As fans of the Hulk will know, Bruce Banner may be the most reasonable persona to inhabit his body, but that doesn't mean he's always the most likable guy. Consequently, almost all the Hulk personas - even those who profess to love him - don't like Bruce much, and one even created a terrifying artificial intelligence named Project Omega to make sure he never stuck around too long. Based on Banner at his smartest, Project Omega has the potential to be Bruce Banner's version of Ultron - a cold, controlling, genius-level intelligence set on controlling the "Strongest One There Is." What a shame then that, in the UK at least, this villain could never be taken seriously.
Project Omega began in 2015's "The Omega Hulk" storyline by Gerry Duggan and Mark Bagley, in which Doc Green - a divergent personality with Bruce Banner's intellect and the Hulk's enhanced gamma strength - took over as the main identity. While many people mistake Doc Green for Banner's mind in Hulk's body - as portrayed by Mark Ruffalo in Avengers: Endgame - he's actually a full persona with his own goals and ambitions, and he built Project Omega to help him with a singular goal: no more Hulks.
In Duggan's run on Hulk, Doc Green commits himself to curing every other gamma mutate of their radiation-induced transformation. The series followed a period in which Marvel had overstretched the Hulk brand - including the much-hyped introduction of a Red Hulk - and so the Doc's plan is a perfect synergy of narrative invention and corporate house-cleaning: hunt down every other Hulk, have a big splashy fight, and then wipe away their powers so the Green Goliath can once again be a unique presence in Marvel's world.
But in pursuing this mission, Doc Green had two initial problems: planning how to take down each new target, and repressing the troublesome Bruce Banner. Project Omega was the answer to both - a copy of Doc Green at his smartest, it was free to help him strategize while remaining on hand for whenever Bruce Banner made an appearance, at which time it would take the necessary measures to force him to turn back into Doc Green.
Unfortunately, as tends to happen with Marvel AI characters, Project Omega took on a life of its own. While it was still interested in the same goals as Doc Green, it came to believe that his intellect was slipping, and that he was therefore unsuitable to the task at hand - someone to be either controlled or defeated. Project Omega parted ways with Doc Green, but not before taking a new name designed to mock the genius Hulk - Gammon. Which is about when every Brit reading Hulk lost their ability to take the story seriously.
In the world of the comic, Doc Green explains that the term is an old word for gibberish - a reminder from Project Omega that he is losing his intellect and will soon transform back into a savage brute. In the UK, however, gammon isn't an "archaic" term at all. In fact, it's a traditional pork steak commonly served in British pubs - the equivalent of an intimidating villain menacingly announcing that from now on, they'll be known as "Brisket." Worse still, the term has a popular slang meaning referring to the type of older man who gets incandescently angry at societal progress - the kind who'll monopolize a family dinner raging about his pet issue, turning as pink as a gammon steak as he does so (which is where the term comes from.) For readers in the UK, Project Omega had basically declared himself "Angry Uncle Ham Hock", and the tension was gone forever. Thankfully for Brits, Gammon quickly gave up his physical form, with Immortal Hulk #34 suggesting he's gone for good. But if that particular villain turned out to be a laughing stock across-the-pond, later developments for the Hulk turned out to be just as enthralling as for everyone else in the world.
October 15, 2020 at 06:38PM
https://ift.tt/2H13AcL
The Hulk: Why One Hulk Villain is a Joke to UK Comic Readers - Screen Rant
https://ift.tt/2BsGM2G
Joke
No comments:
Post a Comment