the sweeping desert winds. “Just hold on. I’m almost there, baby. Almost there...”
The Professor-Hulk leapt across the final hill, scaling the final half-mile of his long journey in one, gigantic stride. At the apex of his leap, he saw a sight that made his heart drop all the way back down to the cold, dark desert below, long before his hulking body ever could.
The long-decommissioned Hulkbuster base – The Waystation. The one being used as a black site for Betty Banner’s cryogenically-preserved body.
Only someone else had gotten there first.
The Professor’s eyes bulged out of his head at the sight of the Waystation ripped completely asunder. Steel girders and heavy-machinery detritus surrounded the outer fence. The fence itself completely ripped off its hinges. Seven-foot titanium beams and barbed wire fencing shredded like wet wrapping paper, melded into twisted heaps of metal and wet meat. The warning towers surrounding the base – those that were still standing – leaned at unseemly angles, half-toppled over from the destructive rampage of whatever creature breached the perimeter.
“Calm down, Banner,” the Professor breathed out, desperately attempting to calm his myriad aspects, as well as himself. “Whoever did this…ahem, whoever did this….might have been after something…something else…?”
The Professor’s breath choked in his throat as he counted at least seven shattered wrecks of what were once Hulkbuster units, simply strewn haphazardly about the landscape. They were stained red – popped like titanium-lined pimples, oozing out with the bloody mess of what were once highly-trained Hulkbuster pilots. On the left, he could see a tank – crumpled and twisted, but still recognizable – sticking out from the wrecked siding of a missile silo. He could also see the remnants of a platoon of men, the bottom halves of which laid still just to the right. The tank had clearly been thrown through the firing squadron, cleaving them all neatly in half before slamming into the now-defunct missile silo.
The Professor’s mind wobbled at the horrific scene, dragging his eyes with sorrow across all the other meaty corpses – all the other lives destroyed. All the military husbands and wives now widowed, the army brats orphaned by whatever monstrosity it was that tore through here.
A ghastly plume of smoke billowed off into the horizon, carried lightly by the prevailing winds. The spotlights cast an eerie pallor into the entire wreckage of the base – as most of them had been mangled or twisted away at bizarre angles – complete with the intermittent spits and snarls bursting from broken high-power electric lines. Several of the spotlights; however, shone directly into the center of the base. As he came down from his leap and the base rushed up to meet him, the Professor could finally make out what it was that shone so profoundly in those spotlights.
It was that sight, which made his heart fill once more with unending sorrow:
A massive trail of blood and pulp – the torn-asunder remains of a single human being – spread crudely into the shape of a heart.
As the Professor landed, his gaze remained fixed upon the awful sight. Even as his muscles shrunk and collapsed into his body, bright green skin discoloring as it gave way to soft, pink flesh, Banner couldn’t look away. Even as a fresh contingent of soldiers rushed up from the subterranean depths of the eviscerated Waystation, drawing their automatic weapons upon the intruder, Bruce Banner’s gaze never wavered.
He stood upon tiny pink legs made of soft jelly, shaking terribly as he collapsed upon the ground. He brought a shaking hand to the blood-soaked remains, shaped like a bleeding red heart upon the cool Arizona sands. The remains of a beautiful woman, torn asunder by a vicious, homicidal madman.
The soldiers cocked their weapons as the tears began to fall from Bruce Banner’s tired, bloodshot eyes.
“Betty,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry, baby.”
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
SOMETIME IN THE EPILOGUE:
The scaly-green monster watched the events at the Waystation unfold on a tiny old cathode-ray tube TV screen, slithering its slimy tongue in abject satisfaction.
The monster – with a heart blacker than the darkest night – slurped up Bruce Banner’s agony in the outside world with unfounded glee, as the hated puny Banner sat amongst a heart-shaped shrine of human remains.
The slithering beast’s companion – a reddish-brown beast with oily scales - smiled a sadist’s smile. “Feeling the guilt now, aren’t we? Betraying your teammates. Stealing the secrets of Extremis. Building the prototype enhancile. The tryst with Nadia. And this whole thing with Betty. Heh, I’d say you’re feeling guilty about a whole lot of things.”
The dark beast looked at his scaly-green comrade, who was high in the thralls of deep, delicious delight. He petted the snake-like monster’s snout bemusedly. “A subconscious push here, a gentle nudge there, and here we all are. I have to admit, this has gone a lot smoother than the homicidal blitzkrieg Guilt and I were planning to unleash upon that sickening Banner whelp.”
The scaly Guilt Hulk coiled himself into the lap of the voluptuous orange-skinned woman that sat on the couch between the two sadistic monsters. The seductive woman, wearing skintight violet leather, patted the Guilt Hulk’s tender underbelly in soft soothing strokes, smiling as the slithering beast purred like a satisfied kitten. As she did so to the first beast, she placed her soft hand upon the face of the second beast, planting a passionate, seductive kiss upon the chapped, venomous lips of the Devil Hulk.
“Just think, boys,” Mercy said melodiously, her warmth breath lingering upon the Devil’s red lips,” this is only just the beginning…”
AUTHOR’S GAMMA-NOTES:
*** Bruce and Nadia’s tryst and the resulting destruction in Sarasota takes place sometime after his escape from Thunderbolt Ross in M2K’s Hulk Volume 1, #6, during the time he was in hiding from the government before M2K’s Avengers #58 & 59. )
***The Abomination killed Betty Banner in Incredible Hulk #467. While she was undergoing treatment for radiation sickness, Emil Blonsky substituted a pack of human blood for a pack of his own gamma-irradiated blood. The blood transfusion during the operation was what did poor Mrs. Banner in.
***We last saw Guilt Hulk, Devil Hulk and Mercy in M2K’s Hulk Volume 2, #0. Hmmm, wonder what they’ve been up to since then...
Next Issue:
The troops at the Waystation gleefully execute Banner. Leader takes over the world. The Abomination kills, well, literally everything.
The End.
Okay, maybe it doesn’t work out quite that way. Nevertheless, in the next issue, you’ll see good ol’ Thunderbolt Ross, a little bit of Banner, a little bit of Savage, a lotta bit of Professor, a teensy-bit of Extremis, and maybe even a pinch of revenge-taking. Maybe even a splash of Abomination and Leader too, if you’re good.
~Robert Brault
Previously, in the HULK...
A man named Bruce Banner saved a young teenager from a gamma bomb detonation in the Arizona Desert. Selflessly tossing said teenager into a safety bunker, Bruce Banner was transformed into the horrific behemoth called: the Incredible HULK:
However, Banner has never been the most stable individual. Bruce Banner suffers Dissociative Identity Disorder, with multiple personalities to contend with, each personality less stable than the last. As a result, Bruce Banner didn’t just transform into one Incredible Hulk after the Terrible Day of the Gamma Bomb...he transformed into many.
Which Hulk he becomes on any given day, of course, is always open to interpretation:
The Savage Green Hulk - A childish, unthinking brute of unrelenting physical power. An engine of mindless destruction that gets stronger and stronger with rage.
The Cunning Grey Hulk - a sneaky, manipulative, cunning adversary whose strength pales in comparison to the Jade Giant, yet whose devious motives are always suspect.
The Idealized Professor – a bright green Hulk with the mind of Bruce Banner, the physical power of the Green Hulk and the devious, cunning tactics of the Grey Hulk. The Professor remains the most idealized version of the Hulk in Bruce Banner’s puny eyes.
The Guilt Hulk - A lizard-like creature that represents all Bruce’s hidden, repressed guilt and shame concerning Bruce’s....tortured past.
The Devil Hulk - A chained monster at the back of his mind. Enraged at the world at large, dedicated to destroying it at all costs.
The Professor had been the dominant persona for some time. However, since losing the love of his life - Betty Ross Banner - to a vindictive radiation-fueled murder by the homicidal Abomination, the Professor had retreated to a world within the safety of Bruce Banner’s mind, where he could be with the woman he’d loved for so long.
In lieu of the Professor, the Banner/Savage Hulk amalgam had joined up with the Avengers, saving the world with Banner’s undeniable genius and the Savage Hulk’s unimaginable (yet untamable) might. Things had been good for Bruce Banner - he’d found the support of his Avengers teammates, proven himself a hero and been able to turn the Savage Hulk’s ferocity toward a decent goal - helping others.
That is, until Bruce got a letter from Mr. Blue, with proof that Betty was alive - comatose, cryogenically-preserved and captive inside a secret government installation. Mr. Blue (the current alias of the Leader) was apparently the only one who could deliver Betty – alive and well - to the lovelorn Banner.
But not without a price, of course.
Isn’t that always the way these things go?
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
THE PRESENT:
The Arizona Desert
The Professor’s Hideaway
The Long Night Begins
The Professor looked upon the photograph of his wife. The same photo he’d been gazing at, sullenly, for so many weeks now, remembering each and every curve of her face. Every smile. Every memory. Each and every moment he’d spent with her, before…
He’d been looking at the same photo, since Mr. Blue had given it to him all those weeks ago, as proof that the once-murdered Betty Banner was still technically alive. With Mr. Blue’s oh-so-generous assistance, she could be brought back to him once more.
Now, the only thing that the Professor had to do to get her back was to give up the secrets of Extremis. A fair trade, as Mr. Blue had put it.
Carrot and the stick.
“I’m so sorry, Betty,” he said, folding the picture up and placing it upon the workbench. He picked up the now-completed Extremis enhancile and made his way out of the lab, into the outside world. “I’m so sorry I gave up on you.”
With gamma-powered might, he shot off like a cannon toward his destination.
Yet, no matter how far he ran or how high he leapt, there would be no outrunning the pangs of guilt. A terrible guilt that had been eating away at him these past few weeks even as he worked on creating an Extremis prototype from the notes stolen from the Avengers mainframe.
A guilt worse than betraying the Avengers, and falling into league with the mysterious Mr. Blue.
It was a terrible, gnawing guilt, which threatened to destroy everything he’d held dear. For even if the Professor brought Betty back now, how could any of the four of them (Banner, Fixit, Savage or himself) explain all the things he’d done while she was away?
And all the things he would have yet to do, to get her back?
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
SOMETIME IN THE PAST:
AFTER THE TIMERAFT, BEFORE THE AVENGERS
Sarasota, Florida
The King’s Coup
A Nice, Quiet Place to Brood
So what do I do now, puny Banner? The scientist thought to himself mockingly, sitting on the edge of the barstool lost in thought.
The King’s Coop was a late night dive bar in Sarasota, Florida. It was the kind of dive bar that didn’t attract too much attention. It was the kind of place people of importance would never let themselves get caught dead in. It was the kind of place where no one asked too many questions – barkeeps or patrons alike.
Fortunately, for the fugitive Doctor Banner, it was the perfect place to lay low, and drown away his sorrows in relative peace.
Except peace was the last thing his puny mind would allow him.
Bruce Banner sat in silence, his baseball cap hung low as he tugged at his second Miller High Life bottle. He let the crisp taste sit on his tongue, the bubbles giving him just that one moment of peace in the insanity which had become of his life.
The battles in space. The Negative Zone. Thiai, and her damned Timeraft. Good ol’ Thunderbolt Ross and his plan to shove me in a dark, damp hole for the rest of my miserable existence. Banner took another swig. Maybe I should have let him do just that.
“Like you ever stood a chance in Hell of that happening, ol’ pal,” Mr. Fixit rumbled merrily at him, laughing sardonically from the Hell that was Banner’s own mind. “You’re destined to be on the run - the good ol’ loner dodging the Feds - for the rest of your life. You know that?”
Bruce Banner nearly snarled and retorted verbally at the granite bully, but the realization of all the other patrons at the bar as well as those in the booths, made him think better of it.
“That’s right, Brucie. Don’t want to seem ‘crazy’ to the normal folk. Don’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves, do we?” the bully kept pushing and poking at him – ever-joyfully poking at the bear.
Banner scrapped at the wooden bar slowly with the Miller bottle, grinding his teeth in frustration yet completely unable to respond.
Suddenly, the dull tones of the piano transformed into a stronger, vibrant melancholy. Distinctive, yet enchanting just the same – an enchantment that drowned out all the shouting madness in Bruce’s twisted mind as well as all the mumbling drunkards that littered the quiet dive bar. Noticing the change, Bruce’s head popped up, and he swung his swivel barstool toward the front to see what had caused the change.
He was just in time - to see her:
Captivating.
Enchanting.
Serene.
Lovely blonde hair trimmed neatly along the sides, playful bangs cascading down across the right side of her face – giving her an air of seductive mystery. The sparkling white dress outlined her every womanly curve perfectly, a shimmering skirt flittering in the light breeze along perfectly-toned thighs. She stood proud upon the stage with glimmering white wedges, her eyes cast out among the audience, searching for someone pure to sing her heavenly tune to.
Her demure eyes reached his and - for just a perfect moment - all was right with the world. Bruce Banner lost himself in her sweet face, her intense gaze finding all the secrets in Bruce’s heart that he’d kept hidden even from himself.
The singer’s soft lips quivered. Her right eyebrow arched, ever-so-slightly - her own interest suddenly piqued as well. Bruce – the stranger in the baseball cap at the bar - had pierced her soul too, somehow seeing far into the singer’s beauteous, yet closed-to-the-world heart. Perhaps he could sense the same pangs of dark, wretched loneliness she herself had ached with for so many, many months. A loneliness that extended to her very soul – a loneliness which they were both all-too-familiar with.
The lounge singer known as Nadia Blonsky sang her heart out that night, to a room of half-aware liars and cheats, booze-hounds and hotheads, sometime-abusers and idle sadists. In a place like this, such innocence in motion as what Nadia displayed on-stage was mistaken for something altogether cheaper. In a place like this, the half-dead and already-dying would give their very souls for a night with a woman like this. They longed for lady with a body like hers.
Unluckily for them, she’d found another whom she’d rather share her soul with.
Nadia finished her set early, and sat down with the enigmatic stranger she would come to know as Bruce Banner. They would talk of their pasts, and their adventures, their dreams and desires - trying - and failing - to not let the other get too close. They’d be shocked to find that, amid a sea of desperate loners and abusive sycophants, they somehow found someone that was real. That was pure, amidst the sea of human flotsam about them.
They would be chatting there until closing time, laughing with one another like old friends. Nadia would take Bruce him home with her that night, where they would become much more than old friends.
The lovers would stay together for some time after that night.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
THE PRESENT:
The Arizona Desert
On the Way to the Waystation
Abominable Thoughts
The scaly green behemoth drooled idly, using his colossal leg muscles to charge forcefully through the desert sands.
His thick, scaly hide quivered lightly, muscles bulging with unnatural power. His veins pulsed and pumped unknown fluids throughout his body, causing them to glow with a strange blue hue. His eyes – bloodshot, pupil-less balls of cataract-white – stared vacantly at the horizon, purposed fully for their new task. Small blue-grey tendrils stuck out from the back of his bulbous head. The scaly flesh at the base of those tendrils was lumpy and irritated, as if suffering from some horrific infection even the Abomination’s mighty healing factor could not overcome. The monster’s face remained expressionless – motionless – as the muscles and sinew of his mighty body devastated whatever obstacles lay in his homicidal wake.
Inside the Abomination’s scaly, infected hide – tiny, unseen creatures conducted the beast like a marionette towards a singular purpose.
At first, Emil Blonsky – the monstrous Abomination – had struggled.
Oh, how valiantly he had struggled!
When the chitinous creatures had latched onto him - deep in the quiet ocean darkness that remained Blonksy’s singular respite from the cruel tragedy of his life – he had frantically struggled to rid himself of the monstrous things. But like an army of ants, they’d just kept coming – wave after wave of the tiny creatures.
Invading his sanctuary. Violating his body. Drilling their way through his hide with unstoppable adamantium pincers. Corrupting his thoughts with their mechanical droning. Transforming his body and forcing him to be a soldier in some unspoken war that was clearly not his own.
Or, so he thought.
In-between fits of exhaustion, as wave after wave of the chitinous creatures overtook his nervous system – Blonsky could finally could hear the simple little messages that the droning things were speaking amongst one another. As they’d leeched and nestled inside his nervous systems and sucked their ways into his brain tissues, he could finally listen to the beats of the creature’s hard-skinned drums: They’d been given a new target to apprehend.
Once Blonsky heard the name of this particular target, he gave up all resistance against the creature’s overwhelming onslaught. He’d even welcomed their assistance, despite his reservations against their currently-uneven alliance.
Emil Blonsky – the hideous Abomination – let the unseen, chitinous things beneath his skin move his body about. He let the vermin nest inside his motor functions, pulling sections of his brain over themselves, burying each other in the warm cocoon of his twisted mind. He let the vermin send his body in the right direction – toward the place where their mutual enemy lay, waiting for him to pounce.
The hideous monster simply had to wait – bide his time as the robot-things led him to their prey. Then, Blonsky could finish the job he’d started all those years ago in that surgical bay.
When the Abomination found Bruce Banner’s precious little wife, he would rip the screaming little thing apart, and paint the Arizona desert with her blood.
This time, he would leave nothing to chance.
There would be no body left to resurrect.
The Abomination was going to rip the sleeping little bitch into itty, bitty shreds, and there was nothing that putrid wretch Banner could fucking do about it.
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SOMETIME IN THE PAST:
The Uptown Apartment of Nadia Blonsky
A Quiet Bedroom Touched by Precious Moonlight
...and the Simple Peace that Never Lasts.
The sleeping beauty stirred wordlessly, snuggling closer into Bruce Banner’s bare chest. Drowsily, Bruce’s eyes began to flutter and stir, and the word “Betty” almost escaped from his lips.
He sighed, clutching Nadia to his chest once more, and gently kissed her forehead.
Betty is gone, he told himself. Bruce gazed up at the ceiling of Nadia’s bedroom – a ceiling he’d come to know so well these past few months, half-awake mind still sulking with a sweaty mixture of melancholy and shame. For some time now, she’s been gone.
Betty – my wife - is gone. She died. She died, and we had the funeral for her. We had to have a closed-casket-funeral for her, because her skin was mottled with radiation poisoning.
She is never coming back. Never. Coming. Back. Bruce. She wouldn’t want you to pine over her memory for the rest of your life. She would want this - for you to get out there, find someone new. She would want you to be happy. Wouldn’t she?
“Yeah,” a voice in his head laughed. “I mean, Betts really did love it when we were shacked up with the redhead, didn’t she?”
“Shut up,” he gritted his teeth, whispering angrily to the empty black room.
“Hhrrrmm?” the sleepy blonde in his arms murmured, her warm body pressing closer toward him. “…you say somethin’ Bruce?”
“Hmm?” he muttered, turning toward the half-awake Nadia. “No, no, no. It’s nothing. Go back to sleep, Nadia.”
She laughed huskily, and Bruce’s heart warmed with the seductive tone of her Russian accent. “ ‘kay, beloved.”
Beloved? Bruce thought to himself. That one was new. He breathed out slowly as his back straightened, rigid once he realized the other possibility: Maybe he wasn’t the only one thinking about a lost love…
Could it be true? Could we simply be looking for the missing parts of ourselves in each other?
But why? How could Nadia still love Emil? How could she miss him? From everything she’s told me about him, he was a ruthless, posturing, controlling, cold-hearted son of a bitch behind closed doors, even before he became the Abomination. She’s shown me the physical scars he’d left in his wake. On her back, her hands, her ribs, her face…
“Why’d Mom love good ol’ Brian?” a grey monotone bullied his way into his consciousness. Bruce looked upon the sleeping Nadia and resisted the urge to tell the grey bully to go fuck himself. “Why’d she stay, ‘stead of stabbing a steak knife into his gullet when she had the chance?”
Bruce shook away the uncomfortable thoughts, closing his eyes hard.
Nevertheless, he was right.
Love was a tricky, complicated thing.
One person could be everything to another: Sweet, kind, generous, gracious, accepting. Gentle and forgiving. And yet, the love that ought to coalesce between the two may never truly gain traction. The relationship that ought to form is never more than just facade. Then again, another set of lovers could lie, cheat, steal and beat the living Christ out of one another, and the passions they’d hold for each other in their hearts could fill an ocean.
Who’s to say that – despite the abuse – what Nadia felt for her husband at the time was any less real than if he were a kinder, decent soul? Who’s to say she was wrong, for loving someone that could do that to her?
Maybe, Bruce Banner grimaced, looking down upon her. That doesn’t mean you deserved that kind of cruelty. That doesn’t forgive Emil, and all the things he did to you. All the things he wasn’t for you.
That brings up an even worse question: am I any better than him? Bruce wondered idly. Aren’t I using you as a place to hang my hat? A respite, until the government watchdogs track me down again, like they always do? As a means of fighting off that terrible, soul-crushing loneliness with the pleasant company of a woman, and the manufactured laughter that comes with light conversation? For the feeling of normalcy, despite the insanity my life has always been? Aren’t I using you, Nadia, as a substitute for the woman your horrible, GODDAMN PESTILENCE of an ex-husband took from me?
“Nadia,” Bruce whispered, his arms gently stroking the blonde’s bare back, stirring her back to consciousness.
“Mm..nnnff…Bruce?” she murmured, blinking her eyes and pulling her head up slowly. The rays of the full moon gently shone in from the window, framing her eyes as the light made her blonde locks twinkle with a bright, silver sheen.
Her beautiful Russian accent made him smile, and he could feel the heat of her breath upon him. He could still remember the taste of her lips upon his. His eyes gazed gingerly upon her bare shoulder, her bra strap moving just so slightly with the ease of her delicate movements. Her lips parted ever-so-lightly, and he wondered if – just for a moment – he could just fall in love with this woman who was not his wife. If he – just for a moment – could put away the overwhelming guilt he felt with himself for putting them both in this situation.
Closing his eyes, he sighed heavily. Now was not the time for such fond, blissful thoughts.
Now was the time for the truth. Before things got any more complicated.
“Nadia, there’s something I need to tell you,” Bruce said, gazing upon Nadia’s moonlit eyes, watching them sparkle like diamonds.
She sighed knowingly, turning her head to the side as she tended to do. A subconscious gesture, but he knew it was because of the scars that Emil had left upon her.
Bruce’s face softened. He was about to leave his own green scar upon her.
“Don’t be coy, darling Bruce,” she said softly, caressing his face and blowing a soft kiss upon his lips, breaking the pregnant pause that had been hanging between them. “Say what you feel you must.”
“Nadia, I—“ he spoke. He caressed her face longingly, running his fingers across the long-healed scar from her husband’s cruel hand, feeling the raised flesh upon his fingers. He wished his fingers could heal all the unspoken scars he knew that Emil had left upon her beauteous, tender features. Bruce tried to pull the words together he knew he needed to say, when a dark shadow played across her sweetly-smiling face.
Bruce’s gaze sauntered away from the beauty toward the window sill, where the moonlight expanse was suddenly replaced by a perverse darkness.
A darkness that moved.
A darkness with scales, and reptilian features.
A darkness with reptilian eyes, narrowed into homicidal slits.
Bruce recognized the creature instantly. But it was Nadia, who recognized that look – that same, terrifying look that signaled nothing but violence and misery on the horizon in her difficult, strained marriage to Emil Blonsky.
Now was no different.
“…Emil?” she gasped.
And the peaceful noises of the night were drowned out by a jaded, jealous roar.
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SOMETIME IN THE PAST:
Outside the Uptown Apartment of Nadia Blonsky
A Noisy Bedroom Touched by Jaded, Jealous Rage
...and the Everlasting Madness that Follows.
THOOM!
Half of the building fell away in an instant. Nadia’s screams were deafening as Bruce instinctively clutched the blonde in his arms, as if to protect her. As the floor shook and disintegrated below them, the couple fell into freefall amidst a turbulent mass of falling wooden beams and debris. Bruce’s body mass tripled in an instant, his limbs providing a safe haven for the shapely singer’s form as ceiling and tile fell against them like shrapnel. Bricks and mortar, wood planks and soot slammed hard into the thick, calloused hide of the ever-expanding Bruce Banner, bouncing off his coiled muscle as if they weighed nothing. They crashed hard into the subbasement of the once-apartment building, smoke and debris billowing around them in thick, choking clouds. Nadia, shrouded in the protective arms of the incredible Hulk, coughed hard against the rising dust, belting it out like a career smoker. The behemoth protecting her simply grunted as the debris continued to collide against them, with exactly the same effect on his massive form as if it were confetti.
The rest of the building fell upon the both of them as the Abomination watched, coiling and uncoiling his massive digits in wait, like a stone-cold killer waiting for his prey to emerge from its hiding place. The mass of twisted metal shifted and sank, the beast unfazed at the severed body parts and the groaning things sticking out of the rubble that had once been humans. Emil Blonsky was rarely ever concerned with the damage he’d left in his wake. As always, he was focused on the one thing.
“Nadia,” the Abomination growled low, his homicidal eyes gazing upon the downed building with some semblance of satisfaction. “Serves you right, you cheating whore.”
His eyes narrowed further as the debris began to sift and sink in ever so slightly.
“Ah,” he grunted. “Fight left in you yet, you piece of shit?”
It shifted again, upsetting slightly toward the right as if to respond to the Abomination’s comment.
“Good,” he muttered. “ ‘cuz I’m not fucking done with you yet.”
Like a volcano, the outermost pile of debris exploded upwards, shards of shattered building bursting into the air in all directions. A green meteor flew out, trailing bits of rooftop and broken piping in its wake. The Abomination watched the meteor bound away, landing with a deafening thud about a half mile distant from the wreckage.
“No, no, no,” the Abomination growled, scaly lips curling into a sneer. “Neither of you gets away that easily.”
The homicidal monster bounded away after them.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
THE PRESENT:
The Arizona Desert
On the Way to the Waystation
Dark Thoughts, Greek Chorus
The enraged green behemoth growled angrily, using his colossal leg muscles to storm mightily across the desert sands.
The enigmatic Mr. Blue had offered the mighty Professor a trade: Give him Extremis, and he would resurrect Betty Banner. Mr. Blue had given him the picture as proof she was still alive and preserved – not buried in Arlington cemetery as he and all the other mourners had been led to believe. Blue had given him specific contact instructions for the later trade and delivery. Mr. Blue had said that certain…creatures…in the government were responsible for this act, and that Banner’s only concern was the finishing of the Extremis module.
It had taken some weeks to synthesize from the notes he’d stolen off of the Avengers Mainframe, but he’d finally created the Extremis enhancile – a simple injection module that could be used to inject the Extremis virus into a live subject. From there, Extremis would re-write the repair centers of their body, encoding the revamped DNA into the test subject. The person’s immune system would then take over, replacing the old, weak cells with the new modified matrix.
Nevertheless, in the wrong hands, Extremis could be a weapon of mass destruction.
It had taken some constant, incessant, infuriating, endless, non-stop prodding from the puny scientist but in the end, Bruce Banner had finally convinced the stubborn Professor that Mr. Blue could be trusted about as far as either of them could throw him. Well, about as far as the puny Banner could throw him. The Professor clearly had a bit of an edge in the throwing-people department.
They both realized they needed an ace in the hole if this was all going to work. They needed to know where Mr. Blue was keeping Betty.
It had taken Bruce Banner some time to ferret out Betty’s location from the image that Mr. Blue had sent. Despite the Professor’s insistence on finishing Extremis first, Banner had also spent hours upon hours analyzing and cross-referencing the markings on the room’s walls with every top secret, classified, need-to-know database he could access and, with his formidable hacking skills, had discovered Betty’s location at last: A long-decommissioned Hulkbuster base deep in the Arizona Desert called The Waystation.
Good ol’ Thunderbolt Ross himself had given the order – to cryogenically preserve Betty’s body until a cure for her radiation-poisoning could be found. Was Mr. Blue a worker at the facility? Had he taken it over, and was operating out of it covertly? Was Mr. Blue even in the facility? These were questions neither Bruce, nor the Professor could answer. All they knew was, they had to get to Betty before Mr. Blue found out they already knew her location – or all bets were off.
The Professor rubbed at the tender spot on his wrist, knowing that what laid inside was the last, best chance of seeing his wife again. The problem with freezing Betty’s body was that, by all accounts, Betty Ross Banner was still technically dead.
Enter: The Extremis Enhancile.
If the Professor could keep her body alive long enough – i.e. getting her veins pumping blood again through artificial means – he could use the Extremis enhancile to re-write her body’s immune system. The enhancile would re-make her from the inside-out: Alive, back at full health, and forever immune to radiation sickness.
Betty’s proximity to the Hulk for all those years was the initial trigger for her radiation poisoning. However, it was the blood transfusion pack that Emil Blonsky had switched out during her surgery for the first condition that killed her. So, while the Abomination murdered his wife, she never would’ve been sick in the first place if he hadn’t been for the Hulk’s gamma-irradiated body.
The guilt over bringing his wife to the operating table in the first place had almost been too much for all four of their alter egos to bear. If the Professor could set her up with a healing factor this time, almost on par with his own, perhaps he wouldn’t have to worry about...
“You know Betty just as well as I do,” Bruce Banner said, earning a disapproving grunt from the Professor-Hulk, who was still leaping tall through the Arizona Desert. “Do you think she wants a healing factor like that?”
The green goliath grinned. “Couldn’t hurt.”
“Of course not,” the scientist laughed. “Perhaps we’ll just add some wings and turn her into the Harpy again? Or turn her into a regular gamma-powered She-Hulk, like our cousin Jen. Though, Jen really has the She-Hulk thing nailed down. Maybe if we give her a different color – like a mauve, or a red hue. Yes, a Red She-Hulk!”
“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” the Professor mumbled.
“Nevertheless, you do see my point, yes?” Bruce Banner raised an eyebrow, pointing his pipe at the stubborn green giant. “Betty does not want to be anything other than a natural-born human being.”
“Look Banner, I’m not in the mood for this—!” the Professor snarled, a witty retort at-the-ready, when a second voice sounded off in his other ear:
“Ah, just let the Professor give Betts the healing factor, you twittering milksop,” the grey Hulk – Joe Fixit – harrumphed. “Dames never really know what they want.”
“Oh good, it’s the sexist, womanizing brute,” the scientist chuckled, breathing out a thin stream of smoke from his pipe. “Let’s hear his thoughts on the subject.”
“You better watch it, punk,” Fixit grumbled, tapping off the worn, ashy edge of his fat Cuban cigar and grinding his teeth with a noise akin to slabs of granite scrapping across concrete. “All I know is that, if I’d had this…Extremis whats-its…when the redhead was on death’s door…”
“…you would’ve charged in, like the Goodfella-in-Shining-Armor you are,” the Professor finished, snidely smirking towards the former legbreaker’s voice as he continued to glide across the endless desert. “Never mind what Marlo would’ve wanted.”
“…wanted Rick Jones, is what she wanted…” Bruce Banner mumbled under his breath, juuuust loud enough for the granite-faced Hulk to hear.
“The fuck’d you just say, milksop?” Fixit roared, rage boiling over, ready to wipe that smirk off Bruce Banner’s face. “I don’t remember you asking Betts if you could bang the Abomination’s wife’s blonde brains out, did you?”
“It’s about time you heard the truth, you grey simpleton,” the scientist stood up, red-faced with rage. He faced the granite beast and pointed his pipe at the towering menace. “The real Marlo Chandler chose Rick Jones over you not out of circumstance, but because he is a better human being than you. You’re a loudmouth, a brute, a bully and a pestering, posturing cretin. Don’t sully the rest of us with your own inferiority complex. Nadia’s good name need not be tarnished coming from your loud mouth. Go crawl back into my subconscious and crawl into bed with that pale imitation of Marlo Chandler you’ve invented, inside that Vegas that Never Was.”
Joe Fixit – the grey Hulk – smiled, taking off his gloves and pin-striped suit, and cracking his knuckles loudly. His face was chiseled with an undeniable, uncontainable, boiling hate. “That’s it. You’re fucking dead, twerp.”
“BOTH OF YOU - THAT’S ENOUGH!” the Professor bellowed, drowning out the noise from both sets of Banners.
Outside Banner’s mind, the sound waves from the Professor’s roar blasted across the horizon, loud enough to literally shake the desert for miles. While within his mind, both the scientist and the gray brute shook their collective heads, the Professors magnanimous growl still ringing wildly against their eardrums.
“Both of you, shut the hell up,” the Professor grunted. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”
“Hmmph!” the grey-faced brute grunted, crossing his arms and turning his back towards Banner.
“Hmmph!” Banner grunted, crossing his arms and turning his back towards the grey-faced brute.
The Professor – while still running – turned toward the stubborn ghostly apparition on his left, then towards the stubborn ghostly apparition on his right. “We. Are not. Giving. My wife. A healing factor. Green wings. Red scaly skin. OR red goddamn hair, because I know that’s what you’re thinking, Mr. Fixit!”
“GRRRR! Fine then, you idiots do whatever makes you happy. I got better places to be,” the grey brute grunted, stomping off away from the Professor before disappearing in a puff of smoke back into the Professor’s labyrinth mind. The apparition stomped off toward the glitzier, more glamorous pleasures awaiting him in of Las Vegas.
Perhaps even, toward the one redhead he would never admit he would always miss.
The Professor continued running toward the base.
“Very nicely done, Professor,” the scientist said, clapping his hands. “Bravo.”
“Shut up,” the Professor grunted, itching at the Extremis enhancile in his forearm. “You’re just as bad as he is.”
The scientist rolled his eyes, puffing away on his pipe, as they both continued to glare at the horizon. Toward the Waystation. Towards the one woman the both of them could agree they missed more than anything in the world.
“If Mr. Blue finds out we’re onto him,” Bruce Banner clicked his tongue, glancing sidelong at the stomping Professor-Hulk, “you’re going to give him the Extremis Enhancile, aren’t you?”
“We already discussed this,” the Professor grumbled.
The scientist clicked his tongue again, refusing to be deterred. “I know we’re going to go in there, guns ablazing. Busting down the front doors, trying to get to Betty before Mr. Blue can have his people surround her.”
“Your point being?”
“What if he threatens to hurt her? To kill her, even?”
“Betty is his only bargaining chip, Banner,” the Professor grunted. “Without her, we have no reason to give him Extremis.”
“You’re so adamant that it won’t come to that.”
“It won’t.”
“And if it does?”
“It won’t.”
“But if it does come to that,” Banner droned. “Would you hand over the Extremis enhancile to someone who – for all we know – is working with Hydra, or AIM, or some other sick terrorist cell ready to release it on a populated area?”
“It won’t. Come. To that,” the Professor remained resolute in his stance. ”I won’t let anything happen to Betty.”
“You never answered my question,” Bruce Banner stated, grinding his teeth against his smoker’s pipe. “About giving Mr. Blue the enhancile, if Betty’s life were put at stake.”
The Professor glared at the ghostly apparition of Bruce Banner before waving the image away with his hand, continuing to stomp hard as he made his way toward the facility.
“No,” the Professor murmured to no one, “I didn’t answer it.”
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SOMETIME IN THE PAST:
Sarasota, Florida
The Aftermath of a Stalking Incident
A Kind of Lovers’ Quarrel
“Answer me, you piece of shit!”
CRACK!
The Savage Hulk roared as the engine block collided into his meaty skull. The unstoppable patchwork hunk of twisted metal exploded against the stubborn, gamma-powered immovable object. Skin flayed away at the superhuman effort, leaving a cascading trail of green blood flowing down the Hulk’s enraged face.
“Think you can fuck my wife and get away with it, you piece of shit?” the reptilian behemoth known as the Abomination roared, his anger – along with his voice - echoing for miles. “Think that’s gonna be okay with me, comrade?”
The Abomination gripped the gigantic engine block once more and pounded it into the Hulk’s massive chest, eliciting a howl of pain from the emerald figure.
CRUNCH!
The impact shattered apartment windows along the block, as several car alarms went off -screech as if in protest to every violent thing the psychotic Abomination was doing to the colossal Hulk.
An apelike roar of undeniable hate erupted from the Hulk as the Abomination lifted the scrap metal – the last vestiges of an engine block – high above the rampaging beast. The shards of scrap metal glistened with the Hulk’s blood and meat, readying for a killing strike. A scraping sound stirred from the pavement as the Hulk’s arms dragged themselves from the tarmac - the engine block’s remnants already moving towards Savage’s pounding, pounding skull...
KA-KOOM!
Every remaining window in the area erupted as the Hulk brought his mighty hands together in a colossal thunderclap. The thunderclap was a hurricane of sound – a thunderous smack that echoed far wider and sheared at the Abomination far more viciously than any of the colorful bouts of language that Blonsky was spouting off at the felled Banner.
The Abomination clutched fitfully at his ears – his eardrums utterly burst open - as the point-blank thunderclap reverberated for miles at a stretch. The impact had annihilated what was left of the engine, sending the remnants of scrap metal slamming violently into the Abomination’s scaly, reptilian visage. Clutching the bleeding scraps of his face, the beast stumbled off of the Hulk’s beaten body, groaning and cursing in tortured Russian. The Hulk gritted his teeth, gripping his meaty fingers into the tarmac and drug himself instinctively away from the recoiling form of the Abomination.
The mighty beasts had healing factors that would leave them undamaged and in pristine fighting form within minutes. Yet, the devastating attacks had taken their toll, and they both desperately needed those minutes to recover.
Nevertheless, these two enemies would hardly let a little thing like a bleeding chest cavity or a completely-shredded face stop such a sacred tome of hostilities blossoming so beautifully between the two of them.
“Nadia is mine, do you hear me?” the Abomination shrieked, clutching the meaty pieces of his face. “MINE!”
“Puny Banner tells Hulk to tell big, ugly green man to go fuck himself,” the Savage Hulk grunted, massaging the gaping wound in his chest. Reluctantly, he added: “Hulk…Hulk agrees with Puny Banner.”
The Abomination glanced toward Hulk as his severed eyes began growing back. “Heh, of course he does.”
“Ugly green man hurt Betty. Hulk should kill you for hurting Betty!”
“Hurt Betty? I fucking murdered that bitch, you ugly, monosyllabic moron!” the Abomination roared, slamming his fists into the shattered concrete ground below. The mini-quake bounded toward the Hulk’s general direction and missed – mostly due to the fact that Blonsky was barely able to see shapes at the moment with his newly-grown eyes, let alone make out the Hulk’s precise location.
“Hulk only ugly on outside,” the jade behemoth growled, rubbing at the multitude of itchy spots where his hide was rapidly sewing itself back together. “Emil Blonsky hurt pretty Nadia too. Emil Blonsky an Abomination…even before accident.”
The reptilian beast once known as Emil Blonsky narrowed his yellow eyes at the felled figure of the Hulk before him, clenching his wide teeth together.
“Every wife needs to learn her place,” the Abomination grunted, leveling his healed eyes at his prey. He stalked towards the Hulk, idly picking up a car and tossing it at the still-grounded beast before him. The savage monster raised a hefty hand too late, as the beautiful Cadillac collided into the Hulk’s face - which was still growing back its skin from the engine-block-beating. The Hulk howled in pain, clutching at the gaping wound as Blonsky stalked toward him.
“Nadia learned hers long ago,” he growled, tossing more metal detritus at the writhing behemoth’s injured hide as he stalked ever closer. The Abomination ripped a metal pole from the ground, crushing one end into a sharp, driving spike. The reptilian beast held the business end up toward the Hulk’s head. “She knows better than to screw around on her husband.”
“Husband?” a voice echoed from across the street. A feminine voice – angry and derisive: “HA!”
The Abomination whirled around, spotting a lithe, young blonde with a plush nighttime robe pulled tight around her shapely form, outlining her womanly curves. Her husky Russian accent was one that Blonsky was intimately familiar with. The tone was one he was also intimately familiar with. He gritted his teeth into a vicious smirk.
“My Nadia,” the green beast smiled, dropping the metal spike with a resounding clang onto the ruined tarmac that was once a city street. Licking his green lips, he walked menacingly towards the woman known as Nadia Blonsky – his wife.
“Your Nadia,” she grunted, crossing her arms amidst the sweeping winds. “I have not been your Nadia for some time now.”
The Abomination stalked closer, attempting a softer tone this time. “I do – apologize - for not finding you sooner. I—did not wish you to see me this way. Did not wish you to see me, as this monster I’ve become.”
He gestured toward himself – toward the gamma-irradiated form of the Abomination. His wife snorted mockingly, softly touching the scar she held above her brow.
“I saw the monster you were every day,” she snarled. “Every day you took your frustrations from work out on my face, I saw exactly the kind of monster you were. Just now, I see your ugliness on the outside too.”
The Abomination growled. “Do not test my patience, Nadia.”
“Or what?” she screamed, pointing an accusatory finger at the reptilian behemoth. “You’re going to teach me another one of your lessons?”
The Abomination clenched his fingers, and cracked his neck, as he continued his slow, predatory walk towards the angry young woman. “A wife should never talk back to her husband. I would think you’d have learned that lesson by now.”
“You’re so full of shit, Emil!” she roared, a lifetime’s worth of anger and frustration finally seething to the surface. “I was just a goddamn punching bag to you, not simply a wife!”
“Punching bag?” he snorted. “This is not true. Why do you wish to hurt your husband with such venom?”
“What do you call this?” Nadia opened her robe, showing Emil all the scars along her shapely figure. All the welts, the bumps, the raised bruise marks that would never heal correctly. Years and years worth of bruising and beatings, painted in permanent ink upon the beautiful canvas of her body. “True husbands do not do such things to their wives, Emil!”
The memories washed over him suddenly – all the beatings and bruisings. All their petty disagreements and venomous words. All the bad times, magnified a thousandfold upon his soul. His reptilian eyes went wide, as all the beauteous fictions he’d managed to misremember about their marriage slowly became undone.
Funny, how so many of the bad times could be forgotten, pushed out by the bloated memories of only the good? Funny, how so many paint themselves heroes in their own minds when they themselves are indeed the villains of their own stories.
Except, Emil Blonsky was no villain.
No, no, not at all.
He was merely misunderstood. A tortured soul who had not seen his wife in so long, finally allowed a once-in-a-lifetime reunion. Two windswept lovers finally reunited in a glorious, momentous occasion, filled with the sounds of bleating car alarms and shattered fire hydrants spewing geysers of water upon the city streets. He would not be denied this perfect moment, after years of imagining this reunion in his mind. He would hold his wife in his arms, and they would go home and reaffirm their love for one another.
She would tell him how much she’d missed him, and what she’d been up to in the years since they had been apart. He would bask in the sweetness of her stories, pretending her adventures in the States were a complete surprise to him. After all, a true husband would not skulk around in sewers or sleep beneath the oceans, stalking his wife from afar, would he?
All of these things would happen.
Here. Now.
Because Emil Blonsky was the hero of this story, and he deserved to finally take the spoils of his victory against that accursed Banner. Nadia simply didn’t know her place in this story yet; after all, it had been so long for her. She was so far away from their beloved homeland.
He’d have to teach the woman her place again.
That’s all.
“My dearest wife,” the reptilian beast said, mere feet from the blonde now, “it is time to go.”
“Yeah, it is,” she narrowed her eyes, defiantly. She closed her gown as he came ever closer, her point made. She waved him away. “So go.”
“Not without you, my Nadia,” he bristled.
“I am not your Nadia,” she growled, pressing her tiny finger against the Abomination’s thick flesh. “I will never again be your Nadia.”
“How quickly they forget,” the scaly monster gripped his wife’s frame with one massive hand, raising her to eye-level. “You will always be my Nadia.”
“Wrong,” she smiled craning her neck in Banner’s direction. “I will always be his Nadia.”
The reptilian monster’s eyes narrowed in rage and Nadia drew in a frightened breath, knowing that the next response in his vocabulary was a backhand full of rage. She steeled herself against the coming blow, prepared to die rather than let this Abomination violate her once more.
Emil Blonsky, not about to let some female embarrass him further, raised his hand upon her. Part of his mind wondered what would happen to her body once he struck her – the other part of him could care less. The months in traction would give her time to learn who was boss.
Let this be another lesson to you, Nadia, he thought, raised his reptilian claw, aiming at the scar he’d once sown so long ago upon her brow. A woman should always know her--
SHUCK.
The Abomination’s eyes went wide.
Nadia’s eyes popped open as her world went sideways, her lithe figure falling out of the Abomination’s claw, tumbling toward the ground.
The blonde landed roughly on the strewn tarmac of the street, the breath knocked out of her. She coughed, feeling shock at the fall but…feeling no pain.
No pain, she thought, confused. Impossible. The blow should have crippled me.
She peered up from the dusty ground, tracing her gaze across the thick scaly legs of her husband and brought her view up toward his massive chest. A chest which now – suddenly – had a gigantic metal pole sticking through it. Sharpened at one end, Nadia recognized it as the exact same metal pole the Abomination had dropped next to the injured form of the Incredible Hulk.
Nadia gasped once more as she beheld a colossal form behind the Abomination’s pierced chest - the colossal form of the Savage Hulk. The massive, apelike behemoth had driven the massive metal post straight through the Abomination’s chest – just missing the beast’s heart by inches. In Savage’s eyes, she saw an insane, bottomless fury.
But this was unlike the fury she’d seen in her husband’s eyes. This was a pure kind of fury. Righteous. Altruistic. The kind of fury thrust upon the good men of the world when the bad men hold all the cards. The kind of fury that good men have when they witness pain and injustice around them, while they themselves are helpless to end the cruelty and injustice that brought that pain to light.
Except, this Savage Hulk was far from helpless.
The Abomination shook, frozen in horror as his punctured organs spouted their fluids richly and freely upon his well-muscled chest. He looked down at the metal pike sticking out of his body as he heard a voice behind him. A low, guttural, ominous growl that sounded nothing like what he knew to be the Savage Hulk.
It was a commanding voice, a warning voice. A voice that itself was its own force of nature. It was a sound that shook Emil Blonsky to his very core:
“No more hitting.”
The Abomination gasped as a gigantic hand clamped itself around his face, craning his neck back hard. As the Hulk pulled the reptilian beast’s head backwards, he launched the mound of violent muscle that was his knee squarely into the back of the Abomination’s skull.
THUNK.
The Abomination’s eyes went wide and rolled back, as the shockwave echoed across the shattered city block. Emil Blonsky’s face went slack and he crashed hard into the pavement, the Hulk’s knee having delivered the final knockout blow to the back of his head.
With a mighty bellow, the Savage beast picked up Emil’s Blonsky’s unconscious body and launched it skyward, angrily watching the abusive husband taper off into the distance until he was a long-forgotten memory.
Suddenly, the Hulk felt a gentle touch upon his thick, calloused hide.
He turned around, gazing into the tiny face of the lovely Nadia Blonsky, who seemed to gaze so deeply into his soul just as another beautiful woman had once done long before her.
“Betty?” he murmured gently, his gigantic green finger gently brushing away the strands of blonde hair away from her face. He murmured once more, just as softly, realizing his mistake. “Not Betty.”
“No,” she smiled up at the behemoth, watching him shrink and shrivel slowly down into her knight in shining armor. Slowly collapsing upon himself until he was the simple fugitive she’d let into her doorstep so many months ago. The man who’d been filling the loneliness of her soul with his warmth, his charm and his kindness.
She clutched him to her, reveling in the warmth of his naked body. They held each other on that destroyed stretch of street for some time, as if it was the last time.
A teardrop fell upon her beauteous cheek as her lips parted slightly.
“No, not Betty,” she said in a hushed, choked whisper. “Not your Betty.”
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
THE PRESENT:
The Arizona Desert
Arriving at the Waystation
The Long Night Ends
“Betty,” the Professor whispered gently to the sweeping desert winds. “Just hold on. I’m almost there, baby. Almost there...”
The Professor-Hulk leapt across the final hill, scaling the final half-mile of his long journey in one, gigantic stride. At the apex of his leap, he saw a sight that made his heart drop all the way back down to the cold, dark desert below, long before his hulking body ever could.
The long-decommissioned Hulkbuster base – The Waystation. The one being used as a black site for Betty Banner’s cryogenically-preserved body.
Only someone else had gotten there first.
The Professor’s eyes bulged out of his head at the sight of the Waystation ripped completely asunder. Steel girders and heavy-machinery detritus surrounded the outer fence. The fence itself completely ripped off its hinges. Seven-foot titanium beams and barbed wire fencing shredded like wet wrapping paper, melded into twisted heaps of metal and wet meat. The warning towers surrounding the base – those that were still standing – leaned at unseemly angles, half-toppled over from the destructive rampage of whatever creature breached the perimeter.
“Calm down, Banner,” the Professor breathed out, desperately attempting to calm his myriad aspects, as well as himself. “Whoever did this…ahem, whoever did this….might have been after something…something else…?”
The Professor’s breath choked in his throat as he counted at least seven shattered wrecks of what were once Hulkbuster units, simply strewn haphazardly about the landscape. They were stained red – popped like titanium-lined pimples, oozing out with the bloody mess of what were once highly-trained Hulkbuster pilots. On the left, he could see a tank – crumpled and twisted, but still recognizable – sticking out from the wrecked siding of a missile silo. He could also see the remnants of a platoon of men, the bottom halves of which laid still just to the right. The tank had clearly been thrown through the firing squadron, cleaving them all neatly in half before slamming into the now-defunct missile silo.
The Professor’s mind wobbled at the horrific scene, dragging his eyes with sorrow across all the other meaty corpses – all the other lives destroyed. All the military husbands and wives now widowed, the army brats orphaned by whatever monstrosity it was that tore through here.
A ghastly plume of smoke billowed off into the horizon, carried lightly by the prevailing winds. The spotlights cast an eerie pallor into the entire wreckage of the base – as most of them had been mangled or twisted away at bizarre angles – complete with the intermittent spits and snarls bursting from broken high-power electric lines. Several of the spotlights; however, shone directly into the center of the base. As he came down from his leap and the base rushed up to meet him, the Professor could finally make out what it was that shone so profoundly in those spotlights.
It was that sight, which made his heart fill once more with unending sorrow:
A massive trail of blood and pulp – the torn-asunder remains of a single human being – spread crudely into the shape of a heart.
As the Professor landed, his gaze remained fixed upon the awful sight. Even as his muscles shrunk and collapsed into his body, bright green skin discoloring as it gave way to soft, pink flesh, Banner couldn’t look away. Even as a fresh contingent of soldiers rushed up from the subterranean depths of the eviscerated Waystation, drawing their automatic weapons upon the intruder, Bruce Banner’s gaze never wavered.
He stood upon tiny pink legs made of soft jelly, shaking terribly as he collapsed upon the ground. He brought a shaking hand to the blood-soaked remains, shaped like a bleeding red heart upon the cool Arizona sands. The remains of a beautiful woman, torn asunder by a vicious, homicidal madman.
The soldiers cocked their weapons as the tears began to fall from Bruce Banner’s tired, bloodshot eyes.
“Betty,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry, baby.”
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
SOMETIME IN THE EPILOGUE:
The scaly-green monster watched the events at the Waystation unfold on a tiny old cathode-ray tube TV screen, slithering its slimy tongue in abject satisfaction.
The monster – with a heart blacker than the darkest night – slurped up Bruce Banner’s agony in the outside world with unfounded glee, as the hated puny Banner sat amongst a heart-shaped shrine of human remains.
The slithering beast’s companion – a reddish-brown beast with oily scales - smiled a sadist’s smile. “Feeling the guilt now, aren’t we? Betraying your teammates. Stealing the secrets of Extremis. Building the prototype enhancile. The tryst with Nadia. And this whole thing with Betty. Heh, I’d say you’re feeling guilty about a whole lot of things.”
The dark beast looked at his scaly-green comrade, who was high in the thralls of deep, delicious delight. He petted the snake-like monster’s snout bemusedly. “A subconscious push here, a gentle nudge there, and here we all are. I have to admit, this has gone a lot smoother than the homicidal blitzkrieg Guilt and I were planning to unleash upon that sickening Banner whelp.”
The scaly Guilt Hulk coiled himself into the lap of the voluptuous orange-skinned woman that sat on the couch between the two sadistic monsters. The seductive woman, wearing skintight violet leather, patted the Guilt Hulk’s tender underbelly in soft soothing strokes, smiling as the slithering beast purred like a satisfied kitten. As she did so to the first beast, she placed her soft hand upon the face of the second beast, planting a passionate, seductive kiss upon the chapped, venomous lips of the Devil Hulk.
“Just think, boys,” Mercy said melodiously, her warmth breath lingering upon the Devil’s red lips,” this is only just the beginning…”
AUTHOR’S GAMMA-NOTES:
*** Bruce and Nadia’s tryst and the resulting destruction in Sarasota takes place sometime after his escape from Thunderbolt Ross in M2K’s Hulk Volume 1, #6, during the time he was in hiding from the government before M2K’s Avengers #58 & 59. )
***The Abomination killed Betty Banner in Incredible Hulk #467. While she was undergoing treatment for radiation sickness, Emil Blonsky substituted a pack of human blood for a pack of his own gamma-irradiated blood. The blood transfusion during the operation was what did poor Mrs. Banner in.
***We last saw Guilt Hulk, Devil Hulk and Mercy in M2K’s Hulk Volume 2, #0. Hmmm, wonder what they’ve been up to since then...
Next Issue:
The troops at the Waystation gleefully execute Banner. Leader takes over the world. The Abomination kills, well, literally everything.
The End.
Okay, maybe it doesn’t work out quite that way. Nevertheless, in the next issue, you’ll see good ol’ Thunderbolt Ross, a little bit of Banner, a little bit of Savage, a lotta bit of Professor, a teensy-bit of Extremis, and maybe even a pinch of revenge-taking. Maybe even a splash of Abomination and Leader too, if you’re good.
Welcome to RAGE MOMENTS - our Hulk-errific lettercol! Let’s start with a letter from Anthony Crute, who’s currently writing M2K’s kick-ass IMPERIAL series:
I find it takes a really good writer to write the Hulk and I'm getting that feeling now.
This was a great #1 issue from my view (given that it's not really #1 and we've got 40 years of Hulk history), sets up the status quo nicely and meets all of the characters...even if they're all the same person.
The fact that you did it so well with a tour through the mind space and some nice Psychological introspection.
I did a series using Doc Samson here a few years ago (shameless plug: m2k.omegacen.com/samson/index.html) so I loved seeing him again.
If this quality writing and interesting view on the characters keeps on coming then I'm totally onboard.
Thanks for reading, and the very high praise, Anthony! Glad you liked the issue!
As you may have guessed, there continues to be a LOT of psychological introspection in this series. That will definitely continue! The Hulk, naturally, has a very rich history that I fully plan on exposing (ahem, exploring) throughout this series.
For those of you just tuning in: Anthony’s previous DOC SAMSON series was top-notch! If you haven’t read it, shame on you!! If you can’t find it on the M2K site (Omegacen recently gave up the ghost not too long ago), you should poke at David Golightly, Cory Weigel or Anthony himself until they give you the whole run! (Continuously, though. Don’t let up for a second, lest they wriggle away from your poking and escape! They are a clever, clever group of fellows.)
And if you also haven’t read IMPERIAL yet...well, what are you standing around gawking at the computer screen for? GO READ IT!!
Here’s a letter from Meriades Rai, who’s currently writing M2K’s spooky DEFENDERS series as well as the equally-spooky (in that its such an amazing snapshot of the period) AVENGERS 1980:
HULK #3 by Jason McDonald
Abomination! Woot!
It's been a few years since I sat down and sketched out my list of Top Ten Comic Villains (I'm one of those people who does ridiculously over-invested things like that, not for the sake of blogs or forums but merely for my own curiosity. It's a curse). I'm pretty sure that Emil Blonsky will still be on it; he has always, always been one of my favourites. And Jason cuts right to the heart of what makes Abomination (and similar villains) so appealing, his sense of righteous tragedy. Being shipwrecked at the bottom of the ocean and dreaming of his lost love Nadia (who he treated like a possession when she was alive) is a startlingly evocative image and also cleverly mirrors the Professor's mind-soup daydreams of Betty from last issue. Hulk and Abomination are two halves of the same green coin, albeit with Emil as the scarred side in true Two-face style, and this was a perfect way to set their inevitable next conflict in motion.
I love Jason's treatment of the Leader as well, and this issue reveals that all is not as it seems with the mutant-headed Mr Sterns. Is he controlling the nano-beetles or are they somehow controlling him, in the way they come to control the Abomination? I figure there's another twist or two to come here.
Two moments I really liked. Firstly, the Professor working out that something was different about Betty; I'm guessing something like a missing mole, or a scar? Or something cleverer that I didn't catch?; certainly something that only Banner/Prof would notice, leading him to hidden information embedded into the image (very sneaky). Secondly, the Professor ripping up his own arm to hide the flash drive and having his flesh heal around it. Both moments serve to illustrate just how different a proposition the Prof is from the regular Hulk, but also from Banner, and that's skilful writing.
Looking forward to more Abomination in issue #4!
Thanks for reading! And for all those awesome reviews you post! So you’re an Abomination fan, huh? How’d you like that nice street battle between Savage Hulk and Blonsky this issue? Don’t worry, they’re not done tusslin’...not by a long-shot! Of course, which Hulk will be the one fighting Blonsky next - that’s the key point, isn’t it?
Speaking of Hulks, did you see those two sneak in there at the end of this issue, alongside Mercy? See, this is what happens when you have all these crazy gamma-irradiated personalities all over the place, getting into everything. Need to spray around here, keep them from worming their way into this book. Hmmm, sure do wonder what they’ve been up to, though...
Oh yes, the Leader. Yes, he’s not having a good time of it at the moment, is he? At least it’s not going to get any worse. *evil grin*
That’s all for me today folks. So get reading some fine M2K fanfic!
-Jason McDonald
I find it takes a really good writer to write the Hulk and I'm getting that feeling now.
This was a great #1 issue from my view (given that it's not really #1 and we've got 40 years of Hulk history), sets up the status quo nicely and meets all of the characters...even if they're all the same person.
The fact that you did it so well with a tour through the mind space and some nice Psychological introspection.
I did a series using Doc Samson here a few years ago (shameless plug: m2k.omegacen.com/samson/index.html) so I loved seeing him again.
If this quality writing and interesting view on the characters keeps on coming then I'm totally onboard.
Thanks for reading, and the very high praise, Anthony! Glad you liked the issue!
As you may have guessed, there continues to be a LOT of psychological introspection in this series. That will definitely continue! The Hulk, naturally, has a very rich history that I fully plan on exposing (ahem, exploring) throughout this series.
For those of you just tuning in: Anthony’s previous DOC SAMSON series was top-notch! If you haven’t read it, shame on you!! If you can’t find it on the M2K site (Omegacen recently gave up the ghost not too long ago), you should poke at David Golightly, Cory Weigel or Anthony himself until they give you the whole run! (Continuously, though. Don’t let up for a second, lest they wriggle away from your poking and escape! They are a clever, clever group of fellows.)
And if you also haven’t read IMPERIAL yet...well, what are you standing around gawking at the computer screen for? GO READ IT!!
Here’s a letter from Meriades Rai, who’s currently writing M2K’s spooky DEFENDERS series as well as the equally-spooky (in that its such an amazing snapshot of the period) AVENGERS 1980:
HULK #3 by Jason McDonald
Abomination! Woot!
It's been a few years since I sat down and sketched out my list of Top Ten Comic Villains (I'm one of those people who does ridiculously over-invested things like that, not for the sake of blogs or forums but merely for my own curiosity. It's a curse). I'm pretty sure that Emil Blonsky will still be on it; he has always, always been one of my favourites. And Jason cuts right to the heart of what makes Abomination (and similar villains) so appealing, his sense of righteous tragedy. Being shipwrecked at the bottom of the ocean and dreaming of his lost love Nadia (who he treated like a possession when she was alive) is a startlingly evocative image and also cleverly mirrors the Professor's mind-soup daydreams of Betty from last issue. Hulk and Abomination are two halves of the same green coin, albeit with Emil as the scarred side in true Two-face style, and this was a perfect way to set their inevitable next conflict in motion.
I love Jason's treatment of the Leader as well, and this issue reveals that all is not as it seems with the mutant-headed Mr Sterns. Is he controlling the nano-beetles or are they somehow controlling him, in the way they come to control the Abomination? I figure there's another twist or two to come here.
Two moments I really liked. Firstly, the Professor working out that something was different about Betty; I'm guessing something like a missing mole, or a scar? Or something cleverer that I didn't catch?; certainly something that only Banner/Prof would notice, leading him to hidden information embedded into the image (very sneaky). Secondly, the Professor ripping up his own arm to hide the flash drive and having his flesh heal around it. Both moments serve to illustrate just how different a proposition the Prof is from the regular Hulk, but also from Banner, and that's skilful writing.
Looking forward to more Abomination in issue #4!
Thanks for reading! And for all those awesome reviews you post! So you’re an Abomination fan, huh? How’d you like that nice street battle between Savage Hulk and Blonsky this issue? Don’t worry, they’re not done tusslin’...not by a long-shot! Of course, which Hulk will be the one fighting Blonsky next - that’s the key point, isn’t it?
Speaking of Hulks, did you see those two sneak in there at the end of this issue, alongside Mercy? See, this is what happens when you have all these crazy gamma-irradiated personalities all over the place, getting into everything. Need to spray around here, keep them from worming their way into this book. Hmmm, sure do wonder what they’ve been up to, though...
Oh yes, the Leader. Yes, he’s not having a good time of it at the moment, is he? At least it’s not going to get any worse. *evil grin*
That’s all for me today folks. So get reading some fine M2K fanfic!
-Jason McDonald