If you haven’t heard the latest Avengers: Age of Ultron rumor yet, then where have you been? Basically, reports have been circulating all over the inter net that the Hulk is probably, at some point in the film, end up being grey instead of his typical green self. This has caused quite the stir all over the social media, so it’s what’s happening this week in geek.
Who is the Grey Hulk?
The first thing you should know about this whole Grey Hulk thing is that it isn’t unprecedented or unheard of. In fact, when the Hulk premiered in comics, he was grey. That was the original color Stan Lee and Jack Kirby intended for him to be. Issues arose, however, when the books went to print. The printer had a hard time with the grey ink, and it just didn’t work well. As a result, the original grey colored Hulk only lasted a few issues, before he was changed to the green toned, purple panted monster we know and love today. If it were any other medium, that would have been the end of it. It was a manufacturing issue, let’s just pretend the whole thing never happened. That only works if you are not dealing with a medium dominated by geeks who obsess about this kind of stuff. We need to know why the Hulk started out as grey and then became green. We want a reason for it in the story.
Fast Forward to the late 1980’s and early 1990’s and we get the return of the grey Hulk. Banner and the green Hulk had been separated, and this opened the door for the grey Hulk to reemerge. The grey Hulk was smarter than the green Hulk, and kind of dodgy. Eventually, he moved to Las Vegas and took on the alias of Joe Fixit, an enforcer. Besides intelligence, one other key difference between the grey Hulk and the green Hulk is that Banner changed into the grey Hulk at night instead of when he lost control. Eventually, the grey Hulk and the green Hulk and Banner were all merged together into a new form of the Hulk that kind of took on the best of all three personalities. I remember the grey Hulk. This was the version that joined Wolverine, Spider-Man, and Ghost Rider as a member of the new Fantastic Four (it was the 90’s, a lot of weird stuff was happening in comics).
Why do we think he might be in Age of Ultron?
So, that’s who the grey Hulk is, but why, all of a sudden, do so many people believe he might make an appearance in the new Avengers flick? Well, it comes down to this:
That is an image of the upcoming line of Funko Pop! figures for Avengers: Age of Ultron. This popped up on a website called PopVinyls.com. Of course the figure that jumps out the most is the big guy in the middle. The hulk, and you’ll notice that he is grey, not green. This led to an article on Cinemablend.com, which then led to multiple articles all over the web. That combined with the image going viral, and now everyone is totally bought into the idea that this is happening. The interesting thing is everyone is connecting it to the Scarlet Witch, and that it may not really happen, but be a hallucination. Maybe. Since we’re talking colors here, color me skeptical.
Don’t get me wrong, it could totally happen, but I just have my doubts. What we are basing all of this speculation on is this one image of one exclusive toy. That’s it. From there it has blossomed into a full-blown theory and from there, into a fact (not really, but maybe in some fans’ minds). Different stores will carry different versions of different toys and slap that exclusive label on it, and bam! instant collectible. I fear that this is more a ploy to make money than an actual spoiler. Marvel and Funko know that their fans will flock to Hot Topic to buy this one item, and it will be huge success. Fans of the classic Marvel Comics will instantly tie this figure to the grey Hulk of old, and will want it, regardless of whether this guy is actually in the film.
My biggest concern, or reason for doubt is the name of the figure. According to the above image, it is a “Hot Topic Exclusive Savage Hulk.” But he’s grey. As I mentioned in my intro to the grey Hulk above, he was smarter than the green Hulk. In fact, most fans of the comics refer to him as the grey Hulk, and the green guy, they call him the savage Hulk. Yet here we have a grey Hulk that is the savage Hulk. Unless they are ironically changing the character, it doesn’t fit. I think the Hulk we will see on film will be the green guy, and he is going to go ballistic for some reason, and be more savage than he already was. The grey Hulk won’t make an appearance, at least not in this film. That would be a great story line for a stand alone Hulk film, which would be a great thing to have. In the future, maybe phase 4 (hint, him, Marvel).
What do you think? Will we see the grey Hulk show up in Avengers 2? Or is it going to be just the plain old green one again? Let us know in the comments. We love hearing from you.
