Synopsis
Original Sin 3.n - Hulk vs Iron Man #4 synopsis by
Rob Johnson
Rating:
Hulk is coming after Iron Man because he believes Tony Stark messed with the Gamma Bomb and hence caused Bruce Banner to become the green monster. While Hulk fights his way through the weaponised city Troy, the Golden Avenger is fleeing through the utility tunnels heading for his armoury where he dons the Hulkbuster armour.
But when his foe arrives, Tony can only hope that the new smart Hulk can't get as angry (and hence as powerful) as the old dumb 1. That doesn't work out.
When Stark wakes up he's imprisoned in his crushed armour, and Hulk has brought him to the Gamma Bomb test site. Greengenes says he drugged Stark to keep him sedated while he brought him here from Troy in China - he makes a joke "Hulk got you smashed". He thinks it will be ironic to kill Stark here where Tony ruined Bruce's life.
Tony is stalling for time while he activates something. He speculates (correctly) that Bruce used the Extremis that brother Arno injected him with (in Hulk #4) to upgrade Hulk's intelligence. But Hulk also correctly guesses that IM is up to something. But it turns out not to be a weapon.
Instead Stark displays a hologram of the workings of the Gamma Bomb. Despite himself the intelligent Hulk is intrigued. And quickly works out what Tony Stark really did to it all those years ago. Then he sits down to have a chat.
As his anger ebbs away, Hulk is able to revert to Bruce Banner. Bruce is surprised to find Tony still alive - he can't remember what he did as Hulk. So Tony shows him the hologram. And we flashback to the fateful evening again.
Drunk Tony Stark had sneaked into the Gamma Base and opened up the Bomb. Gen'l Ross had asked him to decrease the Bomb's shielding to increase it's power - which is what Bruce thought caused the creation of Hulk. But now we see that Tony found that Bruce's overcautious shielding would have the opposite effect to that intended. It would contain the Bomb's explosion until it eventually burst out even bigger.
So Bruce now realises (as Hulk did) that Tony actually reduced the effects of the Bomb by reducing the shielding. Without his intervention Banner would be dead (as would Gen'l Ross and the other observers of the test).
Bruce speculates that the world would have been a better place without him and Hulk. But Tony won't accept that. And Stark still accepts that it was wrong to go behind Bruce's back to change the Bomb - it was their perennial rivalry at work.
Bruce leaves to find someone to get Tony out of the mangled armour. Tony can't help a parting needle "Try Thor. I hear he's the strongest 1 there is."
But when he's gone we're treated to another flashback courtesy of Tony's memory. Tony sent Bruce an e-mail in which he explained what he'd done. But also that he'd spotted stuff in the energy spectrum of Bruce's earlier tests. It wasn't his field of expertise, but it seemed similar to the results from morphogenic experiments. The Bomb might change people if it didn't kill them.
But Tony now figures that Bruce was so angry after their earlier argument (as seen in #2) that he'd deleted the e-mail without reading it. He's never going to tell Bruce about the e-mail, and that it was his own injured pride caused him to be turned into the Hulk.