On the heels of their early ’60s success with the Fantastic Four, Marvel Comics released The Incredible Hulk. Written by Stan Lee and illustrated by Jack Kirby, the character followed the FF’s Thing as an exploration the man-within-the-monster motif that would become a Stan Lee trademark, in this case showing the conflict between the scientist-intellectual Bruce Banner and his darker side, the Hulk. If the Thing was inwardly the most human of the Fantastic Four, outwardly the Hulk was the rage, frustration and loneliness that can be bottled up inside any of us, particularly appealing to the teenage and immediately pre-teenage audience. That much of the conflict surrounding the Hulk came from his misconstrued actions didn’t hurt either, making the fact that he got stronger as he got madder simply gravy.

The green-skinned goliath would go on to become one of Marvel’s most familiar characters. Did you know, though, that the title proved to be Marvel’s first failure, lasting only six issues?

After debuting in The Incredible Hulk #1 as a gray-skinned man-monster, the Hulk turned green, his most widely recognized character trait, in the second issue. Four issues later, though, the series was over. A limited response from the fans (compared to Spider-Man, the FF and others) and a strictly controlled number of distribution slots cost this distinctly un-jolly green giant his space on the shelves, but he didn’t just fade away.

In 1964 Giant-Man was the star of Tales to Astonish, a Marvel title actually dating from the Atlas days, which began its life as a monster book. In Tales to Astonish #59 Giant-Man fought the Hulk. The following issue saw the book split into two stories, with the Hulk being the new co-feature. Giant-Man was replaced by Sub-Mariner in Tales to Astonish #70, and the title would run with that configuration for 31 issues. Following Tales to Astonish #101, the title switched to The Incredible Hulk #102 (thus explaining for newcomers why you can’t find #7-101). It ran until Incredible Hulk #474. His next title, which began as The Hulk with a new #1, added the “Incredible” back in at #12. It eventually jumped back to the Volume One numbering with #612 in November 2010, ended with #625, started with a new #1 in 2011, and now the Hulk can be found in Indestructible Hulk, part of the Marvel NOW! relaunch.

Along the way the Hulk was featured in The Avengers, Fantastic Four, The Defenders and many other titles. He’s also been the subject of a newspaper strip, a TV series, a handful of TV movies, several cartoon series and now the big budget Hollywood blockbuster. As powerful as he is and as much devastation as he’s wrought, though, the Hulk has not been seen as a classically defined villain, but instead he’s been portrayed as the misunderstood victim of circumstances, who just happened to have the power to wreck cars, shopping malls, buses, tanks, and pretty much whole towns.