Red Hulk: A content question

[the blob]

While I certainly have some of the comics, i haven't gotten around to reading them yet. I see he's prominently featured in "Hulk Agents of Smash", which my 8 year old likes, but I suspect the cartoon character differs from the comic...

 

Anyway, so I tried to figure out when Red Hulk started and was thoroughly confused by the Marvel wiki page

 

is the 2008 first app in Hulk 1 the first app of Red Hulk or General Ross as Red Hulk?

 

The wiki page seems to read that there was Red Hulk who got into a bunch of fights and was ultimately defeated by Green Hulk and that at some point General Ross became Red Hulk after that?

 

Who was Red Hulk before General Ross? Or am I totally confused.

[the blob]

And while I'm trying to figure out cartoon continuity, when was the Rick Jones/a-Bomb character introduced? Wiki again confuses me.

[sd2416]

First appearance

Incredible Hulk #1 (May 1962)

(as Ross)

Hulk vol. 2 #1 (Jan. 2008)

(as Red Hulk)

 

Red Hulk (also known as Rulk[8]) was introduced in 2008 in Hulk #1.[9] The Red Hulk was created to be an uninhibited, tactically intelligent adversary to the Hulk.[10][11] Although Kenneth Johnson, the creator of the 1970s TV series The Incredible Hulk, had suggested a red Hulk for that adaptation decades earlier,[12] Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada proposed the idea for the comics to debut a red version of the character, whose human identity was a secret.[13] Initially, Red Hulk's identity was unknown both to the characters in the story[14] and to the reading audience.[15]

 

The opening story arc of the Hulk series that premiered in 2008 established that the character is very aggressive, as the Red Hulk murders Hulk foes the Wendigo and Abomination; destroys the Helicarrier of the spy organization S.H.I.E.L.D.; defeats several Marvel heroes and, after causing an earthquake in San Francisco, is finally defeated by the combined efforts of the Hulk and the thunder god Thor.

 

In a subsequent storyline, the Collector teams the character with other villains in a team called the Offenders, an evil version of superhero team the Defenders, in a bid to prevent the original Hulk from reuniting with past love Jarella.[16] The subsequent "Code Red" story arc[14] made further allusions to Red Hulk's real identity, and introduced a Red She-Hulk character.[17]

 

It is later revealed that the Red Hulk was created as part of a Super Soldier program by persons including Doc Samson,[18] and the criminal think tank Intelligencia,[19] headed by the Hulk foe MODOK.[20]

 

In Fall of the Hulks: Gamma, Red Hulk is related in flashback to have killed General Ross at the behest of Bruce Banner, with whom he has formed an alliance.[21] However, the 2010 "World War Hulks" storyline reveals that Red Hulk is Thunderbolt Ross himself, the Red She-Hulk his daughter Betty,[22] and that the Ross who was "killed" was a Life Model Decoy used to convince the world that he had died.

[the blob]

What confusd me is that they were talking about Red Hulk and General Ross existing at the same time -- I am assuming General Ross can't just turn into Red Hulk, he's stuck that way? So the General Ross conducting the investigation was not the real Ross?

 

From Marvel Wiki:

 

"The assassination of the Abomination in his homeland of Russia led to an investigation conducted by Iron Man, Commander Maria Hill, of S.H.I.E.L.D., General Ross, Doc Samson and the She-Hulk. One conclusion was of the majority; the person responsible was the Hulk. There were only two problems with this theory. The first was the Abomination was ultimately killed by gunfire – from a missing gun – and the second was Bruce Banner was locked away at Gamma Base in Nevada. However, the massive amounts of residual radiation at the scene seemed to give credence to the hypothesis even though there was speculation as to why the massive footprint, supposedly belonging to the Hulk, had turned the sand underneath it into glass. Upon returning to Gamma Base, General Ross and Samson turned to the one man that could help them in their search for their gamma-powered mystery: Bruce Banner. It wouldn’t be long before the assassin revealed himself.

A Red Hulk was on the loose...."

 

Red Hulk in the cartoon has nothing to do with any of this.

 

[the blob]

So now Doc Samson is a bad guy?

[sd2416]

He can turn like Banner can

[the blob]

ok, now i get it

 

ross was always sort of one-dimensional, are any of the red hulk stories interesting?

[the blob]

ok, you might have figured out I'm about 15 years behind on my comic reading...when i try to catch up i get sidetracked with stuff like goon, chew, walking dead, etc,

[maloney414]

The truth is Marvel put out the 1st several issues without knowing the identity of the Red Hulk.

 

Then they decided it would be cool to make it Ross and tried to explain it later. That's where the life model decoy explanation came from. Then they claimed they knew all along which is BS, because if they knew it would have been written much better the first time.

 

The Red Hulk origin story was a total cluster that enraged fans.