The Incredible Hulk debuted on CBS November 4, 1977 and would run for 87 episodes until 1982, followed by three made for TV movies, which appeared in the late 1980s. Adapting the Marvel Comics superhero/monster series to the cultural and televisual landscape of the 1970s involved several key revisions to the character’s origins. The original Hulk character was born in 1962 when scientist Bruce Banner, working on a Gamma bomb for the US military, exposes himself to radiation while saving the life of Rick Jones, a hippy who has carelessly wandered onto the testing site. As much a symbol of heroic sacrifice as nuclear threat, this Hulk became a countercultural hero that brazenly took on the US military even as his alter ego continued to cow to its authority. In the TV series, David Banner is still a scientist working with Gamma rays who is transformed into a super strong raging green monster with a heart of gold, but, importantly, his motivations for becoming the Hulk have been radically transformed. Banner is driven to experiment with Gamma rays following the death of his wife in a car accident, in which he was unable to muster the physical strength to pry open the door in order to save her. Their romance, depicted in a dream sequence at the beginning of the pilot episode, initially seems idyllic, with Banner clearly epitomizing a softer, gentler, domesticated form of masculinity (he even hems her pants). The dream quickly becomes a nightmare, however, once the accident occurs. As viewers, we are cued to recognize these earlier images as commenting on Banner’s ineffectiveness in rescuing his wife, suggesting that he embodies a failed form of masculinity. This failure drives him to find a way to unleash the rage within. Not only does this Hulk’s origin reveal anxieties over hegemonic masculinity’s supposedly diminished power, but it also seems to react against the inverse increased power of non-whites and women. Significantly, Banner ups the dosage of Gamma radiation after learning how a black mother was able to rescue her son from a trapped car under similar circumstances. His rage at her succeeding where he failed is palpable. So, is The Incredible Hulk a reactionary text that seeks to re-inscribe traditional gendered and racialized power hierarchies? Not entirely. One of the fascinating bits about the series was that it focused primarily on Banner’s attempts to cure himself of the Hulk mutation or shield society from his uncontrollable rage. The series followed a kind of masculinity-on-the-run formula that would become popular in the 1980s (The A-Team, Knight Rider), in which Banner stumbled into adventures as he wandered from town to town. While the Hulk came in handy fighting the villain/disaster of the week, Banner’s inability to control the monster inevitably forced him to keep moving on. In unlocking the power within, men like Banner found they could not control it and so, for the good of society, willingly abandoned their authority and purposely marginalized themselves. The 1970s Banner embodied what David Savran has called “reflexive sadomasochism,” where masculinity validated its power by turning against itself. “The individual subject is split into a sadistic half and a masochistic half... No longer having others on whom to inflict his power and his pain with impunity, the male subject began to turn against himself and to prove his mettle by gritting his teeth and taking his punishment like a man” (175-176). This, in turn, allowed television audiences to have it both ways, enjoying fetishized images of machismo and brutish violence while also empathizing with Banner’s continuous efforts to rid himself of his monstrous excesses. “[In] reconstruct[ing] masculinity in the ruins of Cold War culture…the ‘macho’ man [is transformed] into a spectacle in the hope that his self-inflicted pain will redeem that heroism which a cynical culture finds both embarassing and irresistably alluring” (204)