Anatomy of The Hulk

I’ve been so busy lately that I totally forgot to post my final Marvel submission piece.

This one was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster ride for me in that it ended up in a piece that I really liked, but that I knew halfway thru would never be used by Marvel. Why you ask? Well I know you didn’t really ask, but it helps if you just play along…

Okay, here’s the deal: I decided to do a take off of the old Leonardo Da Vinci drawing called “The Vitruvian Man” after thumbing thru an old college art history book while cleaning up my apartment. I thought it would be kickass to have Bruce Banner in the front just beginning to change, and have the Hulk behind him busting thru the geometric frames as though he couldn’t be contained within them. I was also being bombarded by a bunch of Leonardo retrospectives on the History Channel breaking down the book “The Da Vinci Code”, so I figured it must be fate right? Um… not quite.

Well, it seems that good old Joe Q (EIC at Marvel) must have been being watching the History Channel quite a bit himself because he personally did a version of the “Vitruvian Man” with Spider-Man as a promotional poster for this huge story arc called “Spider-Man: the Other”. As I was midway thru finishing my piece, I logged on to Marvel’s site to see what was new, and I was slapped in the face by a huge splash page of Joe Q’s version!!!



YOU GOTTA BE FUCKING KIDDING ME!!!

So with my spirit crushed, I limped thru the completion of my piece, with the knowledge that they’d never, ever, publish it. You can’t win ‘em all I guess, but… FUCK! What are the odds?

The text at the bottom of the page was adapted from “The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe”, and I tweaked and rewrote it to better suit my needs. For all of the unfortunate non-eagle-eyed-backwards-text-reading souls out there, the text at the bottom reads as follows:

“Anatomy of the Beast

Born as the result of a freak radioactive incident, the Hulk possesses the capacity for near limitless physical strength. The gamma radiation that mutated Dr. Robert Bruce Banner’s body, somehow fortified his cellular structure and added, from some as yet unknown source, over eight hundred pounds of bone marrow and tissue that comprises the core of this monstrosity christened “The Hulk”. In times of great stress, the Hulk’s adrenaline level escalates, causing a corresponding escalation in the beast’s strength. To date the Hulk has never apparently been provoked into demonstrating a maximum output of strength; hence, its upper limit has yet to be determined. God save us all should that day ever come…”

Oh yeah, I made the Hulk bald on purpose. It just makes sense to me that if the Hulk is the result of massive of amounts of gamma radiation, that it should cause his hair to fall out, since it’s a common occurrence for patients undergoing radiation therapy. See? It’s all scientific-al and shit.

Pencil rendering on Strathmore smooth surface paper, colored in Photoshop.

Edit: A desktop version for your computer can be found here [link]

“The Hulk”, and “Bruce Banner” characters © Marvel Comics
This image of “The Hulk” and “Bruce Banner” © Walter O’Neal 2005.