Hulk meets Superman and neither looks happy lol. Let’s see what they do about it in the following short but spectacular article about the weapons the Incredible Hulk could bring to bear against the prime Kryptonian.
5 Ways the Incredible Hulk Could Defeat Superman
When it comes to pure, unadulterated strength in the comic book arena, Superman and the Incredible Hulk embody this attribute more than any other characters. Basically, they are the respective titans and strength-standards in their respective Comic Book Universes – as long as you’re not considering ethereal cosmic entities that are so large they can’t even viably fit on a planet.
The Man of Tomorrow vs. God of the Sun
Superman gets his tremendous strength by way of his Kryptonian heritage; a yellow sun (or brighter) unlocks his absurdly-powerful biology and gives rise to a host of powers and abilities far above even those of other super-humans. Kal-El, as he is also known, is basically a god in human form. Indeed; there’s an especially-telling comic book favorite of ours where Kal went toe-to-toe with an enraged Apollo – the Greek/Roman god of the sun – and sent him tumbling into defeat like so many spent photons traveling from distant stars.
When Worlds Collide: the Gamma-Beast
The Incredible Hulk is also a virtually incomparable beast. Whereas Superman gets his abilities as a result of his alien biology, Hulk gets his from a gamma bomb event. Dr. Bruce Banner was just a normal (inasmuch as a genius nuclear physicist can be called normal) human involved in a freak scientific accident that endowed him with an unbelievably-powerful physique.
When Bruce gets angry, he gains mass and becomes a huge, gamma energy-infused green humanoid possessing mountainous strength. The angrier he becomes, the greater his strength also becomes. He is very durable, too, with a healing factor that is ultra-efficient. It has been shown that many of Hulk’s other attributes continue to scale upward as his wrath grows.
By general consensus, it is often argued that Superman would probably win a fight with the Hulk. In this short article, however, we will analyze each of Hulk’s prodigious powers, and see just how well they might stack up in a bout with the Last Son of Krypton.
The Hulk is very, very, strong, and can slam the palms of his hands together to create a pressure sonic wave that decimates buildings and knocks the crap out of superheroes and supervillains alike.
As he gets angrier, this thunderclap becomes even more powerful, and may be capable of sending even Superman careening backwards. Of course, it cannot kill Superman by itself – the Man of Steel is too durable for that – but it just might take him aback enough for Hulk to start pummeling him.
Furthermore, once Hulk’s wrath passes a certain threshold, the thunderclap gives him redirection abilities: if Supes tries to punch him into space, Hulk’s thunderclap can send him in any other direction at superspeed. The clap is attended by a brilliant green flash, as though to intimate chemical reactions reaching deep into the valence shells of the air molecules.
It is not certain whether the thunderclap would work quite as well in airless space, however. Truly, as the Green Scar powers up, his thunderclap can become a formidable force to be reckoned with – rendering entire mountains into cascading armies of pebbles
2. World War Hulk Radiation
In World War Hulk, the Hulk became angry-enough to emit powerful radiation in all directions. This radiation was of a gamma-level, meaning it was the most powerful spectrum possible. It was certainly very dangerous for other super-humans to be around in the massive World War Hulk series, and was threatening to destroy the planet Earth. Superman has not only punched a planet to pieces using his infinite mass punch, he’s also survived being crushed by two colliding planets.
It’s important to note, however, that the collision knocked him cold out – which means that Hulk does have a chance of knocking Superman unconscious with such a blow. He has to level up to this extreme level, however; and merely fighting Superman doesn’t seem like it would be enough to cause the amount of anger required. In the Planet Hulk/World War Hulk run, the worst things you can do to a man to incite his fury had been done to get Hulk to this level; can Superman even conceivably do the same? Doubtful.
Everyone knows that the Hulk is brutally strong. How strong? Well, at his base, perhaps only Wonder Man, the Thing and a motivated Thor can match his strength in the Marvel Universe. When Hulk unleashes his anger, he then surpasses everyone except maybe an unleashed Thor Odin-son; and, eventually, even the god of thunder.
Hulk once held up a 150 billion ton mountain in Secret Wars! Although it’s doubtful whether Hulk could hurt Superman by punching him at his albeit monstrous baseline strength, he can certainly pummel the Man of Steel if he gets angry enough.
All I’m saying is that it’s possible; in “reality,” we cannot expect Superman to take all this without firing back. In the Death of Superman, the Man of Tomorrow took a tremendous punch from Doomsday without even breaking a sweat – it was a punch that could very well have killed other durable superheroes outright.
So; keep that in mind when considering whether or not a baseline Hulk could even harm the Man of Steel. The primary problem, as we see it, is the extreme amount of leveling up that the Incredible Hulk would have to do before putting Superman in the danger level.
Basically, he can take a lickin' and keep on ticking! More than any other superhero in the Marvel Universe, the Incredible Hulk can take some serious damage. His healing factor rivals or surpasses the Wolverine's; of course, the it's also important to note that Wolvie's healing ability is constantly being taxed by the toxic adamantium that's bound to his bones and in his blood.
Hulk's resistance to damage is not, at its base level, a problem for Superman. As the war progresses, however, even Supes will notice that Hulk is not only becoming harder to hurt, he's also recovering more quickly…as well as re-engaging with greater ferocity. As it turns out, ALL of Hulk's physical attributes scale with his unrequited rage. Hulk is, effectively, a generator fueled by wrath.
There's a small chance that this surpassing durability, and the sheer relentlessness this confers, might actually start wearing down even the Man of Steel. Doomsday, after all, was able to accomplish this - although Doomsday is far more difficult to harm than Hulk (at the outset of any battle); being himself endowed with Kryptonian invulnerability - and beyond.
If Superman was starting to fray around the edges in his bout with Doomsday, then there's also a chance the same happens against the Hulk. There is one caveat here, though: Doomsday was moving at superspeed along with Kal, all day long. Hulk simply cannot tax Clark in this dimension.
5. Anger Unsheathed - Hulk and Onslaught
Onslaught was the exceedingly mighty psionic offspring of Professor X and a Magneto. This royal purple-clad beast was so strong that it took several of Marvel's top super-teams to engage him. Despite the combined efforts of the X-Men, the Fantastic Four and even the Avengers (yes; the Mighty Thor, himself, was a part of the resistance). Even so, they were unable to defeat Onslaught, or even breach his armor with their combined energy assaults.
As a last-ditch effort to make some headway, the Incredible Hulk bid Jean Grey to use her psionic abilities to separate Bruce Banner from his psyche, in order to release impediments to his power. The only thing Hulk asked Jean to keep was his memory of Becky. Once done, Hulk became one of the strongest versions of himself, since there was now no barrier to his wrath.
Amazingly, Hulk succeeded where the combined might of so many others had failed: he destroyed Onslaught's armor and unleashed the non-corporeal form of the mind-monster. As for a fight with the other-universal Man of Steel, Hulk would clearly need something to help him get to rage levels untold if he wants to try to engage Clark on equal footing. Although unlikely (as Superman doesn't really fight to meet rage with rage), it would be an interesting bout to see them exchange blows in their maximal forms.
