Tales to Astonish #60
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeTales to Astonish #60 marks the true relaunch of the Incredible Hulk as a permanent fixture in the Marvel Universe — the moment a canceled character was given a second life that would eventually earn him his own solo title again by 1968. By converting the former Giant-Man anthology into a split-book format, Marvel's editorial team (constrained by distribution limits on the total number of titles it could publish at once) found an ingenious structural solution that would be repeated across the line, shaping how Silver Age storytelling was packaged. The Hulk's 10-page back-up feature was also written as a fully serialized, cliffhanger-driven narrative rather than a self-contained adventure — a forward-thinking approach that presaged the decompressed, arc-based storytelling that would define mainstream comics decades later. Critically, this issue is where the Banner/Hulk transformation mechanics were dramatically retooled: stress now triggers the change rather than a gamma-ray machine, and Banner and the Hulk exist as two genuinely distinct personalities — the psychological foundation that all subsequent interpretations of the character have built upon.
Find on ebay
Read it digitally
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
The Hulk's original solo series had been canceled after only six issues in 1962–63, but the character remained visible as a guest-star in Fantastic Four, Amazing Spider-Man, and the early Avengers, demonstrating enough commercial appeal that Stan Lee sought a way to give him a continuing strip within Marvel's tight distribution constraints. The solution was to drop the anthology back-up material in Tales to Astonish and install the Hulk as a co-headline feature alongside Giant-Man and the Wasp beginning with this issue, with Lee writing both strips. For the Hulk story specifically, Lee paired with penciler Steve Ditko and inker George Roussos (credited as George Bell), an unusual combination — Ditko almost always inked his own work — that gave the Hulk feature a distinctively dark, shadow-heavy visual texture; the Tom Brevoort blog cites Ditko's own published essays confirming his active involvement in plotting and visual storytelling for the relaunch. The Giant-Man story, 'The Beasts of Berlin,' was penciled by Dick Ayers with inks by Paul Reinman, while the cover was provided by Jack Kirby — who, as noted by the Kirby Museum blog, continued to supply covers for the book long after handing off the interior art.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First issue in which the Hulk begins a permanent, ongoing solo feature — the strip runs continuously from this point through Tales to Astonish #101, after which the title is renamed The Incredible Hulk with #102 (April 1968).
- Marks the conversion of Tales to Astonish from a Giant-Man/anthology format into a full superhero 'split book,' with two separate hero features per issue — Giant-Man and the Hulk — a format Marvel used across multiple titles to expand its hero roster without adding new titles.
- Cover date: October 1964; on-sale date: July 2, 1964. Cover art by Jack Kirby (pencils) and Sol Brodsky (inks).
- Giant-Man story 'The Beasts of Berlin' written by Stan Lee, penciled by Dick Ayers, inked by Paul Reinman. Hulk story written by Stan Lee, penciled by Steve Ditko, inked by George Roussos (pseudonym: George Bell), lettered by Sam Rosen.
- This issue establishes a revised transformation rule for the Hulk: emotional stress/excitement causes Banner to become the Hulk, and extreme agitation causes reversion back to Banner — a significant departure from the original series, where a gamma-ray machine triggered the change. This iteration was itself further revised in later issues.
- Bruce Banner and the Hulk are explicitly written as two separate personalities with only vague awareness of each other's actions — the first clear articulation of the split-identity dynamic central to all later Hulk storytelling.
- The Hulk's storyline picks up directly from where The Incredible Hulk #6 (1963) left off, with General Ross, Betty Ross, and the Los Diablos Missile Base all present, providing narrative continuity across the gap.
- The Hulk feature in this run has been collected in multiple trade formats, including Marvel Masterworks: The Incredible Hulk Vol. 2 (December 2004), Essential Incredible Hulk Vol. 1 (February 1999), and a 1978 Simon & Schuster hardcover collecting Hulk stories from TTA #60–74.
Key issues in Tales to Astonish
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.