Tales to Astonish #90
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeTales to Astonish #90 (April 1967) introduced the Abomination — Emil Blonsky — a Cold War KGB spy accidentally transformed by Bruce Banner's gamma-ray projector into a creature physically stronger than the Hulk himself, giving the jade giant his most direct physical counterpart and one of his most durable arch-rivals across nearly six decades of stories. The issue also delivered a narrative milestone that the fan site Marvel Heroes Library specifically flags: it is the first time the Hulk is knocked unconscious by an opponent in combat, a shock moment that underlined just how dangerous the new villain was. As a split book, it simultaneously brought back Byrrah — a Namor antagonist last seen in the Golden Age — giving the Sub-Mariner half of the issue its own secondary key status. The character born here went on to anchor the second MCU film and recur across multiple Disney+ series, making this issue the generative source text for a villain who has never fully left Marvel's main stage.
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Writer-editor Stan Lee devised the Abomination by working backwards from the name: he settled on 'the Abomination' after recognizing no other comics character had claimed it, then built the character's KGB-spy background and visual design around that title. His creative brief to Gil Kane — who was freelancing Hulk stories at Marvel while primarily working for DC, sometimes under a pseudonym — was simply to draw the new villain larger and stronger than the Hulk. Kane penciled and inked the ten-page Hulk story (with letterer Sam Rosen), while Bill Everett — with uncredited corrections by Marie Severin on the final pages — handled the twelve-page Sub-Mariner lead story; Jack Kirby and Vince Colletta produced the cover. The issue appeared in April 1967, roughly a year before Tales to Astonish itself became The Incredible Hulk with issue #102.
Trivia · 7 facts
- In the story, KGB spy Emil Blonsky infiltrates General Ross's missile base, witnesses Banner's gamma-ray projector, and deliberately exposes himself to the radiation, emerging physically stronger than the Hulk and retaining his full human intellect — a key power distinction that made him uniquely threatening.
- The issue marks the first time the Hulk is knocked unconscious by an opponent in direct combat; the Abomination beats the Hulk down and kidnaps Betty Ross at the story's end, setting up the following issue.
- Stan Lee chose the villain's name before conceiving his background or appearance, telling Gil Kane to 'make him bigger and stronger than the Hulk and we'll have a lot of fun with him.'
- The Sub-Mariner half of the issue, written by Lee and penciled by Bill Everett (with Marie Severin supplying uncredited art corrections), marks the first Silver Age appearance of Byrrah, Namor's Golden Age adversary who had last appeared in Sub-Mariner Comics #35 (1954).
- The cover — by Jack Kirby and Vince Colletta — depicts Byrrah prominently; that image was later reused as Byrrah's official Marvel Value Stamp in the 1970s.
- The letters page contains an early published letter from Bill Mantlo, who would go on to become a prolific Marvel writer himself in the Bronze Age.
- The Hulk story has been widely reprinted, including in Bring on the Bad Guys: Origins of the Marvel Comics Villains (Simon & Schuster, 1976), Essential Hulk Vol. 1 (1999), Marvel Masterworks: The Incredible Hulk Vol. 3 (2006/2013), and the Incredible Hulk Epic Collection Vol. 2 (2017); the Abomination character went on to be portrayed by Tim Roth in the MCU films The Incredible Hulk (2008) and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), and the Disney+ series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022).
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