Tony Stark is sitting in his office, bored and on his way to getting drunk, when he recieves a special visitor, Bruce Banner. Bruce was trying to redevelop the Supersoldier formula and thought he had it right. But when he injected it into himself, it turned him into a monster known as the Hulk. Now, at his wit's end, he's come to Tony Stark for help, because Stark is the smartest man in the world, and if Stark can't help him, no one can.
Tony is moved by Bruce's pleas for help, and takes him to the Ironworks, where Stark tests his Iron Man armor, along with developing it. There, they subject Bruce Banner to the surface of Venus to see him change into the Hulk and how it happens in his body. And what they discover is actually amazing. First of all, his blood is in constant flux. Most of the time, he isn't even actually human any longer. And when he changes, his body continuously evolves to overcome whatever it is facing.
And that's why Tony must climb into one of his suits of armor when Hulk goes berserk and breaks out of his containment room, to subdue the Hulk and knock him out with a electrode jolt to his brain. Banner is upset that he once again fell victim to the Hulk's rages, but Tony offers him hope. Using nanites injected into Banner's body, they can stop the Hulk from ever existing again, using the nanites to shut down any cells producing the Hulk reaction. In the meantime, Bruce can work on the Supersoldier serum, perfect it and make sure it works right in his own body.
Sadly, they will never get that chance, because the Ironworks is attacked by The Leader, a former British Intelligence operative who underwent his own transformation, his brain and cranium grown so large and heavy that he can no longer stand on his own, and he requires a special harness to be able to hold his head up.
Even before his transformation, the Leader was obsessed with protecting Britain with British superagents, but now he means to rip the secrets of Banner and Stark out of them... from their dead bodies if nothing else will do. Facing certain death, Tony lays out their choices to Bruce. Death or stopping the nanites in Bruce's body from preventing the Hulk transformation. But if Tony stops the nanites, they will never work for Bruce again, because the Hulk's physiology will "learn" and reject them. But what other choice do they have to escape the Leader's men?
Wow. I don't usually like the Ultimates universe, but this comic series was very interesting. I can see that they took part of the scenario from the Ultimate Avengers movie (where Bruce is using the Supersoldier serum to try and "fix" his transformation into the Hulk) and ran with it as the way that the Ultimates Bruce Banner turned *into* the Hulk in the first place. It even fleshes it out more and says that the Supersoldier serum *always* turns people into the Hulk, or a Hulk-like creature. Even Steve Rogers' blood.
Which makes me suspect that mentality and wishing have something to do with the outcome. Steve Rogers wanted so badly to be a soldier, the finest soldier, that he somehow "steered" the serum into giving him that. Banner, whose motives were not quite so pure, obviously, didn't get the same result. He even says that just using Steve Rogers' blood produced a Hulk-like reaction, which goes right along with my theory, And this would fit in with the original Marvel universe in which gamma radiation could also be "steered" by what the individual affected by it wanted.
Anybody who knows comics will know that the attempt to do away with the Hulk (who is in his gray-skinned incarnation here) will eventually go awry. The only question is "how?". But the "why" of that "how" makes for an ultimately (sorry, bad pun) fascinating story. Highly recommended.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment