The Hulk's pardon and all the related honors come after Bruce Banner figures out a way to remain the dominant personality even after hulking out, maintaining some semblance of control over his body. The Maestro only loses because he gets Betty Ross's ashes in his eyes, which gives Hulk the opening he needs to send the Maestro back in time to the original gamma bomb blast-incinerating the Maestro even as it gives Bruce Banner his original powers. When the Hulk fights back, Maestro pummels him with a special anti-Hulk weapon (like any good despot, he plans ahead), kills Rick Jones with Wolverine's adamantium skeleton, and tries to lift Thor's hammer. The Maestro breaks the Hulk's neck, has one of his concubines rape his younger self, and then offers the young Hulk a place at his side as the Maestro's right-hand man. None of this sits well with the present-day Hulk, who travels 90 years into the future to stop the Maestro's reign of terror. In other words, the Maestro is a monster. He spies on his political opponents, uses innocent lives as bargaining chips, and provides food and supplies to humanity's remnants in exchange for young girls, building a harem of women ready to tend to his needs at any moment. He rules by fear, and crushes-or, in this case, smashes-any organized resistance against his regime. And yes, they've shared bodily fluids in the past-Jen became She-Hulk after receiving a blood transfusion from Bruce-but if you don't know the difference, you need to sit down with your parents and have a long, long talk.īefore you get any wrong ideas, rest assured that the Maestro is just as ruthless as any other post-apocalyptic dictator. His first cousin, too, not some kind of distant kissing-cousin that might make everything sort of okay. Now, remember: Jen Walters is not just She-Hulk, she's also Bruce Banner's cousin. ![]() In The Incredible Hulk Annual 2000, the object of the Hulk's affections is She-Hulk ("the only other of his kind," the Vision says). Hey, if it works for monkeys, it should work for the Hulk-except that he chooses the wrong mate. "He attacks the female in order to assert his dominance over her," the Vision explains, "a display of superiority that will decrease the likelihood of submission later on." In the comic, the Avengers step in to stop a run-of-the-mill Hulk attack, and during the battle the Vision realizes that the Hulk isn't angry-he's horny. No, when the Hulk gets in the mood, he needs someone special, and in The Incredible Hulk Annual 2000 he finds her. He would've won, too, if Rick Jones hadn't slipped him a gamma-irradiated pill at the last minute, transforming the Hulk back into puny Banner and sending him careening into the Hudson River, where the teamed-up superheroes foolishly believed he'd been defeated for good. In Fantastic Four #25, the Avengers arrive, and the Hulk takes them on too-all at once. Johnny Storm goes down quickly, but the Thing puts up more of a fight, and the following brawl rocks downtown Manhattan. Just to make things even more complicated, the Fantastic Four's Human Torch finds the Hulk first, drawing a second superteam into the conflict. After all, the angrier the Hulk is, the stronger he gets-and he is pissed. It's just the Hulk, a massive grudge, and all the power he needs to take down Earth's mightiest heroes. This time, it's not mind control or manipulation. In Fantastic Four #24, after learning that Captain America has taken his spot in the Avengers and that his only friend, Rick Jones, has left to play sidekick to the Star-Spangled Avenger, the Hulk turns on his "friends" and starts hunting them down. But whether or not the Hulk means well, his constant mood swings make him unreliable, and his allies ultimately abandon him.
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