If you’ve read too many comics (if there is such a thing?), I assume that you have favorite versions of particular characters. It’s one of the fun parts about comics, getting to read different creators’ takes on the same character/team/ensemble over decades. What interests one creative team about a character might be wildly different form what compels another! That might not resonate with you as a reader at a particular time, but it might be what draws somebody else into being interested in a character, and when you yourself revisit the book, maybe years down the line, you might fall in love with a new aspect of the character, all over again!
I’m kind of trying to inject some of the jealous/regretful pathos from Mark Waid’s run on Indestructible Hulk into the MCU Hulk, in my comic. I wasn’t all that taken with Indestructible Hulk, the first time I read it (I used to own all the trades, but I’ve pared that collection down to just the second volume, which is the one on which Walter Simonson did some artwork. He’s probably my favorite comic artist, for whatever that’s worth), but as I’m approaching my very own midlife crisis, the Indestructible Bruce Banner’s all-consuming need to make his non-Hulk’d time on Earth count for something is only resonating with me, more and more. Time is flying by, frighteningly.
This Hulk, of course, has to work in IT at Stark Industries to get his health insurance coverage, so while he’s Hulk’d and smart all the time, he probably still feels like he has to make his downtime really amount to something. When the pressure you put on yourself feels insurmountable, that’s when you need to talk to somebody. The Avengers don’t know how lucky they are to have Fat Thor, God of Thunder and Encouragement around!
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