Immortal Hulk and the consequences of the individual world.
It is in man’s mind that the worst fears and social daydreams dwell, chief among them being the dread of absolute insignificance in the face of the vast immensity of a chaotic and seemingly meaningless universe, Every star observed, whether vibrant with life or on the brink of death, defines how horror and cosmic dystopia afflict the human mind, seeking madness as an explanation for its reality.
When considering Cosmic Horror, the mind naturally turns to the black beasts and gods conjured by H.P. Lovecraft. However, as far back as 700 BC, in Hesiod’s Theogony, the origin of gods and their immense titan progenitors was already defined as arising from Chaos itself. Here, consciousness was granted form, and cycles, as believed by the Scandinavians, dictated that Ragnarökr (the destiny of the gods) would bring about the world’s renewal through the final clash between deities and warriors exalted by glory.
The human endeavor to reshape and designate every cosmic form of origin, whether actual or perceived, consumed all human despair to expose the need for a god present in the abyss to guide all the sins and horrors created in the mind of man to explain the non-existence of a logical world.
In the small picture, the story of Immortal Hulk does not markedly differ from other conventional superhero comics, it has an Agon (Conflict) initiated by the death of the Hulk’s alter ego, Dr. Bruce Banner, at midnight, only to be reborn in its deadliest and most vile form. Then we walk the entire course of history, with the comings and goings of caricatured villains and emblematic clashes, the science fiction that surrounds the character, until the writer, Al Ewing, introduces us to the great antagonist of his unique exposition.
Prior to the cathartic turning point in his stories with the introduction of the Green Door, the Hulk was always an especially fascinating character, his origin, as an allegory, was not the need to create a big green monster to rival or metaphorize strong beings like Heracles, or Achilles from contemporary literature as many imagine, but it was born as a deficiency, a need to recompose and restructure what man understands about his nature and how he decides to deal with it.
Over the years, the origins of what became the Hulk changed, as did their personalities, but the equally common point in their stories was the result of years of physical abuse by Bruce Banner’s father character, Dr. Brian Banner, a physicist who became terrified during the study of gamma radiation, and after years of experience, he began to think that radiation itself was not electromagnetic radiation, but a form of communication and infection of something in the universe inherent to humanity, and in his father’s madness, Bruce was born.
For Brian, from the discovery of gamma rays (γ) by Paul Ulrich Villard, to modern revelations about gamma radiation during cosmic events like supernovas and hypernovas, the Hulk’s destiny becomes a metaphor for the universe’s ultimate consumption. Gamma emission, as a result of destruction, symbolizes the Hulk’s inevitable role as the ultimate consumer of the universe.
The paranoia Brian harbored led him to label his child a monster, a designation fueled by constant association with the “real world.” Since Bruce was a child, Brian consistently subjected him to extreme aggression and mutilated his son whenever possible, and as defense mechanisms for both his subconscious and his own id, Bruce had to create diverse personalities to contain his father’s ongoing abuses, which would later physically reflect on his transformations when he became an adult.
The abstraction of reading not only solidifies through Brian’s abusive relationship but about how the human subconscious needs to be inherent in its fears and its demons to prevail where there is only discord.
Despite antagonizing a large part of the young man’s life, Brian is not the villain of Immortal Hulk, because, by the time the comics are being published, he is already dead in the chronology incorporated in the Hulk character, but the ultimate evil, the One Bellow All, a villain created especially for this series that aims to expose the human illusions created to explain evil.
As the Immortal Hulk narrative delves deeper, it’s unveiled that the One Below All is, in fact, possessing the soul of the protagonist’s deceased father, as a way to whenever he dies or changes his personality within his subconscious, ends up being controlled or used as a weapon of destruction in the real world, the villain, in its true meaning, represents the need to consume, the constant and infinite desire for explanations, the desire to be, since, for being literally the being below all others, he wishes to refer to as something that exists, or in this case, reshape the whole reality in his life form, and by this, actually creating logical meaning behind his existence, which, in the story, is described as the consequence of chaos and destruction.
The natural, the bestial, and the social duty, in Immortal Hulk, present themselves as friends, and they all are, in their essence, destructive, either for others or themselves, regardless of choice, these elements cannot be repressed or satisfied enough to satiate experiences, they make and shape what each person is to their own society.
The protagonist faces a catastrophic clash against his own mind, necessitating the sacrifice of his personality throughout the story to defeat the practically omniscient and omnipotent villain or reshape him just as a delusion or as a common desire, and in this moment the story lights up its apotheosis and asks the reader if it is worth sacrificing your individual being, or parts of it, for the trivialization of desire, no matter how cruel and vile it can and may be.
Al Ewing presents how humanity is able, not only to escape his fears and anxieties, but to heal both physical and psychological traumas and bruises allowing the creation of real monsters, and letting them absorb the being, to finally expose their, or in this case, our true potential, good or bad, present in each individual.
Every edition of Immortal Hulk starts with a direct quote from a book, passage, or verse, adapting to how the turnaround, or cohesion of the edition will be about the theme presented, but, to the man:
“In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter — bitter,” he answered;“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”
Stephen Crane, The Black Riders and Other Lines
