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Among Marvel heroes, the Hulk has always been quite different. While he’s been a member of various teams, he’s not really much of a joiner. While he has a secret identity, he actually hates it and that secret identity hates the Hulk. He doesn’t really have a costume and he’s not exactly known for being fun to be around. He was always a different kind of character right off the bat and only got more different as the years went by.
The Hulk will always be separate from the other heroes. He’s a very complex character and his heroism isn’t nearly the same as others.
10 Thanos Is Scared Of Him
In the MCU, Thanos took out Hulk like it was nothing, but this is very different than in the comics. It’s not that Thanos couldn’t beat Hulk in the comics, although it definitely wouldn’t be as easy as it was in the movie, but that Thanos is actually afraid of the Hulk. He’s one of Marvel’s greatest villains, but the Hulk is someone he’d rather not face.
The Hulk’s potentially infinite power is a very frightening thing. Thanos knows that every hit that doesn’t kill the Hulk makes him stronger. There’s always the chance that the Hulk is going to get too strong for him to beat, which is why Thanos tries not to mess with him.
9 His Mental Issues Affect His Powers In Unprecedented Ways
One of the defining things about the Hulk is how many different versions of him there are. Superheroes change their costumes all the time, but the Hulk’s different versions come from somewhere else. Bruce Banner is a deeply psychologically scarred man and those scars have affected him and his gamma-based transformations over the years.
While other heroes have mental issues as well, they aren’t as defining as the ones that define the Hulk. The ebb and flow of his power and form are all because of the things that happened to him over the years.
8 He Wants To Be Left Alone
For other Marvel heroes, a big part of their heroism is the camaraderie. They help others because they love society and want to protect it. Hulk does not care about other people, for the most part, beyond Betty Ross or Rick Jones. Hulk doesn’t want to help others; he just wants to be left alone.
When the Illuminati shot him to Sakaar in the seminal Hulk tale Planet Hulk, they basically thought they were doing what he wanted, as the planet they thought they were sending him to was an idyllic paradise without people. In Hulk: The End, the Hulk loves wandering the barren wasteland the Earth became. He just wants to be alone.
7 His Origin Is One Of The Few That Is Directly Caused By Saving Someone
Looking at the origins of Marvel heroes, one finds something quite strange. Very few of them get their powers from actually saving someone. Captain America volunteers to be a super-soldier. The Fantastic Four are bombarded with cosmic rays. Spider-Man is accidentally bit. Iron Man gets injured in a war zone. Mutants are born that way.
Hulk gets his powers because he was trying to save Rick Jones from the gamma bomb. He’s transformed into a monster at that moment, and that moment sets him apart from most Marvel heroes. He was damned to become the Hulk because he didn’t want someone hurt.
6 He Fights More Monsters Than Supervillains
Most of Marvel’s more popular heroes have a coterie of villains they fight, rogues galleries full of colorful villains. The Hulk does have some villains of his own, like the Leader, the Abomination, and for a short time, the Red Hulk, but for the most part, the Hulk has mostly fought monsters. This makes a lot of sense since he himself is a monster but it definitely sets him apart from the others.
The Hulk often feels like a throwback from Marvel’s pre-Fantastic Four #1 days, when the publisher put out a lot of monster comics. Him fighting other monsters is kind of perfect in that regard.
5 He Fights The Military & Rarely Works With Them
Over the years, the Marvel Universe’s heroes have become more militarized. While some have always been associated with the military, in recent years they’ve become more closely aligned with SHIELD and other military organizations. The Hulk, though, has never been a friend of the military. In fact, most of his villains have been military brass over the years.
While other Marvel heroes have also fought against the military, rarely have they done so in the way that he has. His most iconic foe is General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross and he’s also tangled with Major Talbot and others.
4 He’s The Strongest One There Is & His Powers Are Tied To His Anger
Hulk’s base strength is comparable to people like Thor or Hercules but it keeps going up as he gets angry. Hulk’s power is basically infinite; there is no limit to how strong he is and it’s all tied to how angry he gets.
This is probably one of the most unique aspects of his powers, as being fueled by anger isn’t exactly the most heroic thing in the world. The closest is Wolverine’s berzerker rages and even those are quite different, as Wolverine doesn’t get more powerful, he just loses control. His anger-based powers make him very different from other heroes.
3 Future Versions Of Him Are Pretty Much Always Evil
Alternate futures for Marvel’s heroes are always popular and the Hulk’s are quite different from most heroes. In the classic alternate future stories, the hero is still basically a hero. They sometimes need to be reminded of it again, but then they jump right back into it. Future Hulk stories are very different. He’s usually the bad guy and the most dangerous Hulks are often these versions.
Stories like Future Imperfect and Old Man Logan show future villainous Hulks who have embraced their anger and hatred. Even Hulk: The End has a Hulk that doesn’t really care about anything as long as he’s left alone. For some reason, the Hulk always turns out evil.
2 He’s Basically A Horror Movie Monster
Even before The Immortal Hulk turned the subtext of the Hulk into text, the character was always a bit of a horror character. His biggest inspiration was seemingly Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, even down to him gaining his powers at night. While other Marvel heroes would work for horror stories, the Hulk has always been a horror story with superhero overtones, down to the psychological nature of the character.
This is the truth of the Hulk and it sets him completely apart from other Marvel characters. Sure, he’s done some good things over the years, but he’s also a wild source of destruction that has done way more harm than help.
1 He’s Not A Superhero
The Hulk is not a superhero. More often than not, he’s fighting the heroes and is destroying private and government property. Stories like World War Hulk and The Immortal Hulk show him fighting against Marvel’s heroes and while he sometimes has good reason, sometimes his reason is just that he’s really angry and the heroes get in his way.
Thinking of the Hulk as a superhero is the exact wrong way to think of the character. Superheroes save people and fight supervillains; Hulk destroys things and fights superheroes and the military more often than not. That’s the biggest difference between him and Marvel’s other heroes.
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