The Incredible Hulk#140

The Incredible Hulk #140

Jun 1971 · Marvel

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★ 1st appearance — Jarella

About this Issue

Incredible Hulk #140 introduced Jarella, princess of the sub-atomic microworld K'ai, who would become one of the most emotionally resonant supporting characters in the Hulk's Bronze Age run — ranking alongside Betty Ross and Caiera as one of his great loves. The issue is also a landmark collaboration between literary science fiction and mainstream superhero comics, bringing Hugo Award-winning author Harlan Ellison into the Marvel Universe as a credited plot contributor. The story's central device — a sorcerer's spell that temporarily fuses Bruce Banner's intellect with the Hulk's power — explored the Banner/Hulk duality in a genuinely novel way, giving readers a tantalizing glimpse of what a unified, self-aware Hulk could be. Jarella's debut here set a chain of character development in motion that would run through 1976 and culminate in one of the most reader-protested character deaths in Bronze Age Marvel history.

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History

The issue concludes a two-part crossover that began in Avengers #88 (also plotted by Ellison), conceived as a single sprawling story that Ellison pitched to Roy Thomas around 1970. Thomas then adapted both halves into full scripts while keeping each issue consistent with its respective title's ongoing subplots — a considerable editorial juggling act. As a tribute to their celebrated collaborator, Thomas secretly embedded the titles of more than twenty Harlan Ellison short stories — drawn from the full contents pages of Paingod and Other Delusions and The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World — into the dialogue and caption copy of the issue, a fact Marvel itself revealed in the letters column of the same issue. The story's central premise of a hero finding a miniature romance in a sub-atomic world was itself inspired by a 1922 pulp tale by Ray Cummings, a lineage Thomas acknowledged in his 2012 introduction to the Marvel Masterworks collection reprinting this run.

Trivia · 8 facts

First appearance of Jarella, green-skinned princess of K'ai, a sub-atomic world accessed through the Marvel Microverse; she would go on to appear sporadically through Incredible Hulk #205 (1976).
Story title: 'The Brute That Shouted Love at the Heart of the Atom!' — plot by Harlan Ellison, script by Roy Thomas, pencils (layouts) by Herb Trimpe, finished art/inks by Sam Grainger, lettering by Artie Simek, edited by Stan Lee; cover art by Herb Trimpe.
First appearances also include: Jarella's Pantheon of Sorcerers (Torla, Holi, Moli), antagonist Lord Visis, the Warthos creatures, and the Pitll Pawob assassin division.
Roy Thomas embedded over 20 hidden references to Harlan Ellison short story titles — sourced from Ellison's collections Paingod and Other Delusions and The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World — throughout the dialogue and captions, and confirmed this Easter egg in the issue's own letters page.
The story continues directly from Avengers #88 (also plotted by Ellison), making this the second half of an Avengers/Hulk two-part crossover; the Avengers (Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Goliath, and the Falcon) appear in recap.
The sorcerer's spell used to teach the Hulk Jarella's language also awakens Bruce Banner's mind inside the Hulk's body — a pivotal in-story mechanism that would be revisited repeatedly in later Hulk stories exploring the Banner/Hulk duality.
Two interior pages from this issue (pages 4 and 17) were adapted as separate Third Eye black light posters in 1971 (poster numbers 4020 and 4018 respectively), placing this issue's Herb Trimpe artwork among the most widely distributed Marvel images of the early Bronze Age.
The issue has been reprinted multiple times, including in Marvel Super-Heroes #91 (September 1980), Essential Hulk Vol. 3 (2005), a 1994 JC Penney catalog exclusive reprint (identifiable by a Stridex ad on the back cover), and the Hulk: Heart of the Atom trade paperback collections (2008 and 2012).