#hulk posting

[misscammiedawn]

DID Representation in The Incredible Hulk (Part 2)

Continuing on from Part 1 in which I explained the background of the Banner System I wanted to discuss the marriage between Bruce Banner and Betty Talbot Ross-Banner and break down relationships between systems and singlets.

This is a topic that is tackled often in media and one that could be its own topic of focus within DID representation.

Some may have a complicated love triangle where a singlet is in love with two members of a system or have dynamics where members of a system love different partners and even stories involving introjects of loved ones who are treated as living memories.

The romance tropes and "split personality" tropes really do go hand in hand and for the most part those stories are not what I would consider DID representation as the trope exists to facilitate the story. The drama is often sourced from at least one party in the situation not understanding or consenting to the dynamics of the plurality at play or a member of a system attempting to actively sabotage the relationship.

Where I would start considering it moving out of trope territory and into representation territory is when the condition is treated as part of the reality of being in a relationship and something which has to be navigated as surely as any other life circumstance.

Today I'm going to talk about the romance in Hulk comics. Particularly surrounding the relationship between Joe Fixit and Betty Ross.

Since the very first issues in 1962 Betty Ross has known the man she was in love with was both Bruce Banner and Hulk. Bruce's DID may have been a curveball thrown at her down the line, as mentioned in part 1 it was not codified until the mid-80s, but it was never a secret. In the previous part of this essay I noted that Bruce did not have the strength within himself to accept his condition and he was emotionally distant and ran away from the people who loved him.

Bruce has the option of not dealing with his condition. Betty does not.

Hulk is a rare comic where it shows a hyperbolic reality of engaging in a relationship with someone who has a dissociative disorder. Betty and Banner do not have a good marriage. They show a lot of red flags, some more worrying than others. But they deal with those issues and thus they display them on the page well enough to have a conversation about it.

And that's why I wanted to highlight it.

Immortal Hulk #48 (Al Ewing - 2021)

In this issue Betty and Joe have just had a passion fueled reunion that lead to them enjoying some private time in a hotel room. The circumstances are complicated but she had walked out on Bruce earlier in the story. Betty has been trying to show him the imperfections in herself (physically represented by her Red Harpy form) and Bruce has been refusing to engage with the "monster" in the place of his wife.

Gamma tends to make physical that which lays under the surface. When Bruce looks away from Red Harpy he is truly looking away from viewing his wife as anything other than perfect.

Towards the end of the Immortal Hulk storyline Betty returned to the plot and found that Bruce was still "hiding" from her so she got close to Joe instead and the two proceed to have an adult conversation about their broken marriage and just where Joe fits in with it.

We'll cover Immortal Hulk 48 in more detail a little more later. It's one of my favorite comics of all time.

But before I continue I want to point out Joe and Betty's disagreement on whether this is cheating or not. "You married Banner" "You're a part of him" to paraphrase.

Relationship dynamics with systems come in a variety of different shapes and sizes. In writing this essay I have no intention of stating any version is better or worse than another and I recognize that different circumstances have different needs.

Many of my friends who I know from support communities hold Joe's view. That individual alters have the agency to consent to be included in relationships with the system or not. Others hold Betty's view, that to be in love with the system is to be in love with every part of the person, regardless of whether they were present enough to consent at the time the relationship began.

I am in Betty's camp. Some of my closest friends with DID are in Joe's. There are other camps. But there is one thing that I have seen discussed in every single support group I've been part of and it's that members of the system dating outside of a monogamous relationship without explicit consent is and will always be cheating. Emphasis on communication and consent.

Incredible Hulk 376 (Peter David - 1990)

I am polyamorous and our system considers all of us in each relationship, even if we understand that this ideal is not exactly easily integrated into a relationship. I'll not peel back the curtain but there's a lot of inner and external management that goes into that conceit. One of our partners explicitly has a relationship with all 5 of us, our other partners have a relationship with "us" that is less concerned about individual dynamics and neither version of this scenario is preferred over the other. Every relationship is different. Even if one of those relationships contains 5. Like everything with being in treatment, it's about being flexible, understanding, compromising and accommodating.

As noted above, Joe does not consider himself to be Bruce and so he does not feel like he has to honor Bruce's marriage. In the 80s run when Joe gains his name and acts as a Las Vegas enforcer he has a romance with a young woman named Marlo Chandler. Regretfully she is not overtly mentioned in Immortal Hulk #48 though Betty does bring up that Joe had a whole life in Vegas that he had hidden away from her. Marlo was part of that life.

In the tail end of the Vegas arc of comics Betty returns to Bruce's life after thinking him dead for over 6 months. Marlo shows up and is surprised to see Bruce, someone she was told was Joe's brother. Joe and Marlo's relationship was formed while Bruce was dormant and after he returned the cover story was that Bruce Bancroft was Joe Fixit's brother. Joe does not consider himself to be Bruce and so does not honor his marriage. As you see in the above page, everyone else involved does not see it the same way.

A highlight from this era is a few issues earlier where Betty and Joe have their first adult discussion. It's an absolute classic comic and is directly referenced in Immortal Hulk #48. Betty and Joe have great energy together and trust one another, though Joe fears her as the system's attachment to her leaves them feeling vulnerable and lowers the walls between alters. It's a shame that this was 4 issues before the forced fusion. I'd have loved to have seen more interactions between the pair.

Incredible Hulk #373 (Peter David - 1990)

Sidenote that issue has my favorite Hulk cover of all time.

They don't have a lot of time together but Betty and Joe had great chemistry in these comics, especially when compared to how Bruce treats her. The following pages are both from the same issue:

Incredible Hulk #374 (Peter David - 1990)

Bruce does love Betty but he hates himself more than he loves her and she long has to deal with him putting up walls and keeping a distance. Where Banner fears the "monster" he becomes, in no canon does Betty ever fear any incarnation of Hulk.

She does however resent being coddled. Her father was overly protective of her because her mother died, her first husband, Glenn Talbot, was overly protective of her and now Bruce has picked up that sin. She hates being treated as helpless.

For sake of clarity and addressing the "early installment weirdness" I'll note that it wasn't until Byrne's run in the 80s that Betty gained a backbone. During the 80s period of comics Byrne and David codified her as a fierce and strong-willed woman and that characterization has remained with her ever since.

The reason Bruce is so temperamental about the woman he loves and why all the Hulk's, even Devil, are typically so good to her is...

Well...

Incredible Hulk #377 (Peter David - 1991)

I'll let that speak for itself.

The Vegas arc is not the only time that Bruce has seemingly died and been content to let his wife think he is deceased.

Bruce's emotional distance from Betty is another all too real depiction of traumatized adults who are not managing their symptoms. Trauma in all forms remains with a person and steers their behavior. In the extreme this can lead to phobias and mildly it can lead to avoidance.

Bruce is constantly driven to avoid pain. He is depressed, self-loathing and withdrawn and no matter how much he pulls away he is unable to secure for himself a sense of comfort and security. When he withdraws from his wife he is indulging in a maladaptive coping mechanism that tells him that he will be hurt if he gets closer to her.

A quote from Bruce in Immortal Hulk #14 "Betty... I know. I should have... called someone. But I--I wasn't ready. It's like I knew that in my gut. I couldn't face it. I've learned to trust feelings like that. They protect me."

Joe, who is emotionally removed from the source of their trauma, does not live in terror of the memories that haunt the rest of the system. Bruce may have repressed memories of his father's worst deeds (and the fact that he, himself, murdered the man) but he still feels the terror that is attached to love.

Devil overtly spells it out during the Immortal Hulk storyline by saying "Deep down inside. He's still that kid. A little kid who can't imagine love without pain." which is sadly an all too true reality for many suffering with DID. We don't need to be child alters to still be eternally living through events that happened decades ago.

In the Immortal Hulk storyline Bruce spent months estranged from her and when he got back to her she ended up caught in crossfire and died herself, only to awaken the gamma in her blood and be resurrected as Red Harpy.

There's a lot of Comics stuff there about Betty's mutate forms (Harpy and Red She-Hulk) and how gamma mutation is psychological in how it presents. All that is needed to be known is that Betty simmers with a silent fury. She has been treated as a trophy her entire life, protected and sheltered by her military general father, all but traded as a dowry to one of her father's loyal men, Glenn Talbot, and then long suffering as Bruce Banner's wife.

Even her Red She-Hulk form was forcibly taken away against her wishes by Bruce "for her own good".

Immortal Hulk #14 (Al Ewing - 2019)

For this reason after she is killed again, her latest gamma mutation draws out a feathered and fanged harpy, something she entirely identifies as with no shame, represented by her instant and intentional transformations between forms. Her catchphrase is "this is ME."

Bruce cannot accept this is the person he married. Joe actively admires and encourages her self-acceptance.

Here's a page where Bruce escapes from a conversation that he himself initiated because he cannot stand to face an imperfect version of Betty:

Immortal Hulk #22 (Al Ewing - 2019)

This all comes to a head when Betty approaches Joe and asks to speak to her husband and after switching out, Bruce feels cornered enough to lash out and demand to speak to his wife. Betty, realizing Bruce will never accept this side of her leaves.

Which brings us back to the hotel room after she reunites with Joe.

The argument breaks out when Betty scornfully notes that if Bruce objected to them being together then he should come out and say it himself, knowing full well that he will continue withdrawing and hiding from her.

Joe admits that Bruce isn't there because he's in hell. There's a very long and interesting explanation to that which is entirely literal.

But the point is that he allowed their reunion and passionate evening to persist without saying that. It clues Betty in to the fact that Joe may be better at hiding it and may be better at smooth talking than the system's host is but he is just as avoidant.

She does not take it well.

Immortal Hulk #48 (Al Ewing - 2021)

But here's the part that really solidifies these two as a pair of grown-ups.

Joe admits to his fuck-up, offers some additional vulnerability (Betty herself refuses to believe Joe is capable of vulnerability and lashes out at him for attempting to emotionally manipulate her) by confessing to his origins as a child's idea of a man.

The little bits of truth about the condition that spill out during this conversation truly show how much empathy Ewing put into depicting DID as accurately as he could for a comic about world breaking atomic beasts. "If I wanted to lie, I coulda said I didn't remember. We usually don't" and "I... we, All of us. The whole damn system... We're messed up" are lines which feel like they could come up during a conversation on these topics.

I cannot even tally the amount of guilt we feel in discussions where we know our brain should be retaining the information and that we want to remember and be clear but we can't. The hardest part is to not just lean on the condition as an excuse or out for many of the valid discussions that come up when navigating a relationship.

At the end of the day the only way to manage these troubled waters is with trust and communication, same as any other relationship.

Joe gives that a try, even.

Immortal Hulk #48 (Al Ewing - 2021)

DID is a hidden illness. It's denial disease. It is sourced from a level of emotional agony that is too present, too constant and too inescapable. It's why, until the age of the internet where ability to recognize symptoms without medical guidance due to knowledge and resources being widespread, the average age of diagnosis is 30 despite symptoms being prevalent from childhood.

Relationships with disordered systems are difficult. When an adult has a trauma response that causes them to dissociate, hide and reject sources of pain and conflict they will inevitably fail to communicate and cause additional friction in a relationship.

Joe here makes his absolute best attempt to bridge that gap. He accepts his failings. Admits fault and attempts to communicate with honesty and vulnerability.

I do not know where Banner/Ross' marriage will go in the future. There's a lot of hurt there. It won't be smoothed over with a single conversation. It won't be healed until Bruce is able to be present in the conversation.

But my heavens this is the most mature discussion I have ever seen on the topic in fiction. Bruce is the personification of the phrase "Hurt people hurt people.", he doesn't mean it. None of the system truly means it (well... sometimes they mean it. They have anger issues after all) but they want to try and be better. Joe does, anyway.

And the sad fact is that sometimes that can be too little, too late.

Betty leaves after the above page. A hopeful person can claim that she was summoned by Dr. Strange's magical call for champions but it doesn't matter. She decides she has seen everything the Banner System has to offer and needs some time for herself.

I look forward to seeing if we ever get a follow-up to this. It's been 2/3 years.

And that brings me to the end of this little detour.

I'll likely be back with more Hulk talk in the future. There are a lot of storylines to cover. But for now, thank you for reading my little squee on this particular comic book relationship. It means a great deal to me.

If you enjoyed my little ramble about DID representation please consider checking out my Media, Myself and I tag. Otherwise, thank you for reading.

Oh and buy Immortal Hulk. It's legitimately one of the best comic runs of all time.

[mysticdevils]

avengers + name meanings

“‘cause if we can’t protect the earth, you can be damn sure we’ll avenge it.”

[sugarbear2001]

They are so damn freaky

[deadpoolya]

if I had a nickel for every time marvel studios released a project about a fourth wall breaking superhero with their love interest appearing in yellow suit for the first time on screen and the final scene of that project is a family dinner where the love interest is wearing a gray plaid shirt i'd have two nickels which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice.

[mrsbrxkkxr]

Nico, I see what are you doing here

.

.

.

From Nico Hulkenberg's Instagram

[misscammiedawn]

It drives me absolutely feral that the character that I love so much is just not known by anyone who doesn't real Hulk specific books. Sometimes I wonder if every writer who does the character even knows the mythos given how many times they've reinvented "Hulk's Hulk" and "Hulk, but smart!" concepts... or worse, treat Devil like he's Guilt.

And the less said about MCU the better. I'm still livid that Infinity War had a sequence with (a hologram of) Thunderbolt Ross and Bruce in the same room and they didn't interact.

Now MCU have introduced Skaar, which is fine enough. But how the hell do you even do justice to the character without the weight of Bruce's history of abuse and the fact that he murdered his own father.

There is a rumor that World War Hulks (emphasis on the s) will be coming down the line and like... can you even do this sequence without understanding just how badly Brian messed up his son and how the mere concept of fatherhood is terrifying to Bruce.

I just...

I'd give anything to be able to share with people who Joe is and why he means so much to me without having to get them to understand the brief of Mantlo's run, the circumstances that lead to PAD's run, PAD's run itself and what Ewing did to make him so meaningful.

It'd take like 2 hours to explain why these two pages-

-are enough to make me tear up.

Ah well. At least there are like a couple hundred of us online who actually enjoy the meat of the mythos and not just the stuff that makes it into TV, movies and video games.

I don't get why Hulk writers (comics/movies/everything) keep leaning into the public perception of the Hulk as "guy with extreme anger issues" when the premise of "group of guys who despise each other, but are forced to share a body, try to save the world or whatever" is right there, and is much funnier/more tragic and more interesting in general

[thestarlightforge]

Rhaenyra Targaryen’s kissing women. Agatha Harkness is kissing women. Charlie Spring hates Marvel and Billy Maximoff is gay, dating a black gay Teddy Altman (golden earrings, green garb & all), alive and well—on a Witch’s Road that glows Wiccan Blue, lit by the colors of his family (blue, green, gold and scarlet), and opened for him (upon his memories of his brother).

I don’t know how we got away with this, y’all. But let’s soak it in. And Happy 2024, Apparently 🧙🏻

[louisferrignojr]

when will my husband (lou ferrigno jr) come back from the war (social media gag order) 😔

[misscammiedawn]

Words cannot describe the hole in my heart left behind from that comic ending.

Al Ewing has something special with the way that he writes characters. He seems to understand the core of each character that he writes for and how that core would interact with the world it is in. This is especially true for the Banner System, especially when Bruce is dragged to hell and Joe is left in charge.

With Charlene and the above mentioned issue, the way she resists mind control (the mind control itself being an incredible allegory for how corporations hijack progressive movements and utilize them to steer people in a direction that is convenient for their status quo) is that she, as a transgender woman, has spent her entire life resisting and rejecting what the mass media signals her truth and reality should be and so when a supervillain utilizes television propaganda to change people's perceptions she can see through it.

She'd been in the comic for over a year real-time by the moment this sequence happened and the way her trans status is revealed is so human and natural.

Al has continued writing Charlene and Len in the 5 part Gamma-Flight comic and it's good to see Len trying to relate to Charlene but Charlene not wanting anything to do with it. By that point Len is obsessed with regaining his original form (his original form is as pictured in the page above) after events of Immortal Hulk left him in Sasquash's form. Charlene is *disgusted* that a mental healthcare professional (one who is responsible for the world breaker himself, no less) would think that she felt trapped in a body that wasn't hers. Charlene embraces her form, her identity and her truth and is BETRAYED when a well meaning idiot assumes that they can relate on something because he's suddenly experiencing dysphoria.

God... I could go on and on about this comic. About the way Ewing handles identity, psychology, family, trauma and self-love. I'd give everything just to have another 50 issues. To have an adaptation. To have this be the base standard for how Banner and co are portrayed...

For me? The level of care, compassion and curiosity displayed was healing in a way most fiction simply isn't. It'll be a long time before I find something to replace it.

read immortal hulk, it has charlene macgowan, she’s a trans woman trapped in a life of working for black ops guys and criminals because she was so saddled with debts it was the only option available to her, and her kindness to a tormented gamma mutant makes the Hulk decide to spare her and recruit her to Team Destroy The World (In a Socially Reconstructive Sense), and her sense of self identity actually is key for her overcoming some mind control and brainwashing in a way that the cisgender people around her don’t benefit from

[misscammiedawn]

Well, just finished reading Immortal Hulk. It was a good time, and I believe I initially heard about it on this blog, so I gotta thank you for making me aware of it.

Immortal Hulk is so damned good. It raised the bar for Marvel. Even outsold Batman at its peak. Glad you enjoyed it and I am sorry for inflicting its absence upon you. That itch won't get scratched again anytime soon.

[youruncleolaf]

marvel had to give matt a girlfriend because they knew charlie and jon will continue making matt and frank argue gayly and they have to keep pushing that he’s straight

[gremlinisjay]

Do not expect this from me again, the second one in this style took ages (I still liked it though, so who knows actually).

[mattmurdeaux]

MATT MURDOCK LOOKOGRAPHY RATING

(As based on Hotness, Appeal, and Overall Yumminess)

HIGHEST RATED: 100 % Black Suit, Tuxedo, Shirtless, Smedium NYPD Shirt

LOWEST RATED: 45% Stick Cosplay

CRITICS CONSENSUS: "Matthew Murdock is an absolute ethereal, beautiful, show-stopping, gorgeous human being regardless of his sartorial choices." (Certified HOT at 100%)

AUDIENCE REVIEW: "Matt ur hot af." (Certified Down Bad for this disaster Catholic man)

[why-i-love-comics]

Giant-Size Little Marvels #1 (2024)

written by Skottie Young art by Dax Gordine & Jean-Francois Beaulieu

[gelu-the-babosa-multiversal]

BEST AVENGERS ADAPTATION NOT DISCUSSION!!!!

It is canon that Tony is a Saturday cartoon guy and that Thor has a sweet tooth

[gameraboy2]

The Incredible Hulk (1977), "Killer Instinct"