Cover art by Jack Kirby
As Doctor Bruce Banner tinkers with his latest creation in a 1964 multi-issue storyline from Tales to Astonish, he hears a noise in the hall and goes to investigate. “There was someone snooping outside the door,” he realizes. “Must be a spy! There he goes!” Banner takes off after the shadow but the chase causes too much stress on his body and he transforms into his alter ego, the Hulk. As the Hulk runs into the desert, the spy overpowers a night watchman and crawls into the robot that Banner had been working on. When morning arrives, the robot appears at the test site as scheduled, with everyone assuming it is Banner inside.
By now the unconscious watchman has been discovered and revived. Since Bruce Banner was the only other person in the building, he immediately becomes a suspect in the attack. “He must have cracked up,” General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross concludes. “We can’t let him operate that super-powerful robot. It will be too dangerous. Quick, give the order to stop the test!”
The Hulk recognizes the robot as the creation of Banner, fueling a determination to destroy it. Even the strength of the Green Goliath cannot dent the powerful suit, however, and the Hulk not only wears himself out but once again becomes Bruce Banner.
“Don’t lie to me, boy!” Ross screams when Banner says that it wasn’t him inside the robot. “There was no spy and you know it!” When the robot is spotted making its way through the desert, Banner is cleared of attacking the night watchman. General Ross, however, is still not convinced of his innocence. “As far as I’m concerned, I still don’t trust you as far as I can throw you,” he says to Banner. “And I’m going to report my suspicions to the Pentagon. I don’t care how big a genius you’re supposed to be.”
General Ross’ subsequent report is taken seriously. “I am aware that you are one of the top nuclear physicists in the nation today,” Major Glenn Talbot tells Bruce Banner upon his arrival from Washington, D.C. “And your services are vital to our defense effort. But the Pentagon sent me here to check out some disturbing rumors about you.”
The fictitious Bruce Banner of Marvel Comics had a factual counterpart in the real world in J. Robert Oppenheimer, who oversaw the construction of the first atomic bomb in Los Alamos, New Mexico. As journalist David Halberstam notes in his 1993 book, The Fifties, Oppenheimer was a master administrator, capable of seeing the big picture and using his managerial skills to bring the Manhattan Project to fruition. He also understood the destructive power that he and his fellow physicists had unleashed.
“If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One,” he said, quoting the Bhagavad Gita, when the first atomic bomb was successfully detonated. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
While the atomic bomb was indeed powerful, it was merely the destroyer of cities, not worlds. That “honor” fell to the still theoretical hydrogen bomb. During World War II, the equivalent of three million tons of TNT had been detonated – a hydrogen bomb could produce one million tons with a single blast.
Although Oppenheimer told reporters in 1945, “A scientist cannot hold back progress because of fears of what the world will do with his discoveries,” he had a change of heart by 1954 and was the leading scientist opposed to the development of the hydrogen bomb. He was even approached about returning to Los Alamos and working on the project but declined. It was considered a huge blow, as his mere presence would have potentially lured other top physicists to Los Alamos.
As it turned out, there were skeletons in Oppenheimer’s closet. Not only were his brother, sister-in-law, and first wife communists during the 1930s, but Oppenheimer himself had been a member of various communist organizations during the same period. He had disavowed communism by the time World War II broke out and was truthful about his past associations on his security application. Although he was watched closely during the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government did not deny him the required clearances to supervise the construction of the world’s first atomic bomb.
William Borden, chief aide to the chairman of the Joint Atomic Energy Committee, couldn’t understand Robert Oppenheimer’s opposition to the development of a hydrogen bomb and began reading the government’s files on him. By the fall of 1953, Borden had complied a list of over four hundred suspicious activities associated with Oppenheimer and, although no longer employed by the government, sent them to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
Hoover, himself convinced that Oppenheimer was a communist, forwarded the letter to the White House. Fearing a scandal, President Dwight Eisenhower ordered that a “blank wall” be built between Oppenheimer and “information of a sensitive or classified nature.” Since Oppenheimer was by now only a consultant to the government whose contract was about to expire, that should have been the end of it.
It would have been if it wasn’t for Lewis Strauss. Strauss had assumed the chairmanship of the Atomic Energy Commission in July 1953 and immediately began to both increase security and purge what he considered “leftist” holdovers. At the top of his list was Robert Oppenheimer. On December 21, 1953, Strauss informed Oppenheimer that the AEC considered him a security risk and that he had twenty-four hours to either challenge the charge or agree with the conclusion.
The subsequent hearing was a farce. The three-man board presiding over it were personally chosen by Lewis Strauss based on their political views as opposed to merit. Instead of using a prosecuting attorney from inside the AEC as was protocol, Strauss hired a prominent trial attorney. Oppenheimer’s defense team was not only outmatched but they had to leave the room during certain questions because they didn’t have security clearances.
The FBI, meanwhile, had been bugging Oppenheimer’s phones for over fourteen years. Although illegal, transcripts were presented as evidence and left the defendant with little wiggle room. When asked why he had once told a security officer a minor lie, Oppenheimer could only respond, “Because I was an idiot.” In the end, the board voted two-to-one against J. Robert Oppenheimer, effectively ending the illustrious career of the “father of the atomic bomb.”
The spy that Bruce Banner encountered in Tales to Astonish was sent by the Leader, a former blue-collared laborer who was transformed into a green-skinned brainiac when caught in a freak Gamma ray explosion. “With my great intelligence, I organized a vast spy ring, seeking to take over the reins of government,” he says to himself. “But those who worked for me were not equal to the task. However, I have created my own Humanoid! He alone is worthy to serve me, for I have made him all-powerful!”
Because his original military installation has been compromised, the Pentagon orders both Bruce Banner and his latest nuclear weapon moved to a new base. “You’re not to leave the train until it reaches its destination,” General Thaddeus Ross tells Banner. “And Major Talbot will have his eye on you at all times. They may think you’re a top scientist in Washington, but I still don’t trust you.”
It doesn’t take long before the Leader’s Humanoid finds a way to infiltrate the train and dismantles the car containing Bruce Banner’s latest bomb. Fortunately the Hulk appears at that same moment and attacks the creature. The Green Goliath emerges victorious and then removes the bomb from the train car before it reaches critical mass and explodes. When Major Talbot arrives on the scene, he not only finds the bomb but Bruce Banner as well.
“All right, mister, you’ve gone too far this time,” he says. “You were ordered to remain locked in that railroad car, and now I find you here near the missing nuclear device. Guard! Place that man under arrest.”
Unlike J. Robert Oppenheimer, Bruce Banner was ultimately found innocent but still not entirely trusted. As for the Hulk, he continued to have a deep distrust of both the government and military. Given the fate of Oppenheimer, Hulk’s fears were ultimately grounded in fact as well as fantasy.
Anthony Letizia