The Hulk has had more forms than almost any hero, because he is less one character than several living inside Bruce Banner. The main ones are the Savage Hulk, the green one with a child's mind who grows stronger the angrier he gets; the Grey Hulk, smaller, smarter and meaner, who worked as casino muscle in Las Vegas under the name Joe Fixit; the Professor, Banner's intellect in the green body after therapy merges the personalities; and the World Breaker, the furious Hulk who comes back from the planet Sakaar for revenge.
All of them start with gamma radiation and a buried childhood. This follows the comics, with the films flagged where they differ, and Banner, the green Hulk and the Sakaar gladiator all have prints on the Hulk shelf.
Gamma radiation: how Banner became the Hulk
Bruce Banner is the physicist who built the gamma bomb. On the day of the test, a teenager called Rick Jones drove onto the range on a dare. Banner ran out, pushed him into a trench and took the blast himself, because the spy working beside him let the countdown run. That night he became the Hulk.
In the first issue, in 1962, the Hulk was grey and changed only at nightfall. From the second issue he was green, and before long the trigger was anger instead of the dark. In Marvel's comics gamma radiation transforms people rather than killing them, and the result tends to match the person: Bruce's cousin Jennifer became She-Hulk through a transfusion of his blood, and enemies such as the Abomination and the Leader came out of gamma too.
In 1985 the comics added the root of it. Bruce's father, Brian, abused him and killed his mother, and the boy buried the rage. The Hulk is that rage given a body. Gamma Study and Two Sides put the man and the monster together.
The Savage Hulk
The Savage Hulk is the one most people picture: huge, green, speaking in short sentences about himself in the third person, and mostly wanting to be left alone. He sees Banner as a separate, weaker person and hates him. The rule that defines him is simple: the madder he gets, the stronger he gets, with no known ceiling. He can leap for miles and shrug off the army sent after him.
He is also the Hulk who met Wolverine. Wolverine's first full appearance, in The Incredible Hulk #181 (1974), has him sent by the Canadian government to stop the Hulk, with the monster Wendigo caught in the middle. Claws Out and Berserker Bout both put the two of them on the same print.
The Grey Hulk and Joe Fixit
The grey skin came back in 1986, and this time it was a different person. The Grey Hulk is smaller and weaker than the green one, but sly, selfish and pleased with himself. He enjoys being strong, and he does not care much who gets hurt.
In the comics of the late 1980s he settled in Las Vegas as Joe Fixit, a suit-wearing enforcer for a casino owner. Banner and Fixit fought for control of the body, and neither trusted the other. Fixit is the Hulk as a gangster rather than a force of nature.
The Professor and the merged mind
In The Incredible Hulk #377 (1991), the gamma-powered psychiatrist Doc Samson uses hypnosis to make Banner face what his father did. The personalities, Banner, the Savage Hulk and Fixit, come together as one: the Professor, a green Hulk with Banner's mind, the Savage Hulk's strength and some of Fixit's nerve. He leads a team called the Pantheon for a time.
It does not hold. Later stories reveal that the merger was never complete, and the personalities split again. Later runs keep adding more, including the cunning, protective Devil Hulk. The films took their own route to the same place: in Avengers: Endgame (2019), Banner spends months in a lab and comes out as one man in the Hulk's body.
Planet Hulk: Sakaar and the Green Scar
In the 2006 story Planet Hulk, a secret council of heroes called the Illuminati, among them Reed Richards, Tony Stark and Doctor Strange, decides the Hulk is too dangerous for Earth. They trick him into a ship meant for a peaceful, empty planet. It lands on Sakaar instead.
Sakaar's ruler, the Red King, sends him into the arena as a gladiator. There he finds the Warbound, fellow fighters including the insect warrior Miek and the rock-skinned Korg. The people call him the Green Scar, and a prophecy names him two things at once: the Sakaarson, a saviour, and the World Breaker. He leads a revolt, defeats the Red King, takes the throne and marries Caiera, a warrior of the Shadow People. Then the ship he arrived in explodes, destroying the capital and killing Caiera. The Hulk blames the Illuminati.
The 2017 film Thor: Ragnarok borrows the setting and changes the story. On screen, Sakaar belongs to the Grandmaster, the Hulk arrived by himself, and he is the arena's reigning champion when Thor is thrown in to fight him. There is no Red King and no queen. Sakaar Champion is the gladiator.
World War Hulk and the World Breaker
In World War Hulk (2007), he comes home with the Warbound and beats the Illuminati one by one, then sets them against each other in an arena of his own. His last opponent is the Sentry, and their fight wrecks Manhattan until both are knocked back into their human selves.
Then the truth comes out. Miek knew the ship's power core had been sabotaged by the Red King's loyalists, and kept quiet to keep the Hulk angry. The Hulk's rage peaks, and his strength climbs until every footstep sends tremors through the ground. That is the World Breaker, the prophecy's second name, and fans use it for this form. Tony Stark ends it with a strike from orbiting satellites, and the Hulk falls back into Banner. Smash is that rage in one word.
On the back of a tee
Banner, the green Hulk and the Sakaar gladiator are on the Hulk shelf, drawn from canon reference art. Check the size guide before you pick a size.
Why the Hulk works on the back: one huge green figure, purple trousers and a scowl is a shape that fills a print and needs no explaining.
Read next: Weapon X, adamantium and the healing factor explained (the claws that debuted in a Hulk comic) and Doctor Doom, Latveria and the Fantastic Four explained.
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