The Hulk is arguably one of the scariest Avengers out there.
An OG member of the team, he’s always been a character who can hold his own, despite
his two halves often resenting one another.
But that dynamic has made for some greater fodder when Marvel has dabbled with the emerald
giant in alternate storylines that occur outside of the main 616 continuity.
Today, we’re taking a closer look at those narratives with our list of the top 10 scary
alternate hulk stories.
We’re looking at stories that are not only insidious in nature, but ones where the Hulk
is visually petrifying.
So with that in mind, let’s get to it!
10 Venom Hulk Generally any character who is venomized tends
to be absolutely bloodcurdling.
In What if volume 2 issue 4, in a story titled what if the alien costume had possessed spider-man,
we see an alternate timeline in which the venom symbiote ends up bonding with Spider-Man
permanently, but then ditching the character when he comes across the Hulk, sensing that
Banner’s angrier half was a more powerful being.
Venom is able to easily take grasp of the Hulk’s mind, and begins to attack members
of the Avengers, taking advantage of the Hulk’s gamma powered body to go on a rampage.
At least until he comes across Thor, and ditches the hulk for the Asgardian god instead.
9 Ultimate Hulk The Ultimate hulk, who hails from earth 1610,
the ultimate marvel universe, isn’t the strongest of hulks on our list, but is still
pretty darn terrifying thanks to his personality.
A member of the 1610 version of Avengers, the Ultimates, this iteration of Bruce Banner
is a creature of pure rage, the personification of id, in which the emotions of Bruce Banner
have been amplified to a dreadful extent.
Oh, and he’s a cannibal.
So that’s fun.
He only differs in personality compared to the 616 version of the Hulk, although generally
doesn’t show much in terms of intelligence, opting out to be more violent and reckless
than his counterpart.
He ripped ultimate wolverine in half, he threatened Hank Pym with the threat of ripping out his
skull to use as a toilet, and is pretty hedonistic, once since surrounded by a whole bunch of
naked women in Tibet.
He’s also a dick to Bruce Banner, once eating his farm coworkers while taunting Banner’s
decision to be a vegan, and even taking shots at his sexuality.
8 The End Moving on to some bleak territory in at this
number!
There’s a bit of a theme when it comes to solo alternate versions of the Hulk, ones
that aren’t part of an entire alternate timeline crafted to incorporate the stories
of multiple characters (the ultimates universe, for example, or Earth X).
These solo alternate Hulks tend to exist in dystopian futures, and are generally complete
assholes.
The End is quite the example of those two qualities.
A one shot written by Peter David, Incredible Hulk The End depicts Bruce Banner as an elderly
man roaming the Earth as it’s last inhabitant after a nuclear war knocked out all other
lifeforms.
He survived because of the Hulk, transforming into the Hulk at night to survive attacks
from mutated cockroaches.
Hulk would continue to be eaten and destroyed, only to regenerate thanks to his healing factor.
His only company is something called the Recorder, an alien device sent to do recon of the planet
to see what remains.
Eventually, Banner gives up on life, dying, leaving the Hulk entirely alone.
7 Maestro Maestro is a version of the Hulk from a post-apocalyptic
alternate future.
And he’s what would happen if the Hulk became a tyrannical, sadistic dictator.
He’s said to be a version of the Hulk if Hulk and Banner ever embraced their darker
roots.
This Hulk appears in the story Future Imperfect, in which Hulk travels to the future to discover
this dictator Hulk, who is mentally unstable, reigning over the Earth.
His loss of sanity comes from years of radiation exposure (another common theme in some of
these darker stories).
He’s also appeared in other stories, in which he was an enemy of the regular Hulk’s,
with the two duking it out in The Incredible Hulk volume 2 issue 401 from 1993.
The Hulk had to defeat him by tricking him onto Doctor Doom’s time machine, sending
him back in time to when the gamma bomb exploded.
6 Infernal Hulk The Infernal Hulk first appeared in Incredible
Hulks Annual issue 1, in a story that took place on an alternate Earth in which Bruce
Banner is the Sorcerer Supreme instead of Doctor Strange.
He ends up using his magic to rid himself of the Hulk, separating the two.
He then banishes the Hulk to Hell.
Seems like a good idea at first, right?
Well, it doesn’t turn out so great.
The Hulk goes on a rampage in Hell, is corrupted by demons, and then finds himself transforming
into this big orange abomination, with horns and little demon teeth and all.
He manages to find his way out of Hell and back to Earth to take his revenge on Banner,
who then realizes the only way to keep the Infernal Hulk at bay is if he re-merges with
him; a sacrifice he ends up making by the end of the tale.
5 Kluh Self-described as the Hulk’s hulk, Kluh
is the a version of the Hulk who claims he was not born of Bruce Banner’s “weak rage”.
He came to be during the AXIS event in which an inversion spell caused all of the heroes
and villains in the Marvel universe to switch sides.
Meaning the heroes became bad guys, and the bad guys became good guys.
The spell causes the Hulk’s hulk to burst out of the emerald giant, birthed from sadness
rather than rage.
He’s a personality aspect of the Hulk’s, not of Bruce Banner’s, and the sadder the
hulk gets, the stronger Kluh is.
He’s physically more imposing that the Hulk, and had enough strength to take on pretty
much all of the Avengers at once.
4 Ruins Hulk The Ruins Hulk is the most depressing of this
lot.
Hailing from Earth 9591, this version of the Hulk met a terrible end.
For context, Ruins takes place in an alternate timeline in which individuals with superpowers
experienced grim consequences thanks to their abilities.
Bruce Banner, in particular, suffered from the radiation of a gamma bomb he was exposed
to when saving Rick Jones.
He began to mutate into a horrific state, one that vaguely looks like the Hulk, instead
becoming a mass of pulsating green tumours.
The last that was heard of him was that he was being held captivate by the CIA, although
it’s likely that his deformed state would eventually have killed him.
3 Zombie Hulk Zombie Hulk is particularly scary.
In the zombie Marvel universe, after the Hulk becomes zombified, he ends up getting his
undead mitts on Galactus and the silver surfer along with a handful of other zombified marvel
heroes, including Wolverine, Iron Man, Spider-Man,m Power Man and Giant Man.
Because they consume Galactus, they are endowed with the power cosmic.
Calling themselves the Zombie Galacti, they would go around the universe, eating entire
civilizations, easily destroying any defenses or threats with their new found cosmic abilities.
40 years later, at the edge of the known universe, the Zombie Galacti are joined by Thanos, Firelord,
Gladiator and Dark Phoenix.
Having devoured almost the entirety of the universe, Thanos begins to blame Hulk for
putting them in this situation since his hunger is the most insatiable, and he consumes more
than others.
How does Hulk respond?
By decapitating the mad titan.
2 The Immortal Hulk This one is technically set in the 616 continuity,
but it’s too good of an alternate version of the Hulk for us to not include on this
list.
After Banner was killed in Civil War 2, the Hulk would survive, emerging as the Devil
Hulk, a hulk who has always been trapped inside of Bruce’s mind, kept at bay by the other
versions of the hulk kicking around inside his cranium.
Devil Hulk has broken free though, and his goal is to kill all of humanity so that Earth
can start out fresh.
A comic that has found itself in horror genre territory, the Immortal Hulk series has produced
a slew of chilling events.
There’s a new version of the Abomination that’s scary as hell, and is a mix of gamma
irradiated tissue from Emil Blonsky which has been spliced with the exhumed corpse of
Rick Jones.
We witness multiple deaths, including a 12 year old kid being shot in a gas station by
Bruce Banner, Bushwacker shooting Betty Ross in the head, the Hulk ripping out the Absorbing
Man’s spine to beat him with it, and an entire town being wiped out thanks to a UV
energy beam shot down at him by the Avengers.
The Hulk is also constantly reforming, including over top of scientist Dr Clive, killing him
in one of the most grotesque methods we’ve ever seen in a hulk comic.
All in all, it’s filled with nightmare fuel, and it’s one of the hulk’s most addictive
reads of recent times.
1 Old Man Logan Hulk The version of the Hulk that appears in Old
Man Logan is a homicidal red neck of sorts, a Hulk who believes in incest and has lost
all sense of morality.
This is likely chopped up to years of gamma radiation poisoning, which has caused him
to go mad.
Essentially, after the super villains of Earth take over the planet, killing off most of
the heroes, we find ourselves in a dystopian world in which Wolverine, who was accidentally
responsible for killing his fellow X-Men, ended up becoming a recluse and raising a
family, swearing an oath to never release his claws ever again since the deaths of his
friends.
The land he lives on is owned by the Hulk, who ends up sending his sons to threaten Wolverine.
Wolverine goes on a mission to escort a blind Hawkeye across the country in order to pay
his debts, but Banner still orders for the execution of Logan’s family.
A grief stricken Wolverine sets out to kill Banner, and faces off against him.
Banner eventually turns into the hulk, a monstrous version of his former self, who is pretty
much invincible.
He eats Wolverine.
But that isn’t where Logan’s story ends.
The mutant hero claws his way out of Hulk’s belly, killing him in the process.
There we have it friends!
What other alternate versions of the hulk scare the crap out of you?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know!
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