Hulk: Issue By Issue: Tales to Astonish #60
Tales to Astonish #60, October 1964
Untitled
by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
In 1964 the Hulk moved to Tales to Astonish, where he shared page-time with...well, whoever else was in the book. As of #60 it was Wasp and Ant-Man (aka Janet Van Dyne and Hank Pym). Later it was Namor. This story doesn't seem to have a title.
- Often I brush over the credits, despite the little gimmicks I know are tossed in there. This issue has a nice "blink and you miss" one:
- I like the splash page, featuring a somber Bruce Banner seated at a table with the Hulk standing behind, one hand resting on Bruce's shoulder and the other balled into a fist.
- I also like the tag line with it: Starring the world's strangest mortal, who dares to ask the burning question: "Can a man with green skin and a petulant personality find true happiness in today's status-seeking society?"
- I love you, Stan, I really do.
- Bruce is currently unable to stop his transformations to the Hulk.
- Bruce is late to show a robot he built to Gen Ross. Ross suspects that the robot is a failure and Bruce is too wimpy to show. He doesn't understand how Betty could love such a pussy. Betty argues that Bruce really is courageous.
- Betty brings up Bruce's disappearances with him. He won't reveal the truth but asks her to trust him, which she says she does.
- I don't know if I find Betty's trust noble or naive. After all, her "trust" in Mr Tyrannus the "archeologist" didn't go down so well.
- Bruce's robot is a suit he can go inside to study nuclear explosions. For the Silver Age that actually sounds like a good invention.
- Bruce is all stressed and angsty, when a thought dawns on him: his transformations are due to mental stress!
- For the sake of accurately mapping the varying explanations for the transformations (we STILL haven't gotten to the classic Anger Trigger), I quote Bruce: "It only happens when I'm the most worried -- when the pressure become unbearable!...The strain must set off a chemical reaction in my blood cells....And when I'm the Hulk it all works in reverse! When I'm under the heaviest possible strain, the chemistry starts again..."
- Bruce naively thinks that the solution is simple: he just won't get worried!
- Because when you're the premiere government scientist on a secret base during the height of the Cold War, are in love with the boss's daughter, and said boss disapproves of said love AND carries a sidearm, what could you possibly need to worry about?
- Maybe he has a secret stash of Xanax.
- Bruce, to his credit, stays calm under the pressures of finishing his robot-suit, but when he spots a spy on the base it sets him off and he becomes the Hulk.
- Meanwhile the spy sneaks into the robot-suit and poses as Bruce during the next day's test. He also promptly runs off with it, smashing all attempts to stop him. Ross et al think Bruce has turned traitor...again!
- Hulk spots the Robot and has a dim recollection that Banner built it. Assuming Banner built it to destroy him, Hulk attacks.
- Okay, random aside here. It seems like Ditko went and looked at Kirby's first issue, because the Hulk looks much more like Kirby's original "gentle" Hulk (also, Bruce seems to look a lot like Kirby's first rendition of Banner as well), which I like.
- Hulk does his best to smash the Robot, but to no avail. He gets so infuriated and stressed that he begins to change back.
- A disheveled Bruce is found by the army. Ross accuses him of stealing the Robot, until they get word that the Robot is spotted elsewhere on the move.
- Man, Ross really is a jerk, he doesn't even apologize to Bruce.
- We learn that, just as the Hulk only dimly recalls Bruce's memories, so Bruce dimly remembers the Hulk's.
- Bruce wants to make another robot to tackle the stolen original, but Ross says that he's "caused enough harm around here already", that he still is suspicious of Bruce, and plans to report those suspicions. Betty attempts to comfort Bruce, saying that Ross will cool down.
- As the two walk off together Bruce worries that he is a threat to them all, while Betty thinks of how she wants Bruce to remain because she loves him.
- Oh Angst!
- At least Stan is being honest when the final narrative reads: Don't miss the next chapter in the only comic mag super-hero soap opera in existence!
The current stats:
- Hulk Transformations Triggered by: mental stress, in both directions; Bruce no longer has control
- Hulk Garb of Choice: prudish purple pants
- Betty Fainting Episodes: 0
- Hulk Bitch-Slappings of Rick: 0