Face It, the Avengers are the Real Villains of the Hulk’s Story

The Hulk has a very strange place in the hierarchy of the Marvel Universe. When it comes to power levels, he’s in the highest of tiers, but his reputation in the superhero community is… well, complex is the best way to describe. Everyone respects the Hulk, and when he’s when one of his magnanimous moods he’ll end up joining teams and such, helping save the world. However, there’s always that moment when things turn, and the Hulk decides that it’s better to smash than to join. Standing in his way are usually the Avengers, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and the foremost superpowered defense force of the planet. The Hulk and the Avengers have a long history with each other, one that showed something interesting, especially if you look at it from the Hulk’s perspective — the Avengers are the real villains of the Hulk’s story.

The Hulk’s history is very complex, and there are several suspects for the villain of his story. His father’s abuse caused all of the problems in the first place. The Leader has often acted like a puppet master pulling the strings that make Hulk’s life worse. The One Below All is always there in the background, a sinister force with a dark destiny for the Hulk. Even Bruce Banner can be considered the Hulk’s greatest enemy. However, if you look at the Hulk’s story, there’s definitely a case to made for the Avengers being a catalyst of calamity in the Hulk’s life.

The Avengers Should Be the Hulk’s Friends but They’ve Become a Weapon Against Him

So, Bruce Banner saves Rick Jones from the gamma bomb, the Green Door opens and suddenly, the Hulk, one of the personalities created by Bruce while he was being abused by his father, got a physical form. The Hulk just wanted to be left alone, so Banner would be safe, but the military wouldn’t leave him alone. This does make sense; the Hulk is mindnumbingly powerful. However, the Hulk getting chased everywhere by the military just agitated the Hulk. So, one day, Rick Jones needs help fighting Loki and he uses a ham radio (it was the ’60s, folks; the ham radio network was basically the Internet), and Hulk is one of the heroes that Rick called for help. Hulk had a chance to make friends. It wasn’t to be though, as the Avengers were tricked into fighting the Hulk. He left the team in disgust, and suddenly, these people who could have made a difference in the Hulk’s life became a problem. Hulk didn’t do anything wrong — the manipulations of the Space Phantom (later stories set in the period also saw Mephisto working to turn the Avengers against him) caused the Avengers to believe their greatest fears about him. The Avengers rejected him, proving to him that the world was against him.

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Ever since then, the Hulk’s relationship with the Avengers has been fraught with peril. He’s fought alongside them numerous times, and they’ve also been called in to deal with him when he’s in one of his more destructive guises, like the Savage Hulk. Now, obviously, someone needs to slow the Hulk down when this sort of thing happens. It would be different, though, if the Hulk and the Avengers were good friends to begin with. They aren’t; the Avengers betrayed the Hulk once, so every time they come after him, it makes their relationship worse. Bruce did rejoin the Avengers in the Marvel NOW! run of Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers/New Avengers, eventually even joining the Illuminati at the tail end of the Incursions. However, this period of the Hulk was based on the MCU version, so it was a mostly Banner influenced Hulk (and even then, he still changed into the Hulk and lost it, like he accidentally did during Infinity) doing superhero stuff. Since then, the Avengers have been partly responsible for Hulk’s death in Civil War II, his resurrection as a monster by the Hand and Arnim Zola in Secret Empire, and they ended up battling in The Immortal Hulk (you could technically count the fight he had with Iron Man at the beginning of the “Starship Hulk” run of Donny Cates and Ryan Ottley as Avengers stuff, since Iron Man was acting as a member of the team). The Avengers destroyed any hope that the Hulk had as a superhero, their actions taking away a group that could have helped him. Instead of trying to make up for that, they’ve fought him more often than not, as well as used his power to their advantage when they could.

The Hulk Could Have Had a Better Life If Not for the Avengers

The Hulk is often called a monster, but that’s not completely true. The Hulk, at his core, loves Bruce Banner and wants to protect him. Everything that has come in the years since — the fracturing personality, the more extreme forms, the constant machinations of all manner of beings in the Hulk’s life — hasn’t always been the Hulk’s fault. However, it it’s easy to see that if the Avengers hadn’t betrayed the Hulk years ago, there are some things that never would have happened and the Hulk would probably be in a better place.

The Avengers had their chance to make the Hulk’s life easier, but at every turn, they’ve chosen not to. In fact, more often than not, they’ve chosen to antagonize him and to work against him. They’ll use him when they can, but the minute things go bad, it’s back to hitting him. The Avengers have saved the universe many times; however, they’ve never saved the Hulk when they had the chance.

What’s your take on the relationship between the Hulk and the Avengers? Sound off in the comments below.