When the Mighty Marvel Comics Duo from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby made his debut on Hulk in 1962, the Big Fella was initially gray. According to Lee, this had to prevent the character from being identified with an ethnic group – and he could have stayed in this way if the colorist Stan Goldberg had not fought with gray shade. Lee could see that the color was wrong, therefore, after this first issue, he decreed that the Hulk should be green, which, apart from the flashbacks at the origin of the character in 1984, is the way in which things were in the Marvel universe until 2008. (Even the reprints of the first number now depict Hulk as green.)
Then, Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness decided to add a different and more daring shade to the character: red. It was not the Hulk of Bruce Banner, but the alter-ego created in the laboratory of Thaddeus E. “Thunderbolt” Ross, which wanted to go out bane For a change. It was a huge affair for comic book readers, but did not really register outside this world. Most people did not know that there was a red Hulk until they started to see bands and advertisements for “Captain America: Brave New World”, which sought to make tickets by gutting the transformation of Harrison Ford, as Thunderbolt Ross, in Ruby Ruffian.
We know that Loeb and McGuinnes are the creators of The Red Hulk, but what has influenced them? Have they found this idea on a whim? Or have they won someone else? Basically, what we ask is: they stole him from John C. Reilly in “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story?”
Walk Hard presented The Red Hulk before making its debut for comics
“Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” by Jake Kasdan is a parody spotted with biopics showbiz. It is so correct in a devastating way that you think that filmmakers would stop imitating the formula so merciless. Alas, we have the impression that we still obtain at least one film per year which comes up against this structure (like “Bob Marley” disappointing in 2024).
It is possible that Hollywood forgot “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” because it was a box office flop when it was released in December 2007. Of course, those of us who have ventured to see him instantly fell in love and, at the time, comic fans were wondering if Jeph Loeb was among the closed admirers.
At one point in the film, Dewey Cox de Reilly is unleashed to his manager, Schwartzberg (David Krumholtz), because his program varieties of network fears in the notes. This leads to the following exchange:
Cox: Schwartzberg, have you seen the notes? We are kicked the ass every week by “The Incredible Hulk”.
Schwartzberg: Well, the episode of last night was a very special episode. They revealed that the incredible Hulk has an evil twin, and it is not green: it is red.
Cox: I know, it was incredible. Have you seen it?
Schwartzberg: You can’t compete with this.
Since the Red Hulk had not yet been introduced, some viewers wondered if Dewey Cox inspired Loeb to create the character. It would be hilarious if it was, but the Red Hulk made its debut the following month, so it was only a wild coincidence. However, Marvel Studios could do much worse to Heckuva than to write Dewey Cox in the universe (although Reilly would then draw a double service, because he has already appeared in the Marvel cinematographic universe as Rhomann Dey in “Guardians of the Galaxy”).
