Marvel's jolly green giant hasn't always been so. Well, he's rarely jolly, but it's the skin colour in particular that has been inconsistent since his very first appearance. After being bombarded by gamma radiation during an experiment gone wrong in the pages of The Incredible Hulk #1, Dr Bruce Banner was transformed into a huge, muscle-bound, small-minded monster...with grey skin. Or blue skin, depending on which page you're reading. There's plenty of conspiracy theories as to why the palette swap occurred. Some believe that it was down to miscommunication within the office, some that it was part of the story, some that the creators simply had a change of heart. In reality the changing skin colour across that very first issue is down to the way comic books were coloured back in the day, which is to say that the stingy publishers used the cheapest possible method, since profit margins were particularly slim at the beginning of the Silver Age. Hulk was designed to be grey, but colour separations meant that a lot of the time he turned out a different shade of grey, or a different colour altogether. Deciding to pick one a tone more sympathetic to the four colour printing process, Marvel changed him to green, and the rest is history. Apart from all the times Hulk has become grey again, or red, or whatever other colour the writer decides suits him better. This isn't the only time that editorial oversight nearly saw a massive change in the Hulk's characterisation. There's the story of how Stan Lee almost renamed Bruce Banner the much more unassuming Bob for a few months, simply because he'd forgotten his actual first name. So technically, his name is Robert Bruce Banner. Unless you're watching the seventies TV show, in which case it's David. And he's definitely green there. As he's supposed to be. We think.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
