Dr. Bruce Banner

Dr. Bruce Banner is the genius who built the Army's gamma bomb, and the only man alive who knows the formula that fires it. Seconds before the test, he spots a teenager wandering into the blast zone and bolts to save him. His rival Igor lets the countdown run, betting the great Banner never walks back out. Banner shoves the kid, Rick Jones, into a shielding trench and absorbing the full wash of gamma radiation himself. He survives. He does not stay Bruce Banner. A green-skinned giant of monstrous strength surges up out of the man, and a soldier hunting the thing hands it the name that sticks: the Hulk. He walks through a two-foot-thick concrete wall like it is a paper screen. He shrugs off a stream of Igor's bullets and crushes the pistol in one fist. The soldiers who saw him report an escaped gorilla, maybe a circus bear, and somehow nobody connects the seven-foot brute to the mild scientist standing right in front of them. For now, that suits Banner fine.

The relief does not last. Banner has no rein on the change. From his cell, Igor radios the secret across the steel curtain to the Gorgon, the most feared man in Asia, who learns of a creature whose power rivals his own and comes to America to end it. The change takes Banner behind the wheel of a moving car, wrecks it, and sends the Hulk lurching after Betty Ross. The Gorgon is waiting. A single will-destroying pellet turns the Hulk into a puppet, and the villain hauls his prize and young Rick behind the curtain by submarine and rocket. Somewhere over the ocean the giant softens back into Banner. Face to face with a scientist instead of a monster, the Gorgon breaks. He is a freak too, and he would give anything to be a man again. Banner uses the enemy's own radiation gear to make him one. Cured, the Gorgon turns on the masters who built him into a weapon and dies by his own bomb so he can die human, buying Banner and Rick the seconds they need to outrun the atomic blast. Banner escapes the Gorgon. He is far from sure he will ever escape the Hulk.

Bruce Banner and Rick Jones are searching for a way to contain Banner's nightly transformations into the Hulk. Banner has prepared a hidden cave with a massive concrete door that he hopes will hold the Hulk until daylight restores him to human form. Before they can complete their plans, the Toad Men use magnetic technology to capture both men and carry them aboard their spacecraft. Their leader, Torrak, demands information about Earth's scientists and reveals that the Toad Men intend to invade Earth. Banner refuses to cooperate. When the ship passes behind the Earth and darkness causes him to become the Hulk, he breaks free, overpowers the Toad Men, and takes control of the ship's weapons before the vessel is destroyed by military missiles.

Banner emerges from the wreckage in human form and is arrested by General Thunderbolt Ross, who believes he is responsible for the alien spacecraft. While Banner is imprisoned, the Toad Men launch their invasion and announce their plan to use magnetic rays to pull the Moon toward Earth. After night falls, Banner transforms into the Hulk and breaks out of his cell. He goes to the Ross residence and takes Betty with him when soldiers attack. Rick follows them to Banner's laboratory and tries to reason with the Hulk. A tremor caused by the Toad Men's magnetic weapons knocks the three unconscious, and sunrise transforms the Hulk back into Banner. Banner then uses his gamma-ray weapon against the Toad fleet, disrupting the magnetic propulsion of their ships and sending them out of control into space. He is cleared of treason after stopping the invasion.