Incredible Hulk #149
The Inheritor!
The Hulk has been sedated and kept under lock and key at Project: Greenskin in the hopes that they can find a way to cure Bruce Banner once and for all. Betty however fears that they have tried too many times and that perhaps the Hulk will never revert back to Bruce Banner again. She goes outside the base and watches the stars and makes a wish on what she believes to be a shooting star. It is in reality an alien ship that crash lands just outside the base in the forest where it is spotted by two hunters. What issues forth from the shuttle is a gigantic insectoid creature calling itself the Inheritor, who has come to lay claim to the entire planet Earth. As the creature trudges away from its ship it explodes.
While back at Project: Greenskin, the Hulk awakens and attempts to break out of his cell forcing General Ross to have the Hulk gassed. The gas causes the Hulk to revert back into Bruce Banner, and he is visited by General Ross and Betty. Ross assures Bruce that they will find a way to turn him back to normal, however after all the years of hearing the same story, Bruce is less than optimistic about this goal.
As they prepare their next attempt to cure the Hulk, the Inheritor kills the two hunters and begins to be drawn toward Project: Greenskin. At the Project, Banner is rigged up to a device that will detect Bruce's transformation into the Hulk and drain him of the excess radiation in the hopes of curing him. The Inheritor meanwhile attacks a truck filled with radioactive material. In splitting it open he is bombarded with radiation that unlocks hidden memories about how his species outlived the dinosaurs and early man. Wanting to awaken more memories, it detects the radiations coming from Project: Greenskin and is determined to absorb them as well.
There the Inheritor smashes its way through the base and reaches the room where Bruce Banner is currently attempting to cure himself of being the Hulk. Smashing open a reactor and being bombarded with radiation, the Inheritor remembers that it was one of the High Evolutionary's New Men that was banished from Wundagore II and was drifting in space. It soon found that it was losing it's memory and regressing back to it's previous state when a meteor hit it's ship causing it to crash on Earth.
As the Inheritor is recollecting all of this Bruce changes into the Hulk once more and the green goliath battles the Inheritor. As the two battle, the fight is taken to the surface of Project: Greenskin where the Hulk then knocks the creature back down below. The Hulk is then knocked down by the military's counter attack. The Inheritor looking for another machine to absorb radiation from stumbles upon the machine that Banner was going to use to change himself back to normal. The machine saps all the Inheritor's absorbed radiation causing him to revert back to his original form. The Hulk comes smashing through shortly thereafter and finds only a single cockroach inside and no enemy to destroy. Confused, the Hulk tosses the bug aside and it scurries off into the darkness.
Recurring Characters
Hulk, Betty Ross, Glenn Talbot, General Ross, High Evolutionary (flasback)
Continuity Notes
A Note mentions that the High Evolutionary created the Inheritor prior to his first appearance in Thor #134.
Another Note teases that the High Evolutionary is still active and that readers can see what he's been up to in Marvel Premiere #1.
