Tales to Astonish #96
In "Somewhere Stands... Skull Island!", Bruce Banner finds himself trapped in the High Evolutionary’s lab, on the brink of a forced transformation. As the New Men launch a desperate assault to stop the experiment, Banner unleashes the Hulk—only to face his own creators in a brutal clash. Written by Stan Lee and illustrated with dynamic flair by Marie Severin and Herb Trimpe, this 1967 issue sees the Evolutionary make a final, radical choice: evolving himself into a being beyond time, unraveling his creations and dissolving into cosmic consciousness. The Hulk returns to Earth, haunted by fragmented memories and the weight of his fate. The cover by Dan Adkins captures the eerie, otherworldly tension of the tale.
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With Banner trapped and about to be evolved by the High Evolutionary, the New Men attack and stop the experiment. Banner becomes the Hulk and fights the New Men. The Evolutionary, realizing he's dying, decides that the only way to stop his former creations is to do to himself what he planned on doing to Banner--evolving himself a thousand years into humanity's future. He does so and becomes a transcendent being who devolves his New Men back into animals before melting into cosmic consciousness. Hulk, returned to Earth, has apparently lost his recent memory, and continues to bemoan his fate.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).