The Four Color Media Monitor

Bruce Banner, the first Incredible Hulk:

Poor Bruce Banner. Things were never easy for the man best known as the eternally tortured alter ego of Marvel's Incredible Hulk. But for his comics incarnation, life had been looking up as of late: After saving a bunch of lives and disappearing from the public eye, he had somehow figured out how to live life free of his emerald half. His bliss was not to last, though. In today's third issue of Marvel's Civil War II, Banner is confronted by a crowd of heroes who have reason to suspect he might Hulk out again and kill a bunch of folks (this suspicion came from the predictions of a superpowered kid who can predict the future and who is trusted by Captain Marvel and distrusted by Iron Man ... look, it's a long story). When Banner starts to freak out at them, he is abruptly arrow'd by none other than purple-mounted Avenger Hawkeye, who (as we learn in a flashback) was previously ordered by Banner to kill him if he ever came close to going green again.

Sounds pretty contrived alright, which is about what you could expect from a bunch of writers and editors who aren't interested in plausible character drama, just stunts. Which is confirmed by the following reminder:

There's still a Hulk out there in the Marvel Comics universe, though: boy genius and Banner associate Amadeus Cho, who absorbed a bunch of Banner's gamma radiation awhile back and became the so-called "Totally Awesome Hulk." And, of course, this is a superhero-comics story we're talking about here, so you can all start tallying up the number of days Bruce stays dead before he's resurrected, or the dead body is revealed as a clone, or his consciousness is downloaded into a robot simulacrum, et cetera.

Yes, this is the reason why Bruce has been thrown under a bus for now, so they can concentrate full-swing on their new, totally diverse replacement Hulk. If and when Bruce does come back, don't be shocked if it's in a storyline similar to what Steve Rogers has been forced into over in Captain America.

Marvel's method for replacing their established cast with "diverse" substitutes is becoming quite cliched as it's boring already. And for all we know, Hawkeye could easily be next.

Labels: crossoverloading, golden calf of death, Hulk, marvel comics, msm propaganda