Marvel’s Weirdest Hulk Shows Up at the Oddest Times

In “I Remember Well,” we spotlight instances where writers pull out long-forgotten plots, characters or attributes of comic book characters. Today, we look at how a cosmic-powered Hulk robot kept popping up in odd places over the years.

As I noted recently, when Jack Kirby returned to Marvel, he really just wanted to do his OWN thing, and not have to even THINK about the greater Marvel Universe. With his two series that were explicitly set within the Marvel Universe, Captain America and Black Panther, Kirby simply ignored anything outside his titles, and with The Eternals, the whole concept of the book was based on it NOT being part of the Marvel Universe.

You see, with The Eternals, Kirby was clearly trying to do his own riff on the then-recent book, Chariot of the Gods, which theorized that aliens had visited Earth in the past and had given ancient humans access to technologies greater than they would have otherwise had access to and that explained the pyramids and stuff like that.

It was a really popular book that was even made into a movie in 1970.

Anyhow, that was the basic concept of the Eternals. That the Celestials had come to Earth in the past and had experimented and created three distinct races – Eternals, Deviants and Humans…

Now the Celestials were returning and, well, what the heck do you do in that situation? How does the world react to something like that?

That was what Kirby wanted to explore in his book, less a standard good versus evil story, just a more general, “What do you do when god comes back to Earth?” That idea explicitly does NOT work when you have had Galactus come to Earth in the past, when you have Silver Surfer flying around, moping and learning about humanity or when you have the God of Thunder fighting against the God of Mischief in the streets of New York City. So it was clearly intended to NOT be in the Marvel Universe.

The problem, of course, is that that is not the type of comic book that Marvel was used to selling. When the sales on the book did not exactly set the world on fire, editorial pressured Kirby to tie the book in with the Marvel Universe and Kirby came up with a way to appease Marvel while…well….not exactly tying in with the Marvel Universe.

So, as I pointed out in a bit a few years ago, in an attempt to sort of tie into the greater Marvel Universe, Kirby had the Hulk show up in 1977’s Eternals #14, but it turned out to be a ROBOT built by some college students (with the heavy implication being that they based it on a fictional character)…

Of course, hilarity ensued, and the Uni-Mind (the cosmic grouping formed by the Eternals) accidentally used cosmic force to bring the Hulk robot to life, infused with cosmic power…

That made the Hulk robot a major threat to the Earth (and the Eternals). Eventually, though, the Hulk had the cosmic energies drained from its body, and it seemingly was destroyed in a gas explosion in Eternals #16…

Or WAS it?

After The Eternals wrapped up its initial run, the characters were then officially added to the Marvel Universe. So the Hulk robot was now a robot that was based on the ACTUAL Hulk by two college students.

In 1988’s Fantastic Four #320 (by Steve Englehart, Keith Pollard and Joe Sinnott), Doctor Doom manipulates the Hulk (who is now a smaller, craftier gray version of the Hulk) into fighting the Thing (who has been mutated into a stronger version of his regular self), and the Thing is handing it to the Hulk, to the point where he honestly doesn’t believe that he is fighting the real Hulk (and the Hulk is glad for him to believe that), but suddenly, the “real” Hulk arrives!

This continues into Incredible Hulk #350 (by Peter David, Jeff Purves and Terry Austin), where Doom reveals that he found the robot after the events of Eternals #16, and repaired it, in case he might need it someday (and since he felt the real Hulk was losing the fight, he figured he’d bring in a ringer)…

Eventually, the Thing is able to decipher that this new Hulk is a robot, and he eventually destroys it…

A couple of years later, the inker of that issue, Terry Austin, brought the robot Hulk back for an Acts of Vengeance tie-in in The Mutant Misadventures of Cloak and Dagger #9 (art by Mike Vosburg and Don M. Cameron), where Doctor Doom lent the Hulk robot to the new Jester to create an “Assembly of Evil”…

The robot was destroyed at the end of the issue…

However, it’s a robot, it can’t really DIE, right, so what comes next?

During the Fall of the Hulks storyline, we learned that in the recent past, the villainous group known as the Inteligencia had discovered the Hulk robot, and had used it to help study the effects of the Hulk’s radiation, and they ultimately found a way to create a RED Hulk to work with them. They convinced Thunderbolt Ross to become the Red Hulk, in exchange they would bring his daughter, Betty, back to life.

In 2010’s Hulk #21 (by Jeph Loeb, Ed McGuinness and Mark Farmer), the Red Hulk came for the Leader, and the Hulk robot defeated him…

However, in Hulk #23 (the issue that revealed Ross was the Red Hulk), Ross seemingly destroyed the Hulk robot once and for all…

And that’s seemingly the last we’ve seen of the Hulk robot, but knowing it, it will pop up again in about a decade or so…shoot, that would be right around NOW!

By the way, as I noted in an old I Remember Well, this isn’t even the ONLY Hulk robot that pops up from time to time!

If anyone has a suggestion for a future I Remember Well, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com