Times Bruce Banner Was Cured Of The Hulk

The greatest struggle of Bruce Banner's life is the quest to find infinitely stretchable purple pants. The second greatest struggle of Bruce Banner's life is the quest to finally, once and for all, cure himself of his affliction: when he gets angry, he transforms into a giant, savage, green engine of destruction known as the Incredible Hulk.

Bruce has almost never been happy with his condition; every transformation is out of his control, and the Hulk and him have never seen eye to eye on life they share. Banner is too puny and pathetic and cramps the Hulk's style; the Hulk destroys peoples' lives and keeps Banner away from the woman he loves and the scientific accolades he deserves.

He's tried many times to finally rid himself of the Hulk, and each attempt seems like it'll be the one to stick - but that's never quite the case, is it? Here are 18 Times Bruce Banner Was Cured Of The Hulk, Once And For All.

18. At the end of his first series (Until the Avengers needed him)

The Hulk's first comic book series, The Incredible Hulk, didn't last too long. Debuting in 1962, it saw Bruce Banner struggling to reverse his strange condition. Only a few issues after he was first afflicted with the world's worst temper, Banner invented a device that allowed him to turn from Banner to the Hulk and back again. Still, each transformation met with more resistance than the last, and in the end Banner decided it just wasn't worth the suffering and the risk to be the Hulk at all. With Rick Jones' help, he used the machine to finally remove the Hulk once and for all, and end The Incredible Hulk at issue #6.

Less than a year later, the Hulk would be needed once more, this time to do battle with Loki in The Avengers #1. No mention was made of Banner supposedly being cured, and the Hulk's popularity was secured.

The Missing Link was a radioactive beast that once defeated the Hulk by draining him of his gamma radiation, leaving puny Banner in his place. Of course, the transformation didn't last long, but it led to Reed Richards building a device based on Banner's notes that could finally cure Bruce of the Hulk, once and for all.

The machine threatened Banner's life, but Reed was convinced to go ahead with his plan after seeing how happy and helpful a de-Hulked Bruce Banner could be. The machine worked, and turned Hulk back into Banner - until moments later, when the Missing Link showed up. This time the radioactive ogre had the opposite effect: he turned Bruce back into the Hulk. Thanks, Missing Link!

Bruce saw the effectiveness of Reed Richard's design, and put his considerable intellect towards improving the device. Mr. Fantastic may be the smartest Marvel superhero, but Bruce Banner is unsured in the field of gamma radiation, after all. Bruce developped improvements, and brought his notes with him to the Baxter building - only to turn into the Hulk, and battle the Fantastic Four.

Luckily, during the battle, Sue discovers Banner's notes on the machine, and they are able to make his work a reality. This proved to be remarkably effective - Bruce gained full control over his Hulkification, and vowed never to transform again. He retired to live a quiet life with his love, Betty Ross.

...until her own father, and the Hulk's nemesis, General Ross requested Banner turn into the Hulk one last time, in order to defeat the Leader. Banner complied, only for the Leader to show up at his wedding and blast him with a gamma device, effectively turning him into the mindless raging savage Hulk once more, without the ability to turn back.

15. Dr. Raoul Stoddard separates Bruce from the Hulk

Bruce Banner wasn't the only gamma radiation expert in the Marvel universe; one of his closest rivals in that field, Dr. Raoul Stoddard, had been working on a way to separate Bruce from the Hulk for years. Using a device called the Gammatron, Stoddard apparently, finally, cured Bruce Banner of the Hulk.

For the time being, anyway. Banner soon discovered that Raoul hadn't erased the Hulk so much as he'd created two separate, but connected, beings: one nerdy scientist, and one big screen rage machine. Killing one would kill the other, so they still couldn't deal with the Hulk that way, and simply keeping the Hulk captured while Banner lived a happy life didn't seem like a good plan, either. In the end, with Iron Man's help (and in spite of Stoddard's meddling), Banner had to re-merge with the Hulk.

14. Doc Samson drains it away (until he hits on Betsy Ross)

Dr. Leonard “Samson” Skivorski, Jr. is a classic Marvel scientists: ostensibly a psychiatrist, he's also a prodigious inventor and biologist and male model and physicist. In a classic Hulk story, Betty Ross had been turned into glass, and Doc Samson saw a way to cure two birds with one highly experimental method: he took the Hulk's "libidinal" energy and transferred it to Betty Ross, turning her and Banner human again.

Samson, though, took things a little too far after that - he took some of the Hulk's energy and transferred it to himself, super-charging his body and turning his long hair green. He then began to romance Betty Ross, which irked Bruce Banner enough to actually reverse the process that had cured him. He wrestled Samson for Betty's love; it was then that Doc Samson realized how much damage he'd caused, and backed off of Betty. Since then, he's been a close friend of Banner's and an ally to the Hulk.

13. Bruce travels back in time but kills Rick accidentally

In comic books, time travel is never simple - it appears to solve our heroes' problems, only for there to be some terrible ironic cost associated with it. Maybe you interrupt your parents' meeting, and erase yourself from existence; maybe you step on a dragonfly and now everyone is a dinosaur. Maybe you travel back in time to dodge the bomb that turned you into a radioactive rage machine, only to allow that bomb to kill an innocent teenager and future sidekick.

That last scenario is what befalls Bruce Banner, when a scientists friend, Kerwin Kronus, devises a time travel device that sends Banner's mind back to the moment the bomb went off, allowing him to run for cover. In the future this change creates, he is happily married to Betty Ross and is a respected scientist; his guilt over allowing Rick Jones to die in the explosion, however, drives him to travel back once more and live out the explosion as he had the first time.

12. It just goes away on its own, really

Just as he was getting ready to squash a couple of love-struck teens, the Incredible Hulk started shrinking. It turns out, by issue #223 of The Incredible Hulk, Bruce Banner had all but entirely expunged the gamma radiation from his body; his transformation that day in the woods was to be his list. Before the teenagers' eyes, the terrifying green rage machine became the harmless - even pathetic - Bruce Banner.

Of course, it's just then that the Leader happens to kidnap Doc Samson, General Ross, and Bruce Banner in one fell swoop. Bruce and his "friends" have to work together to defeat the Leader, without relying on the Hulk to smash their way out. Bruce ends up using an old Hulk robot to fight the Leader, but from the robot's destruction - plus an extra dose of gamma radiation from Samson - brings his emerald alter ego back.

11. Peter Corbeau Cures the Hulk until Jarella Needs His Help

Peter Corbeau, a friend of Bruce Banner's (and Professor X!), was a noted physicist, astronaut, inventor, and designer of the Starcore orbiting space station. When the military had finally captured the Hulk through the use of sedative-filled explosives, Corbeau was called in to destroy the beast once and for all. He uses a device that harnesses the sun's energy to neutralize the Gamma energy in the Hulk; unfortunately, Jarella (the Hulk's sub-atomic love interest) shows up soon after, and her arrival combined with the machine causes the sun to threaten all life on Earth (somehow). Banner turns back into the Hulk (somehow) in order to rescue Jarella from an assassin sent from her world, just in time to help settle the dangerous solar storm brewing on the surface of the sun (somehow).

10. The Silver Surfer drains his energy

After successfully petitioning Galactus to leave Earth alone, the Silver Surfer was trapped on the planet by a cosmic energy field created by his former boss. He therefore sought out the Hulk, the only being he knew of who possessed the energy necessary to break through the barrier. Instead sharing, of course, The Hulk tried to break the Surfer's board, and the two got into a scuffle. The Surfer drained all of The Hulk's radiation, turning him into Banner once again, but the infusion drove the Surfer temporarily insane. Banner had to somehow siphon the Gamma radiation back into himself, becoming the Hulk once more.

9. The Presence removes Hulk and Ursa Major's powers

While on vacation in Russia, the Hulk happened upon some Soviet Super-Soldiers and a giant bear. The bear would turn out to be Ursa Major, a soldier in a situation similar to the Hulk's: he had a nasty tendency to turn into a giant, feral bear. The two forces got to battling, but were interrupted by The Presence. It turns out the Soviet soldiers were sent there to deal with him, and Hulk himself had had some experience with The Presence from his time with the Defenders.

The Presence, not wanting to be disturbed, simply removed Ursa Major and The Hulk's powers. He could have kept them both that way forever, to everyone's benefit, but he simply reversed the process in the next issue.