The Incredible Hulk #227
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeThe Incredible Hulk #227, titled 'The Monster's Analyst,' marks a pivotal conceptual turning point in the character's history: it is the issue in which Doc Samson's psychiatric examination formally establishes that Banner and the Hulk are not merely the same person with a physical affliction, but two genuinely distinct personalities — a framework the Wikipedia article on the Hulk describes as rooting the split in dissociative identity disorder rather than gamma mutation alone. It is also the first time Bruce Banner's childhood is depicted in any detail within the main title, a biographical excavation that would later be expanded by Bill Mantlo into the landmark child-abuse storyline a hundred issues later. By reframing the Hulk's rage as a product of psychological trauma rather than pure radioactive accident, this issue planted the seed for every serious literary treatment of the character that followed, from Mantlo through Peter David's acclaimed run. Narratively it also serves as a conscious course-correction by the new creative team, moving the title away from the comparatively gentle 'cuddly Hulk' era toward a monster with genuine menace.
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Roger Stern had taken over as writer beginning around issue #218, succeeding Len Wein, with #227 falling squarely in his tenure; Peter Gillis co-wrote the issue under an unusual collaborative arrangement in which, as Gillis later described to journalist Frank Lovece in 2021, Stern plotted the story partly from discussions the two had shared, Gillis then scripted it, and Stern rewrote portions of the script. Both writers had explicitly discussed a shared editorial ambition: to push the Hulk away from the warmer, folksy characterization associated with Len Wein and Steve Gerber and toward a character who felt genuinely threatening. Penciller Sal Buscema, who had been the regular artist since issue #194 and would remain so for over a decade, provided the interiors, while the cover was by Herb Trimpe and Joe Rubinstein; Bob Hall served as editor under Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter.
Trivia · 9 facts
- Title: 'The Monster's Analyst' — released June 20, 1978, with a September 1978 cover date.
- Written by Roger Stern (plot) and Peter Gillis (script, with Stern rewrites); penciled by Sal Buscema; inked by Klaus Janson; colored by Glynis Oliver (Wein); lettered by John Costanza; edited by Bob Hall under EIC Jim Shooter.
- The story is the first time Bruce Banner's early life — infancy and bullied high-school years — is depicted in flashback within the main series title, more than a decade after the character's 1962 debut.
- Doc Samson's psychological analysis in this issue formally establishes that the Hulk and Banner are two separate and distinct personalities sharing one body — a conceptual foundation Wikipedia's Hulk article identifies as the origin of the dissociative identity disorder (DID) reading that would define the character for decades.
- The issue directly sets up the Stern–Gillis creative mandate to reposition the Hulk as a genuinely monstrous, dangerous figure, explicitly departing from the gentler Len Wein-era characterization.
- The story continues into Incredible Hulk Annual #7 (October 1978), per the Grand Comics Database.
- The issue was reprinted internationally at least eleven times, including in Marvel UK's The Mighty World of Marvel #315–316 (1978), an Italian edition (L'Uomo Ragno #271, 1980), a Norwegian edition (Hulk #10/1981), a Spanish edition (Hulk el Hombre Increíble #80, 1983), and the Ideals Publishing hardcover The Incredible Hulk: The Secret Story of Marvel's Gamma-Powered Goliath (1981).
- The issue was later collected in Essential Hulk Vol. 7 and Marvel Masterworks: The Incredible Hulk Vol. 14 (2020), as well as Incredible Hulk Epic Collection Vol. 9: Kill or Be Killed (2024).
- A Whitman variant edition of this issue exists, published simultaneously with the regular Marvel Comics Group edition.
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