| Writer: | John Byrne |
| Artist: | Lee Weeks |
| Artist: |
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| Cover Price: | $3.50 |
| Secondary Market: | $3.20-$19.99 |
| What I Paid: | $1.00 |
| Variants: 0 | Variants |
| Publisher: | Marvel Comics |
After John Byrne’s return to helm the writing duties of the first Hulk reboot in 1999, they allowed the legendary writer to retool the origin of the jade giant. Byrne kept the color the Hulk first turned, grey, but did do a significant amount of re-imagining.
Instead of testing a Gamma bomb, they are testing a gamma laser that can be used against extraterrestrial threats. Banner still has an assistant named Igor but he is in the diner when Rick Jones friends are daring the teen to do something stupid. After shape shifting into a different teen, Igor tells Rick about the laser test and he thinks the idea is just groovy!
Banner notices the teen and calls for the test to be shut down but it’s Thunderbolt Ross who demands that the test continue. Just like in the original origin, Banner reaches Rick just in time and throws the boy into a ditch and takes the brunt of the blast himself. That night, Bruce turns into the Hulk and creates a ton of chaos on the base but, Byrne really goes off the blueprint, when Igor appears in Banner’s cabin he reveals that he is actually a Skrull.
The shapeshifting alien takes Banner and Rick to a Russian base where the scientist Hulks out but is immediately met with a gamma blaster controlled by the Gremlin! But the Gremlin just wants to be good looking again and dangles a cure for the Hulk in the face of Banner for him to help him accomplish this feat. Banner does his part but they are interrupted before he gets his cure by trigger happy Russian soldiers.
Gremlin is killed but not before he blows the base to smithereens (but he allows Rick and Bruce to leave first).
| Villains: |
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| Good/ Bland/ Ugly | GOOD |
Ratchet's Hulk Collection 
The annual came out at the end of Byrne’s second run, not before.
Thanks for the correction – I will fix that – thanks!
There is a good story from Tom Brevoort’s newsletter that is probably about this issue. He doesn’t specifically name the book or author, but if you follow the clues, you can see it’s this annual and series. It’s an interesting view on how Byrne cared more about creating his version of the characters than the actual characters.
https://tombrevoort.substack.com/p/106-splash-the-zeros