The puny bug is getting a big guest star in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk is reportedly set to smash his way back into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the new movie, with the Avengers star joining Tom Holland’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man and Jon Bernthal’s Punisher in what Marvel producer Kevin Feige has intimated is a street-level story following the multiversal madness of 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home.
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It’s expected that Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner will fill a similar role to that of Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark/Iron Man in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury in Spider-Man: Far From Home, and Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange in Spider-Man: No Way Home. (It’s just as likely that Banner, who melded brain and brawn to become the Smart Hulk in Avengers: Endgame, hulks out as his gamma-green alter-ego wreaks havoc on the streets of New York City for the first time since 2008’s The Incredible Hulk.)
It’s a predicament that the web-slinger has found himself in more than once in the comics, where Spider-Man and the Hulk have been allies as much as they’ve thrown down as foes. We’ve rounded up some of those stories that could inform the role Hulk plays in Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Amazing Spider-Man #14
In the guest star-filled first appearance of Spider-Man’s archnemesis the Green Goblin, Spider-Man unwittingly wandered into a cave where the Hulk had been hiding out in New Mexico. The Goblin lured Spider-Man into the desert to ambush him with the Enforcers — Fancy Dan, Montana, and Ox — only to disturb the Hulk when the five-way brawl intruded on his solitude.
Suspecting that the colorfully costumed wall-crawler had been sent to capture him, the Hulk lashed out as the Green Goblin gleefully stood by, content to let the green Goliath squash the bug. Spider-Man’s agility kept him out of reach of the rampaging powerhouse, but his webs weren’t strong enough to contain the Hulk. And the proportionate strength of a spider wasn’t enough to match the Hulk’s brute strength, so Spider-Man could only get clear of the Hulk’s path before putting himself at risk to save the Enforcers. (Action is his reward!)
Amazing Spider-Man Annual #3
In “To Become an Avenger,” Earth’s mightiest heroes — Captain America, Hawkeye, and team co-founders Iron Man, Thor, Wasp, and Goliath (formerly Ant-Man and Giant-Man) — considered having the loner Spider-Man join their ranks. After summoning Daredevil for his recommendation about the prospective Avenger, they offered Spider-Man membership if he could pass their test: capture the Hulk, who had been spotted around New York.
Spider-Man found the former Avenger at a Gamma Ray Research Center in the city, and enraged the Hulk with his attempt to capture him. Failing to heed Hulk’s warning that he wanted to be left alone, Spider-Man’s test ended with the raging Hulk smashing Gamma Ray testing devices that reverted him back into Dr. Bruce Banner.
Spider-Man, learning that Banner’s green-skinned alter-ego was at his weakest in the first few minutes after a transformation, was able to stagger his hulking opponent with a punch when Banner suddenly turned back into the Hulk. Spider-Man webbed up the Hulk, only to set him free upon realizing that Banner needed help. It turned out that the Avengers also wanted to help Hulk, but Spider-Man wouldn’t become a full-fledged member until much later.
Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America #4
When Steve Rogers was seemingly assassinated in the aftermath of the superhero civil war that broke out over the Superhuman Registration Act, the black-suited Spider-Man found himself in a cemetery reflecting at the graves of his parents, Mary and Richard Parker, and his beloved Uncle Ben. His spider-sense triggered by the Rhino, Spider-Man preemptively jumped the villain, unaware he was paying his respects to his mother.
The rampaging Rhino attacked Spider-Man, triggering memories of his “first or second time” going up against the Hulk. “The Hulk was tearing up New York, and somebody had to stop him,” Spider-Man recalled of the retconned encounter. But before the Hulk could smash the puny spider, the shield-wielding Captain America saved the teenaged Spider-Man, stopping the savage Hulk (with Spidey’s help).
Amazing Spider-Man #119-120
Peter Parker, now a college student, found himself in Canada when his Aunt May was summoned to Montreal, Quebec. The Hulk, having traveled to Niagara Falls in search of Betty Ross, was spotted battling the villain Tiger-Shark, so Peter decided to have The Daily Bugle‘s J. Jonah Jameson finance his own trip up north by snapping pictures of Spider-Man fighting the Hulk. Once in Canada, Peter attended a press conference hosted by the Hulk’s nemesis, General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, who reported that the Hulk had been sighted at a power station on the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Spider-Man found an angry Hulk battering away at the Canadian Infantry, who were hunting him. When the Hulk smashed the Maskattawan Dam in order to keep Ross and his militarized might away, Spider-Man prevented the monster from flooding a village below. The Hulk tried to swat Spider-Man with a steel girder, but once again, the agile Spider-Man’s speed helped him evade the Hulk’s blows.
Over the course of the two-issue fight with the green giant, Spider-Man nearly drowned when he was caught beneath a giant concrete slab, but the webbed wonder prevented the Hulk’s rampage from flooding the valley. Hulk then jumped away, and the second part of their fight resumed on Montreal’s Notre Dame Island, where the Canadian cavalry arrived just in time to prevent Hulk from squashing Spider-Man like a… well, you know.
Marvel Team-Up #27
After the Chameleon impersonated Spider-Man in an attempted prison break, the master of disguise ran into the Hulk — literally. Incensed by the Chameleon’s featureless mask, the Hulk was calmed by his old friend Rick Jones, the latest victim of identity theft. “Rick” manipulated the Hulk into breaking out the prisoner Joe Cord, resulting in Spider-Man’s next encounter with the jade giant not long after their clash in Canada.
Hulk, hellbent on helping his “friend,” shrugged off Spider-Man as he barrelled through the prison to Cord’s cell. Once the Hulk located Cord and brought him to “Rick,” Spider-Man unmasked Hulk’s friend as the Chameleon, clearing his name in the process. The childlike Hulk was angered by the deception, but ultimately, the Chameleon was apprehended and unharmed as Spider-Man and Hulk parted on good terms.
Marvel Team-Up #53-54, Marvel Team-Up #126
The two-parter brought the Hulk to Liberty, New Mexico, which was deserted except for one Woodgod (a satyr-like changling created by biogeneticists who gene-spliced human and animal DNA). After a team up with the X-Men, Spider-Man was caught in the middle of a battle between the Hulk and Woodgod.
Marvel Team-Up #126 found Banner back in Manhattan, where he lost control and turned into the Hulk. Peter Parker happened to be nearby, and swung into action as Spider-Man to stop the Hulk from smashing a S.W.A.T. team. Spider-Man drew the Hulk away from the police, swinging through the air as the Hulk leapt behind him in pursuit.
Spider-Man led Hulk to a deserted warehouse district and hid out until Hulk calmed down and reverted to Banner. When he did, it was a compassionate Peter Parker who gave the down-and-out fugitive his last five dollars with some kind words: pay it forward.
Incredible Hulk #299-300
At a time when the once-heroic Hulk had been reverted to a savage, rampaging monster by Doctor Strange villain Nightmare, S.H.I.E.L.D. failed to stop the senseless destruction. From his dark dimension, Nightmare sicced the brainless behemoth on Doctor Strange, with the savage Hulk having one thought in his mind: SMASH.
At the Sanctum Sanctorum, Strange suspected that the personality of Bruce Banner had been lost as he was subsumed by the savage persona of his gamma-irradiated alter-ego. As the mindless monster raged across New York, street-level heroes like Spider-Man and Daredevil rescued civilians as the Fantastic Four’s Human Torch, Heroes for Hire’s Luke Cage and Iron Fist, and finally the Avengers confronted the animalistic Hulk, unaware he was a victim of the mind-manipulating Nightmare.
In order to stop the Hulk, Doctor Strange was forced to banish his former ally to exile in the Crossroads, an interdimensional plane where he couldn’t harm others. It should be noted that Incredible Hulk #300 took place at a time when Bruce Banner tamed his other persona and became a more heroic Hulk, just as his MCU counterpart was embraced by the public in the five years post-Thanos snap.
Web of Spider-Man #44, Incredible Hulk #349
While on vacation in Las Vegas, Spider-Man was caught in the crosshairs of Warzone: a para-military group of cyborg mercenaries. Waging warfare on the Las Vegas Strip, their firepower drew the attention of the suit-clad gangster Mr. Fixit — who Spider-Man then recognized as the gray-skinned Hulk.
Taking the name Joe Fixit, the Hulk set up operations in Vegas after he was thought to have died when the Leader detonated a gamma bomb in Arizona. Refusing to let Las Vegas become collateral damage in the “war game” between Warzone’s Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, and Fixit, Spider-Man managed to convince Hulk to help him save civilians caught in the crosshairs.
Amazing Spider-Man #328
“Now who’s the strongest one there is?” During the Acts of Vengeance arc that pit Spider-Man against the likes of Doctor Doom, Graviton, the Tri-Sentinel, and X-Men archnemesis Magneto, the wall-crawler temporarily possessed the cosmic powers of Captain Universe. When the Hellfire Club’s Sebastian Shaw was tasked with eliminating the godlike Spider-Man, he hired the Las Vegas-based gray Hulk to collect a rich bounty on the webslinger.
During a fight on the deserted Roosevelt Island, Spider-Man hit Hulk so hard he knocked him into orbit. Like his earliest incarnation, Banner would become the Hulk by nightfall and transform back during the day, so Spider-Man flew into space to save the Hulk before the sun rose. The Hulk begrudgingly admitted defeat and chose to return the favor by forgoing Shaw’s bounty.
Web of Spider-Man #69-70
No longer a cosmic-powered Spider-Man, Peter Parker was sent to Connecticut to take photos of a “rampaging beast” roaming the countryside that turned out to be the green Hulk. Armand Jones, the brother of one-time Fantastic Four villain Ricardo Jones, used a bio-kinetic energy absorption device to siphon the Hulk’s gamma energy — which turned Spider-Man into the Spider-Hulk.
Like Bruce Banner, stress, anger and anxiety would trigger Peter’s transformation into a green-skinned Hulk. Using his science acumen to deduce that Jones’ device doused him with the Hulk’s bio-energy, it took a second blast from the device to cure the Spider-Hulk of his gamma-irradiated condition.
Amazing Spider-Man #381-382
Professor Hulk — a persona with Banner’s brains and green Hulk’s brawn — encountered Spider-Man when a “radiation virus” intended to release repressed emotions turned Hulk’s gamma-powered psychotherapist Doc Samson into a raging monster. Outnumbered and outmatched, Spider-Man was caught in a battle between the gamma mutates when the gamma virus transferred from Samson to the Hulk.
Once Samson regained his senses, Spider-Man teamed up with the good doctor to battle the “Ultra-Hulk,” who had grown even stronger from his repressed rage. What started as a battle of brawn became a battle of the mind as Spider-Man talked down Ultra-Hulk, urging the reasonable Banner part of his mind to override the virus that infected the primal part of the Hulk’s mind.
Marvel Fanfare #47
It wasn’t the first time the Hulk was infected with a mind-altering virus. Back when Bruce Banner could control his changes at will, Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. had the scientist and gamma radiation expert accompany him on a mission to space to fix a data-gathering satellite that had been bombarded by gamma rays. A parasitic alien organism harmed the Hulk as it infected his nervous system, once more turning the Green Goliath back into a monster. The Hulk fell from space and landed in the South Bronx, leaving a flu-stricken Spider-Man to defend a city block from ol’ greenskin.
As a feverish Hulk tried to resist the alien bioplasm that made him lash out, the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man saved the densely-populated neighborhood’s inhabitants caught in the crossfire of Hulk and S.H.I.E.L.D.’s destructive drones. A drone strike dislodged the alien parasite and, like The War of the Worlds, it was the bacteria from Spider-Man’s cold that saved the day.
Peter Parker: Spider-Man #14
When Peter Parker’s wife, Mary Jane Watson, was believed to have died in a plane crash, Spider-Man tracked down the “big, green killing machine” who was thought to have been responsible for the deaths of 368 people in another plane crash. (It turned out to be a plot by the Hulk’s enemy, the subterranean ruler Tyrannus.)
Although the Hulk was cleared of those charges, Spider-Man was hellbent on bringing the supposed killer to justice. In denial about Mary Jane’s death, Spider-Man angrily unloaded on the Hulk, who was also grieving his wife, Betty Ross. (Spoiler alert: MJ and Betty didn’t stay dead.) Spider-Man’s fight with Hulk left a train track in ruins, so Hulk helped his friend “Bug Man” fix the track before an oncoming train could be derailed.
Immortal Hulk: Great Power #1
Spider-Hulk returned when Spider-Man inexplicably found himself transforming into the Hulk. His rampage was halted by the Fantastic Four, and it was discovered that trickster god Loki drove the Hulk out of Banner by pushing his gamma radiation into Spider-Man.
Spider-Man offered to take on the responsibility of being the Hulk from Banner, but he reclaimed the gamma and changed back into the Hulk. Once back to normal, Spider-Man was surprised to learn that the Hulk remembered his secret identity despite having erased public knowledge that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. “You made everyone forget who you are. Banner forgot,” the articulate Hulk said. “But I don’t forget.”
Marvel Knights: The Punisher #37
In the Garth Ennis-penned Punisher run, Frank Castle unleashed the Hulk on Spider-Man, Daredevil, and Wolverine. It was explained that a criminal gang witnessed the Hulk revert to Bruce Banner, knocked him unconscious, then transported him to New York to auction the Hulk to the highest bidder. The Punisher killed the auctioneers who tried to weaponize the Hulk, and revealed to Daredevil that he fed Banner a diet of C4 and Immodium with a micro-detonator — turning the Hulk into a ticking time bomb and forcing him to revert to his human form.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings smashes into theaters July 31, 2026.
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