Two monsters sit down across from each other at a diner. They order hot dogs, coffee, beer. One can barely fit in the seat, and has to check if the booth can withstand his weight before he settles in. His body is huge, all rippling craggy rock in place of flesh, his brow a sunken boulder that nearly eclipses his eyes. This unnatural exterior surrounds a noble soul, a human soul. Ben Grimm — the Thing — is widely regarded as a hero by the public at large.
In contrast, the other monster appears completely human at the moment, but society regards him as a terror, a horrific menace capable of inhuman rampages of violence and destruction. And that’s often true. When Bruce Banner undertakes his transformation into the towering green (sometimes grey) goliath, not even he knows what to expect. This alter ego can take many forms and many identities, but they do all share a name. The Incredible Hulk.
One monster who is a man. One man who is a monster. The cover of the Hulk’s first appearance in 1962 asks us the potent question: “Is he Man or Monster, or… is he both?” Meanwhile, the Thing’s early defining story in Fantastic Four #51 declares something similar: “This Man…this Monster!” Both struggle with this. Both suffer for this.
Marvel Comics’s two most prominent monsters are fully monsters, but also fully men, and this means something for a publisher built on monsters. “Rommbu! His Very Name Made Mankind Tremble!” “I Was Hunted by ‘X’ the Thing That Lived!!” “Beware of Bruttu!” These were the kinds of stories Marvel pushed out to the stands before their big superhero boom in the early sixties. Douglas Wolk, in his book All the Marvels, argues that the Thing’s first appearance in 1962’s Fantastic Four #1 is formulated like a monster comic, not a superhero comic, and you can read Incredible Hulk #1 the same way.
Both these stories are about humans undergoing startling transformations due to scientific advancements: with Ben Grimm space travel, and with Bruce Banner the Gamma Bomb, an analogue for atomic weaponry. These are stories about technological and societal change. Are humans ready for these advancements? What happens to us if we’re not?
So there’s a lot of common ground between these two monsters, sitting across from each other in a diner, eating hot dogs. There is a lot to talk about.
What do they talk about?
Religion, obviously.
Let’s take a look back at another time the Thing shares a drink with a fellow monster, the scene this time a bar, and the other monster this time Marco Flint, the sinister Sandman. In Marvel Two-in-One #86, Sandman has just come back to life after an ordeal that apparently killed him. When the Thing gets a tip that Marco is back, he confronts the supervillain in a bar.
But what could have been an eruption of super powered blows instead becomes an intimate talk over beers. The Sandman doesn’t have any fight in him. Even though they’ve fought in the past, the two aren’t all that different. So much so that when they’ve finished their drinks, Ben leaves the bar alone.
“Aren’t you going to arrest me?” Marco asks.
“Why should I? I ain’t no cop!”
Flash forward to the diner: the Hulk also has just recovered from a state of death, and the Thing was again called in to deal with him. This time the confrontation does result in blows, but when one of the Hulk alters — Joe Fixit — comes forward in Bruce Banner’s human form, Ben calls a palaver. Once at the diner, Hulk draws a comparison between the two of them, just like Sandman did. Namely, by this point in time, Ben has also died. But the real interesting comparison is what happened afterwards. The Thing went to Heaven. Hulk went to Hell.
This causes Ben to pause, and take a moment of reflection. When he picks up the conversation again, he explains that his death sparked a religious reawakening in him, and he started going back to temple. He had a Bar Mitzvah to celebrate the 13 years of his life as the Thing.
Then, he tells Hulk the story of Job.
Job was righteous, blessed. Then Job was cursed, everything taken away from him. Job confronts God with questions, and God intimidates him into submission. Where was Job when God created the universe, when He laid the foundations of existence, and when He birthed the leviathan? Nowhere, of course. Job is just one of God’s creations in a sliver of time.
Why do men (and why do monsters) suffer? The question has been with humanity for as long as we had the language to articulate it, and one of the first stories to tackle it gives us a bleak answer: who are you to think you can comprehend such a thing? Who are you to even ask? Did Job do anything to deserve the horrible things that happened to him? No. But did he do anything to deserve any real answers? Also, no. Bad things happen, and it’s futile to try to understand.
Satisfying answer or not, this thinking is a mark of progress from the alternative viewpoint, which is in the Book of Job represented by Job’s friends, who insist Job must have done something. Job didn’t do anything to deserve his suffering. But he also isn’t allowed to know the cosmic truth of his predicament. Some find this conclusion unsatisfying, while others may argue that Western Civilization has never produced a better answer to the problem of suffering.
Immortal Hulk wants to give us an answer. By the end of the series, Hulk gets his own chance to confront God, just the same as Job, and asks his own version of the question of why we suffer.
Hulk — unlike Job — gets an answer.
Before we hear it, we’re not yet done talking about the Bible.
Or about monsters.
The Thing’s retelling of one of the Bible’s most famous morality plays isn’t the first religious allusion in Immortal Hulk, nor the last. It isn’t the first allusion to Job either. Jackie McGee is a journalist whose life was drastically changed because of the Hulk. Her childhood home was destroyed, and her father eventually died from the stress and pain of the ordeal.
Jackie gets her own Job moment, to confront the force that led to her suffering. But her question is a bit different. She doesn’t question the reasoning behind her suffering, but questions the nature of the being who caused it. She can’t comprehend the power of such a force as the Hulk. She can’t understand what it’s like to channel such unbridled rage.
But she wants to comprehend. She wants to understand. She wants to experience the power and anger herself.
That’s the thing about monsters. As terrifying as they may be, we’re also in awe of their pure strength, seduced by their sheer power. What could we do if we had that strength and power? What could we do if we were the Hulk?
We can trace the word “monster” back to the latin monere, meaning “warn.” The destruction left in their wake is devastating, the fear they invoke incomprehensible. But there’s more to them than that. They’re harbingers, here to deliver messages from places just beyond our understanding. If we could only pay attention to the signs, these beings are potentiates for change.
In Immortal Hulk, Hulk wants to change things directly. Hulk is a Plural System with many alters, the most well known being the Savage Hulk (the “Hulk Smash” one). This one is infamous for lashing out irrationally when people fail to leave him in peace. There’s no great logic apparent in why he wrecks and rampages, other than that he’s angry (at least at first look). The driving character for most of Immortal is a different alter: the Devil Hulk. The Devil Hulk also wants to rampage and destroy, but for a clear reason.
Humans are ruining the planet, so the Hulk will bring an end to mankind, at least the mankind that pollutes and oppresses, the men in power who refuse to admit that they’re wrong. This is the Hulk’s warning, the message that it is time to change.
The Bible is full of stories of change through divine violence and upheaval, from the flood all the way through Revelation. Immortal would have us understand the Hulk the same way. In issues #11, #12, and #13, Hulk goes to Hell, and the beginnings of each comic collectively ask us a triptych of questions: What is Hell? What is Satan? What is the Hulk?
Through these questions, we learn a lot. We learn that Hell is a place absent from God. We learn about the principality of God’s dominion, where each aspect serves a different role in the schema. And we learn that God, too, may have a Hulk: the One Below All, a supernatural force at the bottom of existence responsible for the power and affliction present in all Gamma powered Hulks.
We learn about Geburah and Golachab, the two hands of God, the left hand the deliverer of pain and destruction — the strength of monsters — and the right hand representing mercy. A comparison is drawn between these hands and the Hulk, a monster capable of both. Which will he choose?
The Hulk’s journey may require both, but when the story gives us a look into the future we see that the path he takes is one of only Geburah. In this eschatological destiny, the One Below All has completely consumed his body and soul, and the Hulk goes from world to world, universe to universe, destroying everything before him, everything that is.
Is this the natural escalation of what the Devil Hulk plans to do, or a corrupt subversion of his goals? We’re left to wonder, but before we find out, everything is shifted when the Devil Hulk dies. Hulk’s longtime nemesis the Leader enters the realm of the One Below All and merges with it, while also possessing the soul of Bruce Banner’s dead father. He breaches the Hulk’s mindscape through way of the Green Door that connects all Gamma powered Hulks to the One Below All’s portion of Hell.
Hulk’s System isn’t prepared for the attack. Bruce Banner’s alters formed in response to their abusive father, but while the Devil Hulk formed to protect them, the Savage Hulk still hurts from the lack of a father’s love, still feels he needs it. This conflict results in the brutal murder of the Devil Hulk, and the imprisonment of Bruce Banner.
With no powerful alter in charge, and Banner incapacitated, the other Hulks are left reeling. The Devil Hulk’s plan to destroy the world of man may have been dangerous, but it was at least a plan. Now, without any guidance, they’re left again with only pain, and the question of why they suffer.
A question we’re finally ready to answer.
Hulk originally directs his question to the One Below All, but when the answer isn’t satisfying, he asks for the real power to reveal Himself. The One Above All appears, and begins to answer in counter interrogation, just like God did to Job. Where was the Hulk when He laid these foundations? But He hints at something else, too. He calls Hulk necessary. Says there is weight, and there is counterweight.
The Hulk still isn’t satisfied, and pushes for more. God assents, but with more interrogation.
“Why are you as you are? What is the Hulk? What have you become? With these hands I build. With other hands I break. I break to build anew. Have you my strength? Have you an arm like mine? Would you build, or break? You are my creation. I made you the counterweight. To ask of you. Are you Geburah or Golachab? And what of Chesed? What of mercy?”
The One Above All, to Hulk
Finally, we have something substantive. Finally, the Hulk knows not just that he’s being tested, but knows the questions on the test. But it still nearly goes over their heads. It’s almost too much to take in all at once. Of the two alters present and conscious for this exchange, Joe Fixit doesn’t get it. He dismisses it all as cryptic nonsense said only to patronize them. But the Savage Hulk wants to understand. He wants to get it, and after a moment…he realizes that he does.
Hulk looks over at Samual Sterns — the Leader — now in his human form after the climatic battle to save Bruce Banner. The Leader murdered one of their own, and nearly killed or enslaved all of the Hulks. Now defeated, it would be nothing for Hulk to leave Sterns in Hell, alone and afraid. But instead the Savage Hulk reaches out his hand, offering a way out with them.
The left hand is destruction, the rage of monsters. But the right hand is mercy.
Why do men and monsters suffer? We have the answer given to Job, and we have the answer given to the Hulk. We know that monsters can warn us of great dangers to society, and that monsters can destroy societies when power structures need to change. But we also know they can go too far. Humans, too, are capable of destruction. Humans, too, are capable of mercy.
The Thing and the Hulk lead similar lives, but also very different. In the penultimate issue of Immortal Hulk this is laid out explicitly. Ben Grimm flew a rocket, while Bruce Banner built a bomb. Both men did what they thought was right, both men were transformed as a result, but one eventually found stability while the other never quite does. Hulk imagines what his life would be like if he was surrounded with the same support system as Ben. What could have been different? But that isn’t what happened. We all have to make choices based on the lives we have.
A more blessed life still requires that choice. In the diner, the Thing is there on a mission to stop the Hulk. To bring him in. He starts by choosing the left hand, but by the end chooses the right. Just like with Sandman before, he lets the Hulk go.
We can all do the same. There is a lesson in Job that isn’t the answer to why we suffer; it’s the lesson the Thing realizes in the diner while talking to the Hulk. We could look at Job and be thankful that we don’t have it as bad as him, but we should also ask ourselves, who does? What do we need to do to help them?
In this, monsters can show us the way.
— Ben Rathbone is the creator of this site, and its only writer. Don’t find him anywhere.
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