Let's do something alongside Allen's threads where we "re-imagine" long-standing superheroes for a modern audience. In this one, let's restore a character to his most iconic version the way Morrison did for Superman in All-Star Superman.

The Incredible Hulk has enjoyed, as well as suffered through, many "new directions" as well as many reinventions, both within continuity and without. An "All-Star Hulk" title would be one that would satisfy the comic book fans, but not confuse or turn off persons who are casually familiar with the general concept of the character, either from the various animation treatments over the years or from the Kenneth Johnson television series.

In my opinion, a successful "All-Star Hulk" title would omit the complications of the child abuse origin tweaks made by Bill Mantlo, Peter David, Paul Jenkins and others... making Banner himself much more like most of the readers: someone without pre-existing, serious psychological problems. This Hulk would also need to talk. The snarling-and-grunting-only versions really sold the character short, in my view. The origin version should be the iconic Gamma Bomb version... as the lab accident version lacks a certain primal quality and it makes more sense that a monster as powerful as the Hulk should be created by a spectacular nuclear explosion rather than the much smaller-scale lab accidents depicted in the Kenneth Johnson series and even the 2008 film. As much as I like the originally planned grey skinned Hulk, most people think of the Hulk as green so the All-Star Hulk should probably be green... at least in the present. (Flashbacks can depict that he was grey for the first few hours of his transformation, but it's really not necessary.) Most of the time, the Hulk should be wearing more common pants colors like blue, black and khaki. Purple pants can be used in situation-specific stories where Banner has to wear them and it makes sense within the story to do so. (One plausible scenario being that Banner is captured and given a purple jumpsuit to wear so that he will stand out more in case he escapes... kind of like the orange suits that convicts are often depicted wearing.)

As this would be an out-of-continuity limited series, like All-Star Superman, I would return Banner to the nomadic wandering hero model for the overall story arc... with Bruce Banner officially missing and nobody knowing that he is the Hulk.

Darin, you have met comic book fans, right?

I knew someone would pick up on that...

I still pretty much think of the Hulk as a really powerful idea... that really doesn't work as a super-hero story.

The first six issues demonstrate the problems inherent in the set-up, because they tweak the set-up about four times, trying to find a workable formula. Damn hard to find a way to aim the Hulk at bad guys until they figured out the anger trigger.

And once they find that, you have exactly one good formula for starting Hulk Vs. Bad Guys stories, mixed in with some Technically Good Guys (but kind of assholes) Vs. Hulk stories. I've seen warning about reading through those old Essential volumes, because of the heavy repetition. The TV show was a pretty big hit, but they pretty much worked that formula into the ground, with just about every episode being David Banner meeting up with some good people being harassed, then he Hulks out near the end of the episode and beats up the bad guys, before having to run away.

The stress trigger does offer more ways for the character to change than the anger trigger would... there's a lot of confusion about that among the civilians. They remember the Ted Cassidy voice over and say "but I thought he changed when he got angry, not scared or panicky." The show and the comic demonstrated a wide variety of Hulk-out stimulus that wasn't just Banner getting hacked off at someone. The stories I sort of miss were the "monster teaches the humans about humanity" stories they used to do when the character wandered across the country and the world helping people along the way. The regular series has really gotten away from that.

Saying the Hulk has exactly one good formula is like saying Superman does too... Clark Kent hears about trouble from the Daily Planet office and heads for the broom closet. It's selling the character short.