COMICS: Marvel Continues To Tease The New 'Hulk's' Identity
This October, Marvel Comics will be launching Totally Awesome Hulk, a new ongoing series featuring a brand-new Hulk! Click the jump to see the publisher's latest teases as to just who this new Hulk just might be!
In October, Marvel Comics will be relaunching their entire line through the All-New All-Different initiative. While the Marvel Universe will NOT be getting rebooted, the idea is that the characters and teams that inhabit it will be significantly altered, and will bring several of the companie's more obscure characters, as well as characters who have inhabited alternate universes (i.e. Mile Morales from the Ultimate Universe [Earth-1210], and Old Man Logan from Earth-807128), will be brought into the mainstream titles. While there are several major changes being promised following the Secret Wars crossover event, one of the biggest involves The Hulk - or rather, the Totally Awesome Hulk.
Writer Greg Pak and artist Frank Cho will be in charge of the title, which will introduce a rather massive twist on the beloved character - it won't be Bruce Banner turning into the green goliath. One of the biggest selling points of the upcoming series is that no-one knows just who will be turning into the monstrous hero, or how that will affect what The Hulk is like. Will he still be a rage-fuelled creature, or will he be something else entirely? While the creators working on the project have confirmed that we will discover The Hulk's new alter ego in the series' first issue, fans have been eagerly trying to guess just who will be taking up the mantle based off of the following image:
One of the most popular theories thus far had been that Amadeus Cho would be the new human harbouring the Hulk within, but there has been no concrete evidence of that being the case. It is also worth noting that it isn't just the head that is blacked out - its the arm. While The Hulk has never seemed to suffer from Bruce Banner's disabilities - when Banner turned into The Hulk, he didn't still require glasses, for example - it is possible that this new Hulk will. Alternatively, the hand could be blacked out due to it displaying some kind of power that would give away the hero's identity, just like... Iron Fist.
As you can see in the image in the embedded tweet above, Marvel has teased that Danny Rand will be the new Hulk. That WOULD explain the blacked out hand, and that blacked out face sure looks like it is donning Iron Fist's mask. But, if you look REALLY close at the head, you can see even more evidence that is who the tease is pointed towards - you can see his hair sticking out in the same way it has in a number of artist's interpretations of the character.
However, Marvel wasn't content with just teasing Iron Fist has the potential Bruce Banner replacement, as they released yet another tease mere hours later.
As you can see, this is a drastically different tease for the character, and one character comes to mind when looking at this image - Unworthy Thor.
As you can see, Thor's missing arm (that he replaced with the arm of The Destroyer) DOES match up to the arm that is blacked out in the teases. Not only that, the hair certainly matches up. But, the beard is definitely a different story, unless you consider what Future Thor looked like in Jason Aaron's 2013 Thor: God of Thunder run, who certainly looked like he could have been the future version of Unworthy Thor (y'know, before Secret Wars kicked in).
But wait - what if the multiple different teases could be more than just a ploy to keep fans guessing, a tease for something bigger? Could this new Hulk be a combination of these different characters? We have seen multiple Hulks in the past, which usually had to do with the Green Goliath's psychological state (see: Hulk: Silent Screams story arc), Marvel COULD be going down the same path as DC's Firestorm, who is a being created by the merging of two individuals within a Matrix. Of course, it could be as simple as Marvel wanting to keep fans guessing.
But what do you guys think? Do you think the new Hulk will be Thor, Amadeus Cho, Iron Fist, all of the aforementioned characters, or none of them at all? Who do you hope the new Hulk is? Let me know in the comments below, and be sure to share and hit that thumbs up!
You can find out who the new Hulk is when Totally Awesome Hulk #1 releases October.