No Surrender Cinema: The Incredible Hulk (1982)
Over the past decade and a half, we’ve been inundated with a variety of superhero content on the big and small screen. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has proven to be one of the most successful media franchises going today, with cinematic blockbusters, streaming series, and animated adventures drawing in fans of all ages. The attempts from Warner Bros. to do the same with the cast of characters from DC Comics has proven to be less successful, but it has still had some live action successes and currently boasts an animated universe that (in this reviewer’s humble opinion) is even better than their big budget adaptations. Amidst the many, MANY films and shows available at the click of a button, there’s one that currently remains forgotten; one that once had a home among other classic Saturday Morning Cartoons before becoming an afterthought in the minds of even the most dedicated Marvel Comics fan’s mind. Well, True Believers, you’re in luck, because this edition of No Surrender Cinema is going to help all of those green-skinned memories come flooding back, because I’m here to talk about 1982’s Incredible Hulk cartoon!
Debuting as part of NBC’s Saturday morning lineup mere months after the final episode of CBS’ The Incredible Hulk starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno, the animated version of The Incredible Hulk is an adaptation that stays truer to what goes down in the pages of Hulk comic books than the prime time series did. For one thing, the character of Bruce Banner is called just that, reverting back to the correct comic book alter ego after having it adjusted to be “David Banner” for Bixby’s portrayal. Secondly, many supporting characters from the comics made the jump to the cartoon, including Bruce’s love interest Betty Ross, her father, General “Thunderbolt” Ross, his second in command Ned Talbot (whose name did change, as he’s known as Glenn in the comics), and Rick Jones, the young man whose presence out in the desert is what led to Bruce Banner being caught in the gamma explosion. While the cartoon did have some “villain of the week” characters created for Hulk to tangle with, some of Marvel’s more recognizable evildoers also made appearances on The Incredible Hulk, including The Leader, Doctor Octopus, and Puppet Master. Each week’s adventure was usually bookended by Bruce seemingly on track to finding a cure for his Hulk problem, only to get caught up in a situation where Hulk is needed to save the day, thus postponing his return to normalcy yet again and ending most episodes on a rather somber note.
Another big difference not just from the live action series, but from many cartoons of the time period, is that Hulk actually got to hit people! Yes, in an era where He-Man could only pick up and throw his enemies around and no one from GI Joe or Cobra ever got hit by one of the thousands of weapons being fired, we do actually get to see HULK SMASH! quite a bit. It’s nothing that is excessively violent, but it’s a show that doesn’t skimp on the action one bit, as every episode has at least one Hulk brawl. Since The Incredible Hulk aired at the tail end of a Saturday morning block that featured shows like The Flintstone Funnies and The Smurfs, it was quite a shift in gears from the shows that aired prior to it (though the show it immediately followed, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, certainly had it’s fair share of action too). Lastly, whereas David Banner often found himself scrounging for clothes to replace the tattered rags left behind by his Hulkout’s, in The Incredible Hulk cartoon those ripped clothes put themselves right back together when Hulk reverts back to Banner. Who needs a tailor when you’ve got gamma radiation to put those buttons back on your shirt!
While I’ve seen every episode of The Incredible Hulk many times over, for the sake of time (both my time writing and your time reading), I’m just going to touch on some Bullet Points (shoutout to my friend and fellow writer Chris the Brain) for a few of my favorite episodes!
- Origin of the Hulk: one would think that this would be the series premiere, but this was actually the third episode in the show’s first (and only) season. For the most part it stays true to the original Marvel Comics origin story, though it replaces the comic’s plot point of having Russian spies involved with said spy actually being an alien robot attempting to steal Banner’s gamma research. It’s also got one of the best transformation sequences in the show’s run, but more on those later.
- Prisoner of the Monster: Banner and Rick seek out a lost tribe that has supposedly experienced Hulk-like transformations from their people, and may have the cure that Bruce is looking for. I watched this one back recently and it stuck out how the “Tribal Hulk” as I’ll call him reminded me of the original depiction of Skaar, who is Hulk’s son in the comic books. It also struck me that this 1982 cartoon character that was seen for 2 seconds also looks a million times better than whatever the Skaar they were trying to pass off to us in the Disney+ She-Hulk series was.
- When Monsters Meet: AKA The Incredible Hulk vs. The Hunchback of Notre Dame! That’s right, it’s one of the most popular superheroes of all time tangling with a classic literary character…sort of. This is probably the episode that I’ve watched the most, as one of my favorite VHS tapes to watch as a kid was a collection that had this episode and 2 episodes of the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon on it. A hopeful Bruce Banner, along with Betty Ross, travels to France for a potential cure. Their stay is interrupted by an evil descendant of Quasimodo, a hunchback who hangs out with an anthropomorphic bat and kidnaps Betty. Hulk has a few fights with the hunchback and with the evil bat (look for the part where Hulk swings the bat into the wall, leaving a dent in the rocks that I always took as a slight at the Bat-Symbol). Watching it back in more recent years, it struck me how this episode fails to make sense (the hunchback is apparently a normal man who morphed into a hunchback a la Banner/Hulk, yet the original Quasimodo was simply unfortunately disfigured, and how does this French sewer dweller know who The Hulk is?), but it’s a fun episode that has two big brutes brawling for most of it.
- Bruce Banner Unmasked: The villain here is The Puppet Master, best known to comic book fans for being an antagonist of The Fantastic Four. In this episode, Puppet Master is using his radioactive clay to control the residents of Mesa City (the town nearest to the Gamma Base, which serves as the setting for a lot of the show’s events). His blind daughter Alicia Masters (also known to many as a major character in Fantastic Four stories) ends up having to help Rick Jones when everyone, including Hulk himself, end up under Puppet Master’s control. I remember watching this episode late one night about 20 years ago, and it felt very Twilight Zone-ish, almost as if it were a bit too dark to be a Saturday morning show, though it was nowhere near as dark as the The Incredible Hulk cartoon of 1996, which tended to feel pretty heavy at times.
- Enter: She-Hulk: I mentioned her Disney+ show earlier, so it’s only fitting that I mention this episode, which was She-Hulk’s very first appearance in any form of media outside of the comics! Bruce is on the road once again, and heads to LA to visit his cousin Jennifer (who by this point is already She-Hulk, but we do see how she got that way via flashback) and ends up teaming up with her to stop a terrorist attack from HYDRA. This episode also features a preview of what we’d come to know as “Smart Hulk”, as Jen/She-Hulk, who has full control of her alter-ego right down to her transformation, aids Bruce in being able to do the same. We end up with a few minutes of Hulk’s strength combined with Banner’s brains, but by the end of the episode, it’s back to square one.
Those are just a few of my favorite episodes from the show’s first and only season, and that’s actually almost half of all of the episodes, since we only got a mere 13 episodes before the show was canceled. As a kid it felt like there was so much more than that, but looking back it makes sense why I always found myself rewatching the same handful of collections that I had. When I got older and sought out the episodes I was missing, it was a bit of a shock to see that there really weren’t that many that I needed. Much like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, to me it felt like The Incredible Hulk was a source of near-infinite adventure, but alas all good things must come to an end.
Speaking of coming to an end, there are two things that I want to mention before I close out this column, and it’s two of my absolute favorite things about this show. The first is the various transformation sequences: there are only a handful of them, and they’re recycled throughout the show in the same vein that the majority of Prince Adam’s transformations into He-Man was just the same stock footage shots. The yellow and green backdrop, the thunder and lightning effect, and a variety of reaction shots ranging from Banner’s shocked face just before he turns to an angry stare before he becomes full-fledged Hulk were scattered throughout the show’s run and never failed to have me jump out of my seat as a kid. Even as an adult watching these back, they still get me pumped up to see Hulk ready to beat some ass.
Speaking of getting me pumped up, there’s no way I could write this without talking about my favorite thing about the show, and one of my favorite things about The Hulk in general; the intro to this show. This is without a doubt one of the best opening sequences of any show ever, and captures the lore of The Hulk perfectly. In just 60 seconds, we see Hulk stomping and smashing and saving Betty Ross from certain doom. We see Bruce Banner caught in the blast that would change his life forever, and we see Bruce stuck in a dangerous situation, desperately trying to escape before the stress takes over and Hulk resurfaces to save the day. All this is accompanied by a thunderous drum beat, a pounding synonymous with the giant steps taken by the Green Goliath. To this day, after what has to be hundreds of viewings in my lifetime, it remains as heart-pumping as hearing Ultimate Warrior’s theme song hit, or the scene in Revenge of the Ninja where Sho Kosugi once again becomes the Black Ninja.
I know I’ve written a lot about 1982’s The Incredible Hulk here, and the truth is I’ve probably spent more time thinking about it for No Surrender Cinema than the bigwigs over at Disney have. You see, despite the very show it was once paired with (Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends) readily available to stream on Disney+ along with the never-ending supply of Marvel movies, original series, and cartoons, The Incredible Hulk is yet to appear on any official streaming platform. Yes, you can buy the episodes on YouTube, and there are some official foreign and unofficial Region 1 DVD releases out there, but aside from that it feels like even the most purportedly hardcore MCU fans have either forgotten this show or haven’t even heard about it. I still maintain my original VHS tapes of the show, and have a bootleg set that I got years back, but if you’re looking for something other than chopped up episodes your only hope is to visit the Internet Archive, where someone has uploaded the full series, and other users have also uploaded copies of the same VHS tapes that I own to the Archive as well.
Hulk adaptations over the years have been a mixed bag; the CBS show was amazing for what it was, but it wasn’t true to the comics. The 1996 cartoon (which IS available on Disney+) was considered so dark at first than they added She-Hulk as a permanent co-star to lighten the mood. The 2003 film tried way too hard to be avant-garde, and it was met with a lot of valid criticism. Edward Norton’s 2008 film was a valiant attempt from a bonafide Hulk fan (Norton) to do right by the character, but even that ended up as a one and done before Mark Ruffalo took over and remains as Bruce Banner/Hulk to this day. What we had with this 1982 cartoon was a show that was essentially Sal Buscema’s artwork on display and writing that kept everything confined (for the most part) to the versions of the characters that were by that point well-established in Marvel Comics. It’s a shame that what is arguably one of the best Hulk adaptations that we’ll ever get has been relegated to the bottom shelf of the internet instead of being on full display on a major platform for a new audience and older fans like myself to enjoy.
The Incredible Hulk is not only my favorite superhero of all time, but this cartoon in particular brings back a lot of fond memories. Watching it back again recently not only brings those memories flooding back, but it’s made me realize what a disservice Disney et al are doing by keeping this show buried. I’m not sure if it’s a rights issue or just a lack of effort on their part, but hopefully the supposed “superhero fatigue” out there doesn’t stop this one from being given a second life on a major streaming platform sometime soon.
The Incredible Hulk (1982 Cartoon) is not currently available on any major platforms. Episodes can be purchased on YouTube, and the series, including several uploads of VHS collections that were released in the 80’s, can be viewed on the Internet Archive.
