Marvel’s Hulk and DC’s Batman might not appear to have a lot in common at first glance. While Bruce Wayne and Bruce Banner might share a name, very few people would confuse the rampaging Green Goliath with the hyper prepared Dark Knight. Yet at one point, a celebrated Hulk writer gave the Jade Giant a strong link to the Caped Crusader.
During his run on The Incredible Hulk, writer Peter David introduced readers to a merged Hulk who possessed Bruce Banner’s intelligence and basic personality, the Green Hulk’s massive strength and willingness to use it, and the Grey Hulk’s swagger and arrogance. While later writers have dubbed this Hulk, “Professor Hulk” or “The Profesor,” David himself dislikes the title as it does not fully acknowledge what he was trying to show with this Hulk.
In his article, “Not Easy Being Green,” David states that his “merged” Hulk was basically a big bully. Rather than end the conflict between Banner and his multiple Hulk personalities by combining them all together, David sought to create a Hulk who had to deal with the consequences of believing he was better than everyone else (as he was now the strongest and the smartest there was).
One storyline that showed this new conflict very well was David’s “Future Imperfect” miniseries where the Hulk came face-to-face with an evil future version of himself called the Maestro. Convinced that he was a superior being, the Maestro had basically taken over the world in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust and turned it into a dystopian empire. This unnerved the Hulk, as he realized how much more dangerous he could be in his “ultimate” form, and he finally sought out psychiatric treatment to better control his arrogant and violent tendencies.
In deg the merged Hulk’s personality, David used Val Kilmer’s character from the movie Real Genius as a model. In the movie, Kilmer portrays a brilliant MIT student named Chris Knight who believes he is better than anyone else because of his genius IQ. During the movie, Knight and his friends spend much of their time partying and use their genius to play multiple pranks on their enemies. In a famous scene, they implant a radio transmitter in a rival’s mouth and make him believe that the messages in his head are coming from Jesus.
Hilariously, the Hulk used the same prank in his comic when Thanos shrunk him to the size of a rat, showing David’s love for Kilmer’s character. Taking advantage of his small size, the Hulk used “Ant-Man” style tactics to beat up his enemy, the Abomination, and then whispered messages into the Abomination’s ear, claiming he was “The Lord.”
Kilmer would go on to play a different “Knight” when he was cast as Batman in Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever movie (Interestingly, Peter David would write that movie’s novelization). Although the Dark Knight is a different character than Chris Knight, Batman is certainly known for both his genius and arrogance – qualities that the merged Hulk displayed in abundance. Moreover, Chris Knight embraced a “party boy” personality often associated with Bruce Wayne’s playboy persona and the merged Hulk’s smug demeanor. Oddly enough then, the Hulk once had more in common with Batman than anyone ever realized!
