Cover art by Gary Frank and Cam Smith
In the opening pages of Incredible Hulk #420 – published in June 1994 – a television reporter tells those watching from home, “This is Hildy Johnson, reporting live from the Theodore Roosevelt School in L.A., where rioting between two groups has broken out during a protest rally regarding an AIDS-infected student. School authorities had initially ruled that the child could remain at the school. The decision brought a firestorm of protest from parents. Now supporters of both views are meeting with school heads inside while out here, tempers have flared with potentially lethal consequences.”
Amongst those caught in the ruckus is African American Jim Wilson, who is hit on the head with flashlight and lies bleeding on the ground. Years earlier, Wilson befriended the Incredible Hulk and in his hour of need, the Green Goliath comes to his rescue. With the television cameras fixed on the superhero and the police unable to stop him, the currently merged Bruce Banner/Hulk – popularly referred to as “Professor Hulk” – asks the crowd, “Which one of you dead men hurt my friend?” The words have the desired effect as everyone scatters from the scene, allowing the Hulk to lift Wilson into his arms and jump the two of them to safety.
The real-world Ryan White was born on December 6, 1971, and diagnosed with hemophilia shortly afterwards. White later contracted HIV when his treatment for hemophilia contained contaminated blood and was then diagnosed with AIDS in December 1984. Even though medical professionals had already determined that AIDS was only transmitted through sexual activities, needle sharing, and blood transfusions – not by casual contact – White was banned the following year from attending middle school in Russiaville, Indiana, a suburb of Kokomo.
According to Paul Renfro in his 2024book The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America, White was too ill from pneumonia to return to school during the 1984-85 academic year. Although word of his infliction had spread throughout the neighborhood, it wasn’t until mid-March that it was made official by White and his mother. At that time, administrators at Western Middle School were open to his potential return in the fall. On July 30, 1985, however, the decision was made to block him from attending. The Whites filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court a week later.
In February 1986, the State Board of Special Education Appeals ruled that Ryan White could return to school if the Howard County public health officer medically cleared him to do so. After looking over all available data on AIDS, consulting with other medical professionals, and a brief medical examination of White, Doctor Alan Adler announced that Ryan’s “present medical condition is such that he should not pose any threat to his fellow students, teachers and others.”
Back at Bruce Banner’s Mount Pantheon laboratory, one of Hulk’s assistants informs him that Jim Wilson has AIDS and has had it for some time. The Hulk suggests using a new experimental drug – noting that “Jim has nothing to lose” – but Doctor Harr points out that it’s not ready to be used on humans, causing the behemoth to lose his temper.
“I’m not asking you!” Hulk shouts. “I’m telling you! Don’t you get it? He’s dying!” After smashing a desk to pieces and regaining his composure, however, the Hulk realizes that she is correct and apologizes.
By now Jim Wilson has regained consciousness. “You must know I got full AIDS,” he tells the Hulk. “So you wanted me to die comfy, is that it? What’s the point o’ that? C’mon man, you’re holdin’ back. I can tell.” The Hulk admits he has an experimental drug but that it’s not ready for human testing. Wilson then asks him for something more potent – a transfusion of Hulk’s Gamma-infested blood. The Hulk again refuses, noting that it would be too dangerous.
“You can help me!” Wilson pleads. “If you don’t, you’re killing me as much as the virus is.” Hulk replies, “That’s not fair,” to which Jim Wilson responds, “You’re talkin’ to me about fair?”
The fifty journalists waiting in the snow outside Western Middle School were joined by a small group of students from Western High School carrying signs that read, “STUDENTS AGAINST AIDS.” Jerry King of ABC’s World News Tonight noted that this “small, brief demonstration against Ryan’s return to classes” was nothing compared to “the main protest” – forty-two percent of the student body remained at home that day as opposed to attending school.
Members of the opposition Concerned Citizens and Parents of Children Attending Western School Corporation, meanwhile, filed a petition for a temporary restraining order in Howard County Circuit Court. It was quickly granted, ending Ryan White’s return after only one day.
“The city had been moderately successful in weathering a generally negative opinion the rest of the country apparently had of Kokomo – until Feb. 21,” the Kokomo Tribune reported. “That day… a local judge slapped a restraining order on (Ryan White’s) return to school. But what appeared to enrage a national television news audience more than the decision was that the school patrons who sought the injunction left the courtroom cheering and flashing thumbs-up.”
The city was soon flooded with “generally hostile letters” from across the country as a result. Even the New York Times got in the act, writing on its editorial page, “Ryan White, a normal Indiana kid except that he has AIDS, is being kept out of school because some adults aren’t learning about the disease fast enough.”
Although the restraining order was later rescinded, the White family decided to move to nearby Cicero nonetheless. When Ryan subsequently enrolled at Hamilton Heights High School, the NBC Nightly News reported that the positive reception was “in sharp contrast to what happened to him last year when he tried to go to school in nearby Kokomo.” The school’s principal, meanwhile, remarked, “We’ve looked at it objectively and looked at the facts. Most of us have made up our minds philosophically that Ryan’s no threat to us physically.” He then added, “The knowledge of the disease here is very high, so the majority are objective and open-minded.”
A few months later, Peter Jennings of ABC News remarked, “Thanks to Ryan’s doggedness in talking about AIDS, the country as a whole has a clearer picture about AIDS and society. We are sometimes not very proud of the media circus which we impose on people’s private lives. And yet if there hadn’t been all the national fuss when Ryan was first kept out of school, perhaps people in other places wouldn’t have been so motivated to learn the facts about AIDS and to act as they did.”
Ryan White was admitted to Indianapolis’ Riley Hospital for Children in March 1990 with an “AIDS-related respiratory infection complicated by hemophilia.” He passed away a few weeks later, on April 8, 1990, at the age of seventeen.
The Hulk has finally consented to a transfusion of his blood for Jim Wilson. Wilson, however, suspects that it’s not really Hulk’s blood and Doctor Harr confirms his suspicions. “Figured you wouldn’t lie to me,” Wilson says to her. “But he wants me t’go out feelin’ hopeful. S’okay. I know why he didn’t wanna. Shouldn’a bugged him. My fault. Don’t tell him I know, okay?”
After Jim Wilson dies, the Hulk wonders if he should have gone through with the blood transfusion after all. “And if you’d given him your blood and it turned him into a monster, as you feared?” Betty Ross – Bruce Banner’s wife at the time – replies. “Destroyed his life, or the lives of others he might have killed?”
The Hulk merely responds, “Why is destroying things so easy and saving them so blasted difficult?”
Anthony Letizia