Is Bruce Banner the Most Dangerous Person in Marvel?

Marvel has introduced readers to some of the most dangerous heroes and villains in comics. A big part of the fun of Marvel is watching the heroes give their all to destroy the deadliest menaces ever, whether they be Earthbound or from the cosmos. Marvel menaces are a cut above the rest at times, all because the publisher remembers its greatest strength — humanization. Marvel became a force in the comic industry because of its human heroes, and this has extended to its antagonists as well. The real interesting characters, though, are the ones in whom darkness and light are always battling, those characters who are fighting against their own natures to do the right thing. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail, but it’s always a wild ride along the way.

That brings us to Marvel’s most conflicted character, the Hulk. The Hulk is one of those characters who has taken the Marvel approach to its apex. Bruce Banner, a child of horrific abuse, created a weapon that opened the Green Door and made him into a pawn for the most powerful beings in creation. Since then, the Hulk has become one of Marvel’s most storied characters, a powerful behemoth that has wreaked as much terror as he’s done good. The Marvel Universe has some dangerous folks, but few of them are as dangerous as Bruce Banner and his alter ego.

The Road to Hell Is Paved with Gamma Radiation

When most people think about who’s more dangerous between Banner and the Hulk, they think of the Hulk and there’s a good reason for that. The Hulk is a rage monster who is known for wrecking everything in front of him. The Hulk singlehandedly beats the Avengers more often than not, and we’re not talking about weak Avengers teams like the ’90s leather jacket crew. We’re talking the big teams, the ones with Cap, Thor, Iron Man, Captain Marvel, and the other heavy hitters. There was an entire Marvel event — the excellent World War Hulk — following the Hulk as he destroyed basically everyone who tried to stop him from killing the Illuminati. The modern classic series The Immortal Hulk had Hulk wrecking the Avengers and government sponsored monsters alike, going after corporations for their environmental records, and revealed that the ultimate form of the Hulk is the embodiment of entropy and will be the last thing that exists in the universe. Being scared of the Hulk is something we in the real world would call “ridiculously smart”. However, the thing about the Hulk, after all of the Green Door/One Below All/Worldbreaker madness, is that all of it is because of the broken human being known as Bruce Banner.

Bruce Banner was exposed to the worst of humanity through his abusive, alcoholic father. His father hated him, and took that rage out on Bruce and his mother. Bruce survived. His mother didn’t. Bruce developed Disassociative Identity Disorder, and would eventually kill his own father in a fit of rage at his mother’s grave. Bruce threw himself into his studies, and created one of the most dangerous weapons imaginable. Bruce Banner is as intelligent as Iron Man and Mister Fantastic, but he is also much, much more broken. His life wasn’t much to crow about before the Hulk but after? A million times worse. The Hulk destroyed everything in Bruce’s life. His peers don’t trust him. The woman he loved died because of him and when she came back, she was scared of him. Not the Hulk, but Bruce. There are things inside his head he can’t control, and at any time he could be replaced by the Hulk. His own feelings are an enemy to him.

The scariest thing about the Hulk isn’t his near-infinite power, it’s that it is all in the hands of a man who has lost everything. Bruce has nothing, can have nothing really, and that makes him so dangerous. If Bruce decides that the world should burn for what it did to him, who can stop him? This is the man who created the gamma bomb and he’s only gotten smarter. The Hulk part of his personality says that it loves him, protects him. If Banner decides that the world isn’t worth it, will the Hulk destroy everything? The Hulk just wants to be left alone, something which comes from the way the world has hurt Banner, and look at the damage he does. If Banner decided that the only way to be alone was to destroy everything, then who could stop the Hulk?

Bruce Banner Holds the Earth in His Hands and He Could Squeeze

Over a decade ago, Hulk fans got a run on the character by writer Jason Aaron for that short period he was Marvel’s golden boy writer. In it, Doom separated the Hulk and Banner, and Bruce became a villain, using his scientific knowledge to create weapons that could hold the Hulk at bay, something that most scientists had always failed at. We’ve seen Banner at his worst, and it’s a scary thing, nearly as scary as the Hulk. In fact, I would say more so, because Banner can create a weapon that would burn away the atmosphere in a firestorm no one could survive. The Hulk and Banner have their differences, but imagine if an insane Banner was able to get the Hulk to go along with his insanity. Nothing would stop him.

In fact, looking at the various evil future Hulks we’ve seen, like the one from “Old Man Logan” or the Maestro, it’s plain to see that these are Banner unleashed. Banner is the most dangerous kind of person you can imagine, a man who learned only pain from the world, and a man with the power, both as the Hulk and as a human, to destroy everything. That’s what makes Bruce Banner so scary.

What do you think about Bruce Banner? Sound off in the comments below.

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