SHIELD Director Maria Hill interviews a
number of candidates applying to work with Bruce Banner, showing them
pictures of the Hulk at his worst and asking them why they would risk
that to work with Banner; the applicants' answers are varied and show
great dedication to their work....
At a dilapidated house in a run-down
part of town, black-clad AIM Agents seize a Professor Burke and force
a helmet on him to shut out all outside sights and sounds. SHIELD
Agents arrive to battle AIM but the baddies scoop up their prisoner
and get away. Returning to AIM's volcano base in the South Pacific,
they hand over to their leader, Colin Thirty-Three, their captive,
who is unmasked as Bruce Banner, switched during the battle at
Burke's home. After Hulk softens them up, more SHIELD Agents arrive
and a full-scale battle breaks out. Thirty-Three, with some
loyalists, rushes off to the labs to activate the Quintronic Man, a
robot operated by five humans inside the giant framework; Burke was
to be the last of the original operators but Thirty-Three will have
to take his place. It should be noted that the other four are dead,
their corpses having the right neural chemistry to run the monster
machine. Hulk smashes it to pieces anyway....
As he recovers from the mission, Bruce
Banner receives an update on the Quintronic Man from Maria Hill who
also tells Bruce about his new team: Daman Veteri, Randall Jessup,
Melinda Leucenstern, and Patricia Wolman. He is also introduced to
ROB (Recording Observation Bot), a floating orb designed to monitor
everything Hulk/Banner does. Bruce rejects the idea, Hill tells him
it is non-negotiable, Hulk fragments the thing with one punch....