The Avengers Battle… The Space Phantom!

Reprint of Avengers #2.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Following their battle with the Space Phantom,[2] it becomes clear to the Hulk that the rest of the Avengers — Iron Man, Thor, GIant-Man, and the Wasp — do not trust him. Having had enough, he decides he doesn’t need the Avengers and leaps high into the sky to get away.

As he bounds away, the Hulk rants to himself about how he tried to do the right thing but now all he wants to do is look out for number one. Landing on the highway, the Hulk throws a temper tantrum until a car drives into him. He is annoyed that the driver wasn’t watching they were going and considers punching the driver, a frightened woman pleading for him to stop. Suddenly, the Hulk becomes dizzy….

… and wakes up as Bruce Banner in a jail cell covered in blood. Banner’s last memory was of the Hulk about to hit an innocent woman and fears the worst. His screams attract two detectives who think that Banner is a drunken bum.[3] Taken to an interrogation room, the two detectives — Fontana and Simon — have questions for him. He is returned his glasses, the only possession they found on him and ask for his name. Bruce tells them that his name is “Bob”.[4]

The detectives explain that they work in homicide and are curious to know how Banner got all the blood on him. They begin playing good cop/bad cop in the hopes of getting a confession out of “Bob”. Banner, tries to maintain his cool under these stressful conditions, less he turns into the Hulk once more. As the detectives turn up the heat, some uniformed officers arrive with lab results from the blood they found on their suspect.

This is when Bruce finally remembers what the Hulk did before he blacked out. He tells the detectives (omitting the parts about being the Hulk) that he got mad when he was hit by a car. However, he discovered that the woman driving was not only pregnant, but about to give birth. The Hulk then helped her deliver the baby.

The is corroborated by the blood tests that determine that the blood on Banner’s body is amniotic fluid. They were also able to track the woman down and she corroborates the story. Banner is cleaned up, given a fresh set of clothes, and then released from custody. As Banner leaves, he is relieved that the Hulk didn’t hurt anyone this time. However, he fears that it is only a matter of time before the Hulk does something terrible and he worries that not even the Avengers will be able to stop him.

Recurring Characters

Hulk, Avengers (Iron Man, Thor, Giant-Man, the Wasp)

Continuity Notes

1. The battle with the Space Phantom, of course, happened in Avengers #2.

2. At the time of this story, the fact that Bruce Banner was also the Hulk was not known by the general public. This will be the case until Tales to Astonish #77.

3. The choice of “Bob” could be a reference to Fantastic Four #25, in which Stan Lee erroneously called the Hulk’s alter-ego “Bob Banner” for an entire issue. When this mistake was pointed out in a letter published in Fantastic Four #28, Stan Lee declared that Banner’s full name was actually Robert Bruce Banner, and that he favored his middle name over his first.