DC Had a Hulk of Its Own, but It Never Figured Out What to Do With Him

Hulk is one of the most popular superheroes ever. In a lot of ways, the Green Goliath links the pre-Fantastic Four Marvel Universe to the monster comics that they had been doing before that team changed the publisher forever. Bruce Banner had all of the hallmarks of an old monster comics – science creating a monster, the military getting involved, a person losing their humanity – but also had him fighting other monsters and battling alien invasions, before introducing supervillains to his adventures like the Leader and the Abomination. Hulk has starred in some amazing stories, digging into what trauma and abuse can do to a person, connecting with generations of fans.

DC Comics has often copied the House of Ideas; for example, Firestorm is basically their Spider-Man. However, they’ve never really given readers a Hulk of their own. The closest they had for years was the villain Solomon Grundy, but that would change in the days after Dark Knights: Metal. DC started a new line of comics called “The New Age of Heroes”, where a group of writers and artists would use Marvel Method-style comic production to create heroes that were more than reminiscent of the greats of Marvel. It was something of a failure, with only The Terrifics lasting any amount of time. However, DC finally created the perfect Hulk analogue, a character who they could never really figure out what to do with – Damage.

Damage Was the Perfect DC Son of the Hulk

“The New Age of Heroes” took some of the best artists in the industry and allowed them to make Marvel pastiches in the DC Multiverse, with Damage being one of the most interesting. Damage is a name familiar to DC fans. The first Damage was a ’90s hero introduced in “Bloodlines”. Grant Emerson was the son of the Golden Age Atom, using his powers to fight evil and try to get the attention of his father’s friends in the Justice Society. The character would end up joining the Freedom Fighters, which led to him being maimed by Reverse Flash in Infinite Crisis #1, spending a short time with the Justice Society before being killed in Blackest Night.

The new Damage wasn’t related to Emerson or the Atom at all, but he did have his own ties to Golden Age DC heroes. This new version of Damage was a soldier named Ethan Avery. He served a tour in Afghanistan, earning praise for his actions in the war, and this would lead to him joining the Damage program, which was meant to create a superpowered soldier that could vie with the most powerful metahumans. He was chosen to be the test subject and was given the Damage serum, which was based on Miraclo, a drug created by Hourman that gave whoever took it superhuman strength and durability for an hour. Ethan’s life was changed forever. He could transform for one hour day, gaining unfathomable strength and durability, but didn’t have any control over his actions at the time.

This is an awesome little premise, taking various aspects of numerous characters and welding them to the Hulk concept. Ethan ends up going haywire as Damage and escapes, going on a rampage and ending up in a homeless shelter, leading to everyone hunting him down. This was basically the first few years of the Hulk in the DC Multiverse but taken to the Nth degree. While Bruce Banner also didn’t always have control over the Hulk, the Jade Giant was somewhat good. Damage was just a force of destruction and Ethan could speak to it, but couldn’t make him do what he wanted. It was a cool little wrinkle to the premise but it also made it harder to use the character.

It’s plain to see that if Damage would have taken off, that Ethan probably would have learned to control himself better, becoming more akin to Firestorm (where there were two people, one in control of the body and the other giving them pointers on what to do) but we never got the chance to get there. Creators Tony Daniel and Robert Venditti took the basics of the Hulk, added in helpings of Hourman and Firestorm, and set up a character that could have grown into something special. However, one of the problems with most of “The New Age of Heroes” is that most of the creators never found a way to make the characters into something unique. Damage was a cool character, but he was basically just the Silver Age Hulk with a DC coat of paint. This hurt what could have been a cool concept a lot and led to him disappearing.

DC Missed the Opportunity to Do Some Damage but It’s Not Too Late

Damage is a character with an amazing concept, taking from Hulk, Hourman, and Firestorm, but I think that DC went the wrong direction with it. Unlike Bruce Banner, Ethan wasn’t all that interesting of a character – he was merely a great soldier – and the fact that he had no control over Damage was a problem. One of the things about the Hulk is that the big destructive battles get you in the door, but it’s the deep character-based storytelling that keeps you there. Damage didn’t have any of that and that led to the character’s failure.

However, just because he’s gone doesn’t meant that he can’t come back or that there’s no hope for the future of the character. While DC’s US government isn’t as often blatantly evil as Marvel’s, characters like Amanda Waller and organizations like the DEO are always in the shadows, ready to cause trouble. Imagine them getting their hands on the serum and using it to create a Suicide Squad or other team made up of Damages and only Ethan, who has spent the time training and mastering his Damage form, can stop them. That’s a solid pitch there and it shows just what you can do with the character. In fact, picking up with him now might actually work, since you can change the formula and find what works. Damage is gone but he doesn’t have to stay away.

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