Betty Learns to Smash

It’s always a challenge to keep a comic book series fresh. Through the years, The Incredible Hulk has been a simpleton, grey, to the integration of his Hulk/Banner persona. Enduring it all had been Betty Banner. Whether they were on the run, and facing forces determined to keep them apart, they knew they had each other’s backs. Somehow, in some way their love for one another would see them through until Betty “succumbed” to being injected with the Abomination’s blood. Alone, the Hulk forged on.

Now Betty Banner is Red-She Hulk, part of a band of “monsters” led by the Hulk. One major problem, Betty is unstable on a multitude of levels – particularly on a molecular level. According to Amadeus Cho (perhaps the 9th smartest person in the marvel universe) if Betty hulks out again she won’ be able to change back. Perhaps that is only an issue for those around her. The aggressive, angry, volatile She-Hulk is not one to be trifled with. No longer is she shot in the leg with rubber bullets, or under the thumb of her father, now she is able to go toe-to-toe with the smartest if not strongest man on the planet.

Still, like a sun, Betty is sure to burn out and in issues 626-627 of The Incredible Hulk looks at the potential disaster that may befall her. With the apt storyline surrounding Pandora’s Box, Betty is in the thick of things with one of The Hulk’s longtime enemies Tyrannus. It seems that when it comes to Mrs. Banner Bruce becomes a different kind of green monster and botches a simple recon mission.

Accumulating a potential girlfriend on the way somehow doesn’t interfere with his trying to save Betty from herself. Unfortunately between nearly destroying an important part of Italy and gaining the ire of The Knights of Rome, both Hulks must now unite to retrieve an artifact that re-instills “the point of the myth rather than the specific details” which is “don’t open the fricking box.”

As the battle rages on will The Hulk be able to save Betty from Red-She Hulk? Or will our violent She-Hulk stop running from her issues and embrace her new path?