I don't own the Incredible Hulk.
The Lonely Man.
I've been travelling for a year now, going from one town to the next, constantly on the run. My identity is hidden, people in my profession believe I am dead, that I died in a fire. I didn't. The reality is much, much worse. At times I dream of home, home with Laura, home at work with Elaina.
Did I kill them?
Did I kill Laura by taking her out on that drive?
After all those years knowing Elaina, did the creature kill her? " It won't kill because David Banner won't kill!" She said that after I metamorphosised into the...the thing that has ruined my life.
I brought it on myself, of course. I made the experiment. I was so frustrated because I failed to save Laura, that I wasn't strong enough to save her from the accident. All those people who demonstrated incredible superhuman strength - bending steel beams, lifting up cars...I discovered it was gamma radiation that made them so strong.
I exposed myself to radiation, but I used too much, far too much. I didn't just gain strength, I gained a mutant thing, a beast made of pure rage. Whenever I get angry, afraid, the rage centre secretes a hormone and I become a monster. I remember driving home from the Culver institute, just after I'd exposed myself to Gamma radiation, but I didn't get any stronger. I was still just as weak as I'd been before the injection. I hit something on the way home, and I had a flat tire. I tried to change it, but I hurt my hand. I remember blacking out, but not before I had the sense of being incredibly strong.
I came back in the woods, my jacket and shirt in rags, my trousers torn and shredded, my shoes gone, and a bullet wound in my arm.
Anger was the key, and that anger is why I'm on the road. A fire tore the building me and Elaina, one of my oldest friends and I were working on finding out about the thing, and I changed again. Next I find that Elaina's dead, thought to be killed by the creature I now become, but I don't know if I murdered her or not even though she was unharmed when I first transformed in that chamber, and now I'm thought to be dead. I can't go back to the life I've lead and now I've got to secretly look for a cure or find a way to control the creature, but its not helping that the creature's now thought to be a murderer, and they might be right. It's not human, maybe its what we humans were before we became human. Maybe its our worst side, a demon made of rage. A monster.
Without an identity, I now travel because a nosy reporter who cannot keep his big nose to himself has made it his life's goal to hunt me down, me and the creature. Without the resources at the Culver institute, I have to work as a cleaner or some other form of mediocre work just to support myself.
I am or was David Banner, and that is the one thing that will never be taken away from me. Not Jack McGee, the reporter, and the Creature he has called the Hulk.