Hulk Is So Strong, He Broke Marvel’s Most Unbeatable Mutant Power

Every Marvel fan knows that the Hulk is strong on a cosmic scale, though his strength has arguably never been as impressive as when he broke X-Men‘s most unbeatable mutant power with a single punch – a power that belongs to the one and only Darwin.

Armando Mu?oz aka Darwin is a mutant with the power to adapt to any situation in order to survive (hence the moniker). Since he was a child, Darwin could reshape his body and mind to fit his needs, even if it wasn’t necessarily life or death. For instance, when Darwin needed to get into a prestigious school to please his mother – who blamed him for his father abandoning them – Darwin suddenly became a prodigious genius who tested off the charts. Since joining the X-Men, however, Darwin’s powers manifested in much more exciting ways. Most recently, Darwin survived a century trapped in the Vault, which is more-or-less a containment vessel for the Children of the Vault, in which they live, die, and are resurrected over and over in order to make them the strongest life forms on the planet – and that’s not even close to the extent of his survival capabilities. Darwin has been able to adapt against the goddess of death, attacks from Omega level mutants, and literally everything else that’s ever been thrown at him – well, almost everything.

In World War Hulk: X-Men #3 by Chris Gage and Andrea Divito, the Hulk is attacking the X-Mansion in search of Professor X. This issue takes place after the Illuminati voted to kidnap the Hulk and send him off-world against his will, and Charles Xavier is a member of the Illuminati. While Professor X wasn’t there for the vote, he told Hulk that he agreed with the council’s decision – and that was enough for the Hulk to seek retribution. However, the X-Men and their affiliated groups weren’t going to let that happen, and in this issue, an all-out war broke out at the X-Mansion, with Darwin right there in the center of the conflict. During the Hulk’s rampage, Darwin tried to use his powers to neutralize him. But then, the Hulk threw a punch so fast and with so much strength, that Darwin’s body couldn’t adapt fast enough to combat it, and he was taken out of the fight right then and there.

Compared to some of the Hulk’s other feats of strength in the past, including pulling together the planet’s tectonic plates or disintegrating a cosmic being with the clap of his hands, punching Darwin in the chest doesn’t seem like something that’s that big of a deal – but that sentiment couldn’t be further from the truth. As previously mentioned, Darwin’s entire powerset is adapting to survive, which means his body changes within milliseconds of a potentially deadly situation, even against entities and/or circumstances that should be far deadlier than the Hulk. The fact that Darwin couldn’t adapt to the Hulk’s attack means that Hulk delivered a punch that is stronger than anything Darwin’s body could adapt to, and given his survival record, that’s unfathomably impressive.

Darwin has survived a hundred years in the Vault, the living embodiment of death, and even a standardized test, but his unbeatable mutant power wasn’t a match for the unparalleled strength of the Hulk, who broke Marvel’s most unbeatable mutant power.