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If there are two things everybody knows about the Hulk,
it's that you wouldn't like him when he's angry.
- You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.
- And you would easily identify him
by his iconic color scheme.
Vibrant green skin and eyes
paired with those rather jarring purple pants.
They seem like an insignificant detail, though, right?
Like, Marvel just threw pants on Hulk
because the Comics Code Authority
wouldn't be too happy about a fully nude monster book
being sold to children,
but Hulk's pants are more than a simple garment.
They're a symbolic representation
of Bruce Banner's continuous struggle to do good,
despite the monster instead of him.
(upbeat rock music)
As you may know, Hulk wasn't originally green.
That detail wasn't introduced
until the second issue in July of 1962.
A lot of thought went into the color of the character.
Writer Stan Lee and colorist Stan Goldberg
went back and forth deciding which color
they thought would best suit the character.
They didn't want red.
They tossed around the idea of green,
but Goldberg said the perfect color for the Hulk was orange.
The problem is that just a few months back,
Marvel had made a huge splash
with their teen book, Fantastic Four,
which already featured a strong
orange monster-like character in the Thing.
So, Lee suggested gray as the Hulk's primary color,
and Goldberg fought Lee on the idea,
explaining that it wouldn't work
because the limited color technology at the time
made it hard to keep grays one consistent shade
from page to page.
But, as with most creative decisions back then,
Lee got his way,
and the Incredible Hulk debuted as gray.
However, Goldberg's concerns proved true.
The gray color changed from page to page
and even panel to panel,
and when Lee saw this,
he and Goldberg decided to give Hulk a new color
that was easier to keep consistent.
For a second issue,
they decided to make Hulk green.
Hulk didn't have a costume in his first issue.
He was simply a man that would become a monster
when the night fell.
As such, Hulk was often adorned
with the tattered clothing of Bruce Banner.
He first showed up with blue pants and an orange shirt,
perhaps echoing Goldberg's desire to make him orange
without actually making him orange.
But later in that same issue,
we see the dawn of the purple pants.
In the first few issues of Incredible Hulk,
we saw the pants go through as many transformations
as Banner himself.
As a tattered purple jumpsuit,
full-length torn-up pants paired with a white shirt
that had almost completely fallen apart,
simple and clean trunks, et cetera.
Despite the style, one thing was made clear.
Hulk wears purple.
The contrast of the violet trousers
with his vibrant, radioactive skin tone
worked wonders for the character of Hulk
and the artists at Marvel.
As we discussed, coloring technology back then
was pretty basic.
It couldn't hold a candle
to what today's brilliant digital color can accomplish.
There wasn't much room for nuance and subtlety
in the early days of comics.
So having Hulk wear purple pants
would turn out to be pretty practical.
Remember how I mentioned that the Comics Code Authority
wouldn't be too happy with Marvel printing a comic
with a giant green naked man?
Well, having pants that are the color
exactly opposite of his skin tone on the color wheel
means that there is no mistaking that Hulk
is definitely wearing clothing.
Even if the details of the lines were too small to see,
the color would jump off the page.
The colors in comics were bright and bold,
made to catch your eye with contrasting,
almost harsh tones.
Scott McCloud explains that such use of strong color
was less expressionistic and more iconic.
Readers could follow their heroes
from panel to panel with ease,
simply by spotting their particular color scheme.
Eventually, the colors alone would symbolize the characters.
I'm sure you could probably recognize
some of these characters
based solely off the color patterns here.
While bold, competing colors meant that comics
struggled to achieve any emotional impact
through color work alone,
this technique did help turn comic book characters
into symbols.
And Hulk is an interesting case here.
You see, superhero comics,
whether intentional or not,
established a visual shorthand
when it came to color.
Heroes would often be dressed in blues, reds, and yellows.
Think Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Daredevil,
the X-Men, Flash, Doctor Strange, the list goes on.
But with villains, artists tended to use
greens, purples, and oranges.
Joker, Green Goblin, Doctor Doom, Doctor Octopus,
Lex Luthor, Mysterio, and a pantheon of others.
There are, of course, counterexamples for all of these,
but the idea represents a trend,
not necessarily a rule.
When we look at the Avengers,
you see Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor
all sporting reds, blues, and yellows.
And then, you see Hulk,
contrasting the rest of the team with green and purple.
I mean, sure, there's Hawkeye,
who also dresses in purple,
but that still fits within our theme here
since Hawkeye was originally a Marvel villain
who had reformed.
But Hulk, why is he visually represented as a villain
compared to the rest of his teammates?
Well, because to a lot of the world
inside of the Marvel Universe, he is a villain.
Hulk isn't your typical superhero.
One of the places Jack Kirby and Stan Lee
drew inspiration from was Frankenstein's monster,
who Lee never saw as the bad guy of the story.
Quote, "He never wanted to hurt anyone;
"he merely groped his torturous way
"through a second life
"trying to defend himself,
"trying to come to terms
"with those who sought to destroy him."
End quote.
Much like Frankenstein's monster,
Hulk wasn't inherently bad.
He's left tons of destruction and chaos
and terror in his wake,
but so have many other characters
who were praised by the public as heroes.
But at least with someone like Superman,
you can attempt to talk and reason with him.
Hulk, on the other hand, is mostly seen as a mindless beast,
a green and purple force of nature
that is as unpredictable as he is powerful,
and that is terrifying.
This led many in the Marvel Universe
to paint Hulk as a villain,
even his fellow superheroes.
The Illuminati believed Hulk was too dangerous for Earth,
so they shot him off into space.
When Hawkeye kills Bruce Banner in Civil War 2,
spoilers, by the way,
Hawkeye is acquitted in court,
and it's revealed that many are happy
to see the Hulk dead as they saw him as a constant threat.
Banner himself even sees Hulk as a villainous monster.
Much like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
another one of Lee and Kirby's inspirations
for the character,
certain stories show Banner fearing his transformations
into the Hulk, ultimately attempting suicide
to rid the world of the beast.
- I didn't see an end,
so I put a bullet in my mouth,
and the other guy spit it out.
- Modern comics have the luxury of not needing
to be limited with their color palette.
Hulk could wear jeans, suits, high-tech armor,
or even just normal clothes.
Yet still, the violet garment finds a way to persist.
And hopefully, you can see now
that these silly purple pants
are more important than they might appear at first,
as they show Hulk,
one of Marvel's most popular heroes,
painted as a villain both symbolically and literally,
creating a character with incredible depth.
What do you think?
Do Hulk's purple pants help symbolize
his struggle as a hero,
or are they just pants?
Let me know what you think in the comments.
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Want more videos on why superheroes
are designed the way they are?
We've got a whole playlist
about why superheroes wear spandex, capes,
underwear on the outside of their pants, and more.
Click right here to learn all about that.
We also talked a little bit
about the Comics Code Authority in this video.
So if you want to learn more about that slice
of comics history, we have an excellent video right here
that you can check out.
Links to these videos,
as well as sources and further reading,
are in the description as always.
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My name's Scott, reminding you to read between the panels
and grow smarter through comics.
See ya.