They thought Lee and Kirby had heard scattered rumors of the Hulk, no more, and thought the rest of the details were entirely made up out of whole cloth, as most of Lee and Kirby's previous monster comics were. They didn't know that Lee and Kirby had an inside source. Certainly they didn't dream, until it was demonstrated in front of their eyes, that one of their most respected nuclear physicists was also the monster they were searching for.

In the graphical family tree of "The Amazing Lanes", Dennis Power uncovered and put in a link between Dr. Henry Jeckyll and "David" (sic) Bruce Banner. That is indeed true, and I am indebted for his research.

Dr. Henry Jeckyll was the son of Thomas and Samantha Lane of Canada. (See "The Amazing Lanes"). Samantha married an English doctor, Dr. Edward Jeckyll after Thomas' death, and Edward adopted Henry and his brother. Of course, Henry's later history is told in DR. JECKYLL AND MR. HYDE by Robert Louis Stevenson. Like his descendent, Robert Bruce Banner, through science, he had an entirely different personality and identity that metamorphosized into his original self from time to time. Dr. Jeckyll thought he had it under control, but as events proved, he didn't. That could often be said of the relationship between Banner and the Hulk. Of course, both men are great scientists.

Samantha brought some---unusual traits into the mix. Her maiden name was Moreau, and her brother was the father of the rather sinister Dr. Moreau, of H.G. Wells, THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, the vivescectionist/biologists who altered animals inot humanoid form. Yet both Dr. Jeckyll and his first cousin, Dr. Moreau inherited their genuis by an even more famous family.

Samantha's mother was Elizabeth Frankenstein, daughter of Ernst Frankenstein. Ernst, of course, was the only surviving member of the Frankenstein family, and his brother was the famous Victor Frankenstein, whose story (and that of his Creature) is told in Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN. Frankenstein was a genuis of breathtaking proportions, who in 1780 was able to understand both how body parts reject each other, and how to overcome that and animate dead tissues.

It is fitting that Bruce Banner, who was horrified at his Hulk transformation, is related to Victor Frankenstein, who was horrified at his own own monstrous creation, a victim of his own scientific experiments. Frankenstein lived a tragic life, and Bruce has his own share of tragedy, also.

Henry Jeckyll married Anne Beatrice Banner. It is said repeatedly that Harry Jeckyll had a "bad past". What that seemingly involved was some mild bondage, which Beatrice, as a duitiful and naive wife, agreed to...but then, after they had children, he suggested---no more, never went through with it.... a menage a trois with a prostitute. Horrified, she left with the children to go to America. It was that scandal that colored Jeckyll's past, but it of course paled towards the excesses that Edward Hyde, his alter-ego did, which were described as the sheerest torture, and later degenerated into murder.

Anne Beatrice Banner came from an old Scottish family. Her mother, though, was Margaret Hornblower, daughter of Jeremiah Hornblower, first cousin to the great Napoleonic naval hero, Horatio Hornblower, and it was that connection that made her "worthy" to marry the adopted son of the upper-class Edward Jeckyll. (Note the brown eyes and brown hair of Horatio, much as Bruce Banner would someday have.)

She took the children with her to visit the American Hornblowers (some of which were in New Jersey...see C. Northcote Parkinson's biography of Horatio Hornblower) and dropped her married name for herself and her children. She wanted to forget Henry Jeckyll ever existed.

Her oldest child was Henry Benton Banner. (Having a middle name which begins with "B" seems to be a family tradition.) He married a Katrina Kreuger. Katrina was the daughter of Hans Kreuger and Madeline Frankenstein, who was the daughter of Alphonse Frankenstein and Felicia Saville, who was the son of William Frankenstein and Madeline Delacroix, who was in turn the son of Ernst Frankenstein, Victor's brother. So they were distantly related. Katrina was German, of course. Henry became a medical doctor, and did post-graduate work in Hiedelberg, and it was there that he met and fell in love with Katrina. (Katrina's family estate seems to have been in Freiburg.)

Hans Kreuger was the bastard son of the 11th Baron Tennington, who was at Wold Newton, a son he fathered on a trip to Europe.

Katrina had three siblings. One was to later become infamous during the First World War, Herr Doktor Kreuger, the most unrelenting enemy of G-8, the american spy and flying ace...her only brother. He was small, pale, and dwarfish. Her two sisters were also married. One married a pharmacist named Sivana, and their child was Thaddeus Bodog Sivana, the greatest enemy of Captain Marvel. Can anyone doubt that Dr. Kreuger, described as,

"a small, wiry man, like a half-starved schoolboy. His lips did not meet and between them showed large, irregular, tusk-like teeth. His forehead was huge and fire seemed to dart from his tiny eyes. He wore very thick glasses and spoke in a high pitched voice."(You can see an artist's rendition above.)

...is related to this man, also a brillant, but insane, scientist?

I rest my case.

The two of them are obviously related, in fact uncle and nephew.

Sivana was one of the most brillant and promising young scientists in Europe around the turn of the century. Bursting with ideas to improve the lot of mankind, Sivana was driven from country to country by men who called his dreams impractical and his science a fake. Penniless, he escaped with his young children to---somewhere, although I won't commit myself where---and returned, his once-magnificent brain warped with dreadful schemes for revenge on a world that would have none of him.

(Supposedly he colonized and became ruler of Venus. Given that the Venus shown there matches nothing about the Venus shown by space probes, I think we must reject that idea. I suspect instead he set up sections of the vast Amazon jungle for his experiments in genetically altering animals, and then fooled everyone, including his own children, about where they really were.)

Dr. Krueger, when a young student, had an affair with a gypsy woman named Esmeralda. (Esmeralda claimed to be descended from the family that had the gypsy Esmeralda in Victor Hugo's THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME,and she claimed her father told Hugo the story.) Their daughter, Cynthia, he taught in the scientific arts, though he wouldn't legitimitize her. She in turn married Werner Von Doom, a gypsy healer/doctor.

Her son was Victor Von Doom, a humble gypsy. Cynthia was executed as a sorceress and a witch by her superstitious peers. Victor grew up to become a brillant man, but was embittered when Werner Von Doom also died, injustly.

He won a scholarship to an American university, and there met Reed Richards and Ben Grimm. (See below.) When attempting an experiment, an explosion happened, and his face came out horribly scarred. He left the university and stayed for years in Tibet, eventually forging a suit of armor that was also an exoskeleton with numerous devices. He was also to prove himself a master of inventing lifelike robots and a time platform to travel through time.

In "Champion of Catastrophes", Scott Koeller made the case for Victor Von Doom being the son of, not Werner Von Doom, but Fu Manchu. (Unfortunately, he states that Victor's eyes were grey, which was predominent in the Greystoke family from which Fu Manchu sprung, but MARVEL UNIVERSE states categorically that they were brown, as Bruce and Reed Richards' were.)

Others have tried to speculate that Dr. Doom is the son of Nathanial Richards, Reed Richards' father.

I myself suspect there is a relationship between Victor von Doom and Fu Manchu, but that the by-blow of Fu Manchu was WERNER von Doom, when he studied in Hiedelberg. After all, Fu Manchu was born in 1840, and Victor was born in 1920 or thereabouts. There would be plenty of time for Fu Manchu to father Werner. I suspect Koeller came across evidence for a relationship between Doom and Fu Manchu but misinterpreted the partial evidence. Yet that's just a theory.

He later conquered a small country, and behind the scenes, was its absolute monarch. He became justly feared under the name of...Doctor Doom.

Another sister of Herr Dokter Kreuger and Katrina married a Russian, named Zharkov. Their son, Dr. Hans Zharkov was a brillant expert in the field of rocketry. He moved to America, smuggled out of Russia after the Communist Revolution there by an American intelligence operative named Allard. His sister accompanied him.

During the decade between the ending of GLADIATOR and his starting his career as the oddly-costumed Superman, Clark Kent/Hugo Danner took the remnents of his rocket, a product of an alien culture, to Zharkov and told him as much as he dared about his origins. (He did something similar to Abraham Erskine about examining him medically.) With the hints gleaned from examining the alien rocket, Zharkov was able to progress decades, maybe centuries in advance of the leading scientists in his day in the field of rocket propulsion. The strain of it all---of glimpsing secrets from an alien culture---drove him a little mad, at least at the time of the "rogue planet" scare which Alex Raymond wrote about/exaggerated in the comic strip Flash Gordon. He kidnapped "Flash" Gordon and Dale Arden when they crashlanded near his isolated laboratory, and took them on a trip in the rocket he designed to the rogue planet Mongo. (Evidently there was some sort of radio communication between Zharkov and his lab on Earth, which is how Raymond learned what was transpiring. Eventually, though, they faded out of range, even by Zharkov's equipment, and the eventual fate of Flash, Dale, and Dr. Zharkov is not known.)

Zharkov's sister married an American scientist/millionaire named Nathaniel Richards. Among his sons was the brillant Reed Richards. Reed Richards, like Zharkov, was a wide-ranging intellect who initially specialized in rocket design. Indeed, he found some of his uncle's notes at the remains of Zharkov's laboratory, and wondered how his uncle could have been so far advanced beyond his time. Reed served in the O.S.S. during World War II upon graduating from college, then returned to his first love, science.

Taking the notes he built his own designs for a more modern rocket, and took them to the government. However, unlike Zharkov, he didn't realize how intense the radiations from the strange engine (based ultimately on Kryptonian science) and didn't shield the ship internally enough. When the government stalled about sending the ship up, Richards decided to prove how safe it was---by taking it up with his best friend, the pilot Ben Grimm, his fiance Sue Storm, and even her young brother, Johnny Storm. Unlike most rockets, this one could be controlled entirely from within, without any need of a "Ground Control"...and if the two civilians, Sue and Johnny, were safe, it would prove Reed's point.

I surmise Richards also suspected another motive for the authorities stalling. His mother was Russian by birth, and he might have been viewed with suspicion by many of the authorities, in the height of the Cold War.

The everpresent cosmic rays in outer space mixed with the unique radiations to the ship to make a truly different combination. The radiations affected each of these early astronauts differently. Reed, for instance, became pliable, able to stretch for enormous distances. His abilities became similar to the former criminal, later FBI man, "Eel" O'Brien/Plastic Man, the adventurer of the Forties. Reed and the other three, after they crashlanded, decided to form a group of adventurers called the Fantastic Four. (Reed's brillant mind was actually more of a help in their adventures than his ability to stretch.) The "Fantastic Four" later made a deal with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to publish comic book adventures of their experiences, and gave permission for embellishments to fit the format. He and Bruce met several times, both as Bruce Banner and as the Hulk.

It's worth noting that both were fairly skinny men with brown hair, brown eyes, and brillant minds. Indeed, Reed...sometimes known as "Mr. Fantastic"--had a mind in bredth and scope unmatched save by Dr. Clark Savage, Dr. Fu Manchu and...his greatest enemy, the ruler of Latveria. Reed was older than Bruce, Reed being born circa 1920, whereas Bruce was born circa 1937.

His wide-ranging brillance was aided with numerous contacts with alien cultures, such as the Watchers, the Skrulls, the Kree, and others...all of whose devices he examined and got clues on advanced technology--- that eventually enabled him to make devices decades or centuries ahead of his time.

Below is the first meeting between the two scientists.

It may have been the influx of the brillant-but-not-always-quite-there Kreuger family, or of Henry Jeckyll's genes, but Henry Benton Banner's son, William Burns Banner, was to grow up to be an abusive husband and father. He married Francine Xavier, the daughter of a Westchester County teacher named Brian Xavier. Xavier's family had been there for generations, descended from a Dutch seafaring ancestor who had claimed that land in the late 1600s. They also were derived from the same Spanish family that produced the saint, Francis Xavier (1506-1552)...a cousin of the Saint's settled in the Netherlands, and from there a member of the family settled in America.

Brian Xavier, had a son, Franklin Xavier, who in turn fathered another Brian Xavier. Brian Xavier was a nuclear physicist who worked on the first atomic bomb project. As we will see, he worked with his first cousin, Bruce's father. He fathered a child, Charles Francis Xavier, and then died in 1945 in an atomic bomb test shortly after World War II...in a chilling echo of what would later happen to Bruce Banner.

Charles Xavier was a mutant, a telepath who could read minds and in turn control them. (Xavier was born about 1933, and fought in the Korean war.) Crippled by an accident, in the sixties he formed "Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters", to train those who are born mutants in the use of their abilities. These became known as the X-Men.

Xavier implied that he got his abilities as a result of his parents' exposure to radiation. That was a half-truth. Though that might have aided the process, the truth is that he was inclined that way...through his mother.

The woman Stan Lee called "Sharon Xavier", Professor Xavier's mother, was actually an Englishwoman. Her full name was Anne Sharon Wainwright Xavier, and she was the son of Dr. Thomas Wainwright and Inga, a Swedish woman, and sibling to Tom, an architect, and the very "odd" John Wainwright.

Inga was the sister of Sven Nelson, father of Kent Nelson. Sven Nelson's mother was Inga Stjarnhelm, sister to Sven Stjarnhelm, who was Matt Helm's grandfather.

Odd John---whose life was chronicled by Olaf Stapledon---was a mutant who was the next stage in human evolution, with an intellect as far beyond ours as ours is from an ape's, with limited telepathic powers and other abilities. The telepathic ability seemed to have been magnified in his nephew, Professor Xavier, and the brillance was a bit more muted, but still wonderful, in his more normal-appearing nephew.

"Odd John" formed a colony of his kind, free from humans...and the entire colony of superhumans were destroyed by the Great Powers in a bombing raid, in 1928. It may be the memory of his uncle's tragic demise, and the death of practically all those who were the next step in evolution, that caused him to gather all those who were genetically different under his wing, to learn how to coexist with normal humans.

(Even so, some genetically gifted beings escaped Professor Charles Xavier's scrutiny. One can think of the homo gestalt combination-being chronicled in Theodore Sturgeon's MORE THAN HUMAN, or the tragic telekinetic Carrie White in Stephen King's CARRIE, or the pyrokinetic girl, Charlie McGee, in Stephen King's FIRESTARTER. The modern changes in environment is seemingly making more possible ways for human beings to vary outside the norm...)

William Burns Banner caused his own son to hate him, in his abuse, and to vow never to have children. To escape the suspicions of his in-laws, Burns Banner moved his family away from New York State to Ohio, where he became a chemist for the Goodrich rubber plant in Akron.

William Burns Banner's son was named David Brian Banner. (Much of these details are given, not by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, but by Peter David. It remains eminently plausible though, and is the only information we have on Bruce's parents.) As a child, Brian, along with his mother, was subjected to intense psychological and--- possibly--- physical abuse from his father. Brian felt his father was a monster and was afraid that he had inherited the monster gene also and had no plans to have any more children so that he would not have the possibility of doing to his children what his father did to him.

During college, Brian met and married his future wife Rebecca who was anxious to start a family. Brian never shared his personal history with her or of his desire to never have children. He was the youngest person to graduate from his college with a Ph.D. and he got his degree in physics. His post-graduate options were unlimited but he settled on going to Los Alamos to work on a government project to find a source for clean nuclear radiation.(He evidently worked with his first cousin, Brian Xavier.) That's according to Peter David, but that's obviously wrong. Los Alamos wasn't opened till 1943, and Bruce Banner was a nuclear physicist in 1962, and would, at a bare minimum, have to be 25 years old.

The stress of the job led Brian to start drinking which also led him to become more erratic and quick to anger with Rebecca and his fellow employees. After one night of excessive drinking, Brian tried to work on his project and accidently caused an overload of the equipment. Brian was court-martialed and released from the project. Even though he was behind a shield when the overload occurred and multiple doctors examined him and found nothing, Brian still felt that some amount of radiation go through and affected his genetic structure and was even more convinced not to have any children. Brian eventually found a job and started to try and pull his life together when Rebecca announced that she was pregnant.

Again, that's the timeline according to Peter David. The real truth seems to be that Brian worked with some physicists, pre-atom bomb, on radioactive substances. Later, after Bruce was born, in fact when Bruce was at least five, he got the job at Los Alamos, with his cousin, Brian Xavier. It was there that the accident happened, and he was dismissed then, circa 1945, when Bruce was about seven.

Rebecca had problems during the pregnancy of an unknown nature. After the birth in Dayton, Ohio, Bruce was kept in extensive care for observation and examination but the doctor's found nothing out of the ordinary. He was also examined for any trace radiation due to Brian's exposure but none was detected. Brian, still thinking that something was wrong with Bruce, would try to spend at little as time as possible with him. (He evidently had in mind the Curies' death from lukehemia, aided by their exposure to radium.) When Brian and Rebecca would go away, they would leave Bruce with a nanny who showed no affection or attention towards Bruce.

One Christmas morning, when Bruce was roughly four years old, he woke up early and snuck down to the Chrismtas tree. He opened one of his presents, which was an erector set. He managed to put together a very intricate structure in a very little time. Brian came down and smashed the structure, saying that Bruce was a freak and that someone his age should not be able to do that. He thought that the radiation had altered Bruce's brain, making him inhumanly brillant, and would have probably killed Bruce had Rebecca not come into the room at that moment. Rebecca tried to get in the way and Brian hit her. When Bruce tried to run to his mother, Brian hit him also. Brian looked at Bruce and called him a inhuman monster. It was finally now that Brian admitted he never wanted a child.

A few years later, after much physical and mental abuse to both Rebecca and Bruce, Rebecca packed her suitcases and tried to leave with Bruce. Brian caught them at the car before they left and struggled with Rebecca. Bruce yells to his father to let his mother go and that he will be good but Brian threw Rebecca to the ground, killing her. Bruce runs to her side and just sat there beside her lifeless body.

During the resulting trial for Rebecca's death, Bruce tried to cover for his father but Brian was overheard gloating over the fact that he had forced his son into lying for him. Brian was sentenced to a mental institution and as he was taken away, he yelled at the young Bruce that he would get him for this.

Brian's sister, Elaine, went to Los Angeles where she married sheriff Morris Walters. Their daughter, Jennifer Walters, was five years Bruce's junior, but would sometimes spend summers with the Banners until, of course, Rebecca got killed. Jennifer and Bruce felt almost like brother and sister. (Jennifer could have been born no later than 1942, then.)

Jennifer became an attorney in the Los Angeles area, and unfortunately got involved in a shootout, while Bruce was visiting/on the run. Bruce gave her a transfusion...it was the only way to save her life...and in the process, created a more intelligent monster, the She-Hulk. Jennifer was luckier than Bruce, for her transformation was voluntary and she kept all her original intelligence. Originally her story was chronicled by Stan Lee (but of course!) and John Buscema. Later she worked with the Fantastic Four (and the Avengers) and had a romantic relationship with the second Human Torch's friend, Wyatt Wingfoot.

Bruce was sent to live with his mother's sister, Mrs. Drake. Bruce went on to attend a science magnet high school, and then attended Desert State University at Navapo, New Mexico---went to a medical college for a year or two--and then did postgraduate work in the California Institute of Technology.

After graduation, Bruce pitched the idea of a gamma bomb to General "Thunderbolt" Ross which would destroy metal, bricks, etc but leave people alive. After giving his pitch, Bruce was notified that his father was being released from the mental hospital after fifteen years.

Bruce talked to the doctors but they felt he was ready to rejoin society. Bruce let his father stay with him for a short amount of time and Bruce admitted freely that he thought his father was still disturbed. Brian broke down and blurbed out the fact that his father had done things to him but it was obvious Brian Banner was up to something. Brian was acting stranger and stranger and Bruce said he should maybe check himself back in for more therapy. Brian shouted that maybe he had gotten better in the mental hospital because he was away from Bruce.

Bruce just walked away and went to his mother's burial site because it was the anniversary of her death. Brian followed him there and started talking again about how Bruce was evil. They got into an argument which let to a physical confrontation. Bruce was on the ground and Brian was about to jump on him when Bruce pushed him back with his foot. Brian stumbled back and cracked his neck on the Rebecca's gravestone.

Bruce went on to work at a nuclear research facility at Desert Base in New Mexico to work on the Gamma Bomb in conjunction with the government. The rest, as they say, is history. It's noteworthy that though he did develop the gamma bomb, he also developed many other devices to protect people in the case of nuclear attack. Project 34 would have blanketed a city with "electro-magnetic waves" which would make any US city invulnerable to enemy missiles or rockets. (Sounds rather like a force field of some kind.) He developed a robot---actually, a ten-ton exoskeletal suit which someone would "wear" a la Iron Man, although much more ponderous and resistant to harm---which would enable someone to observe and study an atom bomb blast close hand, without being harmed. His greatest device might be the Absorbatron, built to somehow absorb the impact of an atom bomb blast, making it the perfect defense against atomic attack.

Unfortunately, attacks by the Hulk and the Hulk's foes often rendered these brillant innovations into so much scrap metal.

Bruce's parents were Brian and Rebecca Banner. Rebecca was a loving woman who loved a large family. After all, she came from a large one, with at least three siblings.

Rebecca's maiden name was Vincent. Her family hailed from Chillicothe, Ohio, and her brother was Harry Vincent, who travelled to New York City to make a name for himself during the Great Depression, got a "dear John" letter from his girl back home, and with that, and his failure to make something of himself, tried to commit suicide. He was saved by the Shadow/Kent Allard, and became the Shadow's primary agent. His loyalty and his bravery were amazing, even when he wasn't sure of what were the Shadow's plans. No other agent was used as much.

Harry and Rebecca's sister, Jackqueline, married a man from the West Coast named Martin H. Jordan, and she had three sons---Jack, Hal, and James. Martin H. Jordan was a test pilot for an aircraft company, and his middle son, Hal, would someday see his father die in a plane crash. Jack became a respected district attorney. James became a reporter. Hal became...

Well...

A respected test pilot...and the second Green Lantern.

Hal Jordan worked for Ferris Aircraft as a test pilot, when a green glow surrounded his flight simulator, and dragged him deep into the desert...where he found a crashed spacecraft. Hal was as close to being completely fearless as it is possible for a human to be and still be human. There he encountered Abin Sur, a dying alien member of the Green Lantern Corps, a group of interstellar champions of justice granted a magnificent ring that could accomplish almost anything the wearer thought of, which reported to the Guardians of the planet Oa.

Jordan was one of the early line-up of the Justice League of America, and fought for justice for years. His adventures were originally chronicled by John Broome and Gil Kane. He has evidently died, but I'm trying to sort out truth from fiction in how he died. Like Bruce Banner he had brown eyes and brown hair, but he was much more a military type than Bruce was.

(A word about the Justice League of America, and other super-teams, especially since Bruce Banner/The Hulk was the cause of another rival super-team being formed, the Avengers. The original super-team, the Justice Society of America, was formed by FDR, and acted much as the FBI did, protecting America via various extraordinarily powered individuals, usually within our shores. It was dissolved lest Joe McCarthy investigate it too thoroughly in the fifties. The Justice LEAGUE of America, however, seems to have been, despite the name, a division of specially-powered peacekeepers under the UN's direction. Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman joined the new group after the Society was disbanded. The Avengers, thanks to the connections of Tony Stark, was more like the CIA--working under the National Security Council, and doing jobs that ordinary government operatives couldn't. Of course, all three groups' acitivities were much more cladestine than the comics hinted at.)

Hal Jordan's aunt, Elsie Jordan, married a New York City native named Daniel Grimm after World War I. Some would say it was a horrible match. Daniel proved to be an alchoholic who couldn't hold a job, and they lived on New York City's lower East Side. Elsie Jordan Grimm was too proud to ask for help from any relatives though. They mainly supported themselves through the illegal activities of her older son, Daniel Grimm Jr., head of the Yancy Street Gang.

Daniel died in a gang fight. Benjamin Grimm, the younger son, remained. (Benjamin was born about 1920.) After both of his parents died in poverty, Jake Grimm, Daniel's brother, took him in. Jake had worked his way out of poverty and became a doctor. (The Grimm family was descended from a cousin of the two Grimm brothers, who collected Grimm's fairy tales...but in the immigration to America fallen on hard times.)

Ben Grimm crawled out of poverty to earn a football scholarship, where he met both Reed Richards and Victor Von Doom in college. Like his younger cousin Hal Jordan, he become a fighter pilot (during World War II, Hal flew in the Korean war) and later a test pilot.

It was he who piloted Reed Richards' rocket, and it was he who turned into the Thing, a Hulk-like monster...save that Ben Grimm didn't change back, and his intelligence stayed the same. His adventures were, of course, originally chronicled by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Ben shares many qualities in common with his first cousin, Hal Jordan---a general fearlessness and flying ability...despite being more lowbrow and having blue eyes. He is not a direct relative of Bruce Banner, but the Hulk and the Thing clashed many times, and although the Thing was not quite as strong as the Hulk, his fighting skill made it a close match, several times.

It's worth noting that Martin H. Jordan and Elsie's mother (other siblings were Titus and Jeremiah) was a Martin, and he was named for his mother's family. She was also the aunt of Bull Martin, G-8's assistant, a crack flying ace in World War I---and, like Ben, a well-muscled and sometimes pugnacious man who was an excellent football player. There was a definite a family resemblence there...Bull Martin, Martin H. Jordan and Elsie Grimm were all first cousins.

At one point Bull Martin mentioned his kid brother. One wonders if that was the Smilin' Jack Martin of Zack Mosley's comic strip, or whether Smilin' Jack was just a cousin. (Thanks to Mark Brown for the suggestion.)

To return to Ohio: a fourth sibling of the Vincents, Francine, married a Drake. It was she who raised Bruce after the death of his mother.

Rebecca's mother was Anna Goodwin, aunt to Archie Goodwin, Nero Wolfe's right-hand man. He once mentioned her as making "wonderful chicken pies". Archie Goodwin, born in 1912, gave several accounts of his life, all contradictory, but all agree he was born in Ohio. He also has the brown hair and brown eyes that he shared with his first cousin Rebecca's son, Bruce Banner.

In many ways, Archie Goodwin and Bruce Banner are exact opposites in personality....but his sometimes pugnacious and aggressive personality can be found in Bruce's "Grey Hulk" persona. Certainly there is a similarity between Archie and his first cousin, Harry Vincent, who were both extremely resourceful doing tasks for their brillant employers or masters. (Hal Jordan, for years, had much the same attitude towards the Guardians of Oa.) Bruce Banner shared that resourcefulness, at least.

Bruce tried to serve "Thunderbolt" Ross well, but Ross' temper kept on getting in the way.

Harry Vincent's father, George Vincent, Anna Goodwin's husband, was a local engineer of some reknown, as well as a part-time inventor.

George Vincent's father, Andrew Vincent, was a local doctor. Dr. Andrew Vincent married Henrietta McKenzie, an immigrant from Scotland. Her mother was Jennifer Bond of Glencoe. Her aunt was Ella MacKenzie, a Scotswoman who married a Englishman named Watson, and her first cousin was John H. Watson, Sherlock Holmes friend, companion in adventure, and biographer. Ella had a brother who fled Scotland for America for getting into a drunken brawl where he nearly killed a man, and he was afraid he might get jailed for it. Henrietta came with him.

Between the Scottish blood in the Banners and that in the Vincents, descended from the McKenzies, it was no wonder that Brian and Rebecca named their child Robert Bruce Banner, after the Scottish king, Robert Bruce. (Bruce Wayne was similarly named for Robert Bruce for the same reason, although they were not any close relation.)

Henrietta's brother, Colin MacKenzie, had a son named Leonard MacKenzie, who became a captain in the U.S. Navy. Just after World War I, he commanded the icebreaker ORACLE, sweeping the Antartic seas of too many icebergs that were endangering ships. Unfortunately, he disturbed more than he knew....

Some hominids returned to the sea, as did the whale and the porpoise, in prehistory. Yet they evolved into a truly sea-breathing race. I suspect they were aided---or were the experiments---of the monstrous sea-breathing froglike race which also could intermarry with humans, as shown in the "Shadow out of Innsmouth". (Which means they were originally homonids too, save with gills and froglike features...)

These blue-skinned water-breathing homonids had built their own civilization beneath the Antarctic seas. A Princess Fen of their race investigated the explosions that were rocking her kingdom, and was captured by the ORACLE's crew. She grew to love Captain MacKenzie (she normally could not breathe air, but a special chemical gave her the ability to breathe it for five hours at a time) and they married.

The Princess' father, the Emperor of that kingdom, mounted an attack, not knowing what had happened to his daughter. In the ensuing battle, most of the humans were killed.

Fen and Leonard McKenzie had a child, though---raised as a prince among their race, despite his caucasian-pink skin and his ability to breathe in air as well as water. He also had a hybrid vigor that gave him great strength and some other strange mutations. Namor was as bitter and antisocial as the Hulk would someday be, at least towards humans, and led several attacks against humanity in the late thirties. Then, when Hitler threatened his people too, he joined the Allies in battling the Axis powers.

His adventures were originally chronicled by Bill Everett. He would meet with the Hulk several times, as shown below.

Andrew Vincent's father was Jonathan Vincent, a carpenter. Jonathan Vincent's wife was named Jeanne Pontmercy, a Frenchwoman. She was the daughter of Marius and Cossette Pontmercy. Cossette's father was the unfortunate Jean Valjean, who was sentenced to nineteen years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread, and lived the life of a fugitive, always on the run, for years and years, much as his descendent Bruce Banner would. Marius, Cossette's, and Jean Valjean's story was told by Victor Hugo in the immortal LES MISERABLES.

So all in all, Bruce Banner had a truly remarkable family, a perfect family for the world's mightiest---yet most misunderstood--monster....and one of the most tragic persons of all time.

PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES:

"The Amazing Lanes" about the Lane family, by Win Eckert.

The Amazing Lane Family Tree in graphical form, where Dennis Power puts in graphical form adds a few members to that family---which indicates Henry Jeckyll was an ancestor of "David Bruce Banner".

"Champion of Catastrophes", by Scott Koeller.

"The House of Frankenstein" by Mark Brown.

Of course, also TARZAN ALIVE and DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE by Philip Jose Farmer.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HORATIO HORNBLOWER by C. Northcote Parkinson.

Those interested with comments, suggestions, things I have forgotten, things I messed up, contact me at...
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Speculations Copyright © Al Schroeder. "The Hulk", of course, is currently owned by Marvel Comics Group. All other characters copyrighted by their respective owners.