This MCU Legends’s First Series Was Cancelled (and You’ll Never Guess Who)

Marvel Comics started telling superhero stories in the Golden Age, but wouldn’t become as huge as they are until the Silver Age. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby spearheaded a new Marvel Universe, introducing characters who would become some of the most well-known heroes in pop culture thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Characters like Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man became icons, but one character who didn’t really need the MCU’s help was Hulk. The Hulk has long been one of the most popular superheroes, his books usually selling very well and his old school live action show making him a household name.

The Hulk is the strongest one there is and his adventures have been enthralling readers for decades. They’ve given his fans some of the coolest fights ever, as well as digging into the psychology of the character, revealing him to be a much deeper character than most fans realize. His comics are some of Marvel’s longest-running books, so you would think that he’s always been successful, but that’s not actually the case. In fact, there was a time when the Jade Giant was a tough sell to fans and it came at a moment when Marvel was at their best.

The Incredible Hulk‘s First Volume Only Lasted Six Issue

Anyone who knows the history of Marvel Comics would imagine that The Incredible Hulk would have been a surefire bestseller. ’60s Marvel was all about the Cold War and American exceptionalism, showcasing the intrepid American Cold War scientists trying to keep the US on top. The story of Bruce Banner and the day the gamma bomb was tested seems like it would fit perfectly into the House of Ideas of the 1960s. The publisher’s comics were selling like hotcakes back then, their sci-fi superhero stories striking a chord with fans, and the Hulk’s first story has become the stuff of legends.

However, The Incredible Hulk only lasted for six issues. They pit the monster against aliens, the military, and one supervillain, the Metal Master. These stories by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby definitely feel like the stories they were doing in other books, with Lee’s hyperbolic dialogue melding perfectly with Kirby’s energetic pencils and unmatched storytelling skills. Here’s the thing, though: while these six issues were certainly endemic of ’60s Marvel, they were actually throwbacks to an earlier time in Marvel history and this hurt it for the publisher’s new fans.

Before they got back into superhero comics in 1961, Marvel was mostly putting out sci-fi, Western, and romance comics. Lee and Kirby were known for their monster comics. These books followed similar tropes; usually, a human would be transformed into a monster or a monster from space or an unknown part of the Earth would attack, forcing the military to intervene. The Hulk was a mixture of superhero and monster comics, and those first six issues of The Incredible Hulk were an example of this attempt at melding them.

However, despite Lee and Kirby being at the height of their creative powers, readers just didn’t cotton to the book. The Hulk would show up again in Fantastic Four (Vol. 1) #12, disappearing until Avengers (Vol. 1) #1. He’d get a back-up feature starting with Tales to Astonish #60, one of those old school sci-fi/monster anthology books switched to superheroes, and 42 issues later, it would be renamed The Incredible Hulk, keeping the old Tales numbering. The book would become massively popular, and most fans never even realized how surprising it was that the hero is as successful as he is.

The Hulk Was Able to Overcome His Early Failures to Become an Icon

The Hulk is a Marvel legend nowadays. When MCU fans say that Cap, Iron Man, and Thor are the three most popular characters in Marvel history, comic fans will point out that the Hulk has long been more successful than them. Like most legends, though, the more unsavory parts of his past have been completely forgotten, including the early failure of the character. We often think of Silver Age Marvel as an unstoppable sales juggernaut, with every series selling like hotcakes, but the Hulk’s history puts the lie in this idea.

The Hulk was meant to take what Lee and Kirby had been doing well for years – sci-fi monster comics – and combined them with the superhero comics that had given them their greatest success. It was a big swing and two of the greatest creators ever whiffed it. Later, as his adventures would incorporate more traditional superhero tropes like supervillains, he’d become more popular and grow into the icon that he is today.

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