Warning! This post contains SPOILERS for Hulk #9If there’s any character who desperately needs therapy in the Marvel Universe, it’s the Incredible Hulk. Now more than ever, Bruce Banner has really needed to sit down with someone and take a hard look at the trajectory of his life given his insane new status quo seen in recent comics. As such, there are multiple reasons why Banner’s rejection of therapy in the latest issue of Hulk doesn’t make much sense (and is pretty hypocritical).
Previously in Marvel’s Hulk from Donny Cates and Ryan Ottley, Bruce Banner has reworked his entire psyche, turning the Hulk into a literal spaceship that he controls from a ship’s bridge he’s constructed within his own mindscape. However, that doesn’t mean Banner is in total control of his greener and stronger other half. In fact, the Hulk himself is at risk of Hulking out, becoming a far darker creature known as Titan. Venturing into a pocket dimension to find a new purpose beyond the main Marvel Universe where he’s viewed as a monster, the voyages of the Starship Hulk have only just begun.
Considering all these new changes and the threat of Titan, seeing Bruce in a therapy session with Doc Samson seems like good news at first. However, it’s revealed that Bruce is still operating within the confines of his mind and that Samson is a construct created by a therapy protocol Bruce created. However, Banner has a hard time seeing the value of therapy even though he himself initiated the protocol, wanting to be sure he was safe to captain the Hulk before beginning a new discovery mission. However, therapy doesn’t work for anyone if they’re not willing to try (or in Bruce’s case shutting down the program rather than continuing to be vulnerable).
Hulk Is The Marvel Hero Who Needs Therapy The Most
While “Samson” wanted to continue the session after getting Bruce to open up about a rare happy memory from his past, Bruce can’t see the benefit and ends the program before they can go any further: “Therapy… what a joke”. Clearly, this is quite hypocritical of Bruce. No one is forcing him to go into therapy, and he created the program in the first place. It should be a healthy thing, but Bruce is currently choosing to reject it in favor of captaining the Hulk with crew members who are simply manifestations of himself. Even a hero as brutal as Moon Knight has a therapist to help with his darkness and Dissociative Identity Disorder.
At any rate, the hope would be that Bruce starts seeing the program he’s created as a valuable asset to help his systems run smoothly as well as to hopefully keep Titan bay (a dangerous transformation neither he nor the Hulk can control). In the Hulk’s unique situation, rejecting therapy is super ill-advised beyond just being downright hypocritical. Hulk #9 is on sale now.
