EDITOR’S NOTE: Here on ComicMix, our lists of must-read Iron Man stories and recommended reading for The Dark Knight were so popular that we decided to put together the following list for Friday’s release of The Incredible Hulk in theaters. Enjoy! -RM]

He’s been in comics for decades. His cameos in series other than his own have always meant blockbuster action. He’s had a live-action television series, TV-movies, cartoons, videogames and now a new major motion picture coming out this Friday.

He is the Hulk.

Yet he is also Dr. Robert Bruce Banner, and long ago, he created the gamma bomb — the next step in nuclear warheads. But when he saw a kid named Rick Jones in the test area, Bruce condemned himself by saving the boy’s life and getting caught in the bomb blast. Bathed in gamma rays, he was mutated so that he would now transform into a gray-skinned, monstrous version of himself at night.

As time went on, Banner’s mutation shifted and he would turn into a green-skinned, savage, child-like creature whenever he was angered, which became the most famous take on the character. Later still, he struck a balance by becoming a gestalt, merging his different alter egos. In recent years, he has reverted to his "classic" status, the scientist who is terrified to lose his temper lest he become a destructive emerald beast.

Perhaps it’s this isolation, and his desperation to change his situation in life, that causes so many people to relate to him — both in the fictional world he occupies and the real world of his readers.

Here, then, are some of the most important, must-read stories involving the Hulk from the character’s long history, and a good place to start if this week’s release of The Incredible Hulk piques your interest in Marvel’s famous green-skinned goliath. (more…)

With any luck, this morning the heat wave that has gripped New York since last weekend will have finally broken.

I’ve never cared for extremes of temperature, but all in all I’m much better equipped to deal with winter than with summer. Winter has its hazards — for instance, our apartment is situated among a row of houses recessed from the main street with a long U-shaped gravel driveway between our stairs and the street itself, and when it ices over there’s never a clear pathway to walk to the street, so unless I drive I’m pretty much trapped in the house. But that generally happens for only a few days, and most of the time I’m more concerned with layering. Which seems to be a lot easier for a person like me with, shall we say, natural padding.

Summer’s a whole different ballgame, though. It’s pretty easy to layer on clothing when you’re cold; it’s a lot harder to strip it off when you’re warm. Leaving aside societal proprieties and whether or not it’s fair or just for topless men to be acceptable but topless women to be verboten (my opinion: as long as women taking off their tops elicits a reaction of "look, boobies!" from the minds of most onlookers, I continue to agree with the status quo here), the fact remains that most of us can’t strip past our skin, y’know? And it’s more and more dangerous to leave skin exposed for long periods of time. SPF one thousand, anyone?

By the way, you do know that once you get past SPF 30 your additional so-called protection from UV rays is negligible at best? And that there are tons of assertions that sunscreen is actually bad for you and even carcinogenic? (Oh, the fun things you find out about when you set out to write about heat waves! That’s at least two articles I now wish I’d never read!) (more…)