What If (1977 series) #45

The Incredible Hulk #1: Bruce Banner cannot throw Rick Jones in time into the protective trench when the gamma bomb exploded. Both get bombarded, resulting in a link between the two. Banner became the Hulk, while they treated Rick for radiation poisoning.

General Thunderbolt Ross eventually discovered the link between Hulk and Jones. He tortured Rick with non-fatal electric shocks to defeat the Hulk. Glenn Talbot disagreed with the tactic. Hulk felt the pain and arrived to destroy the army base. Rick dies, and Hulk became homicidal.

Desperately, Ross summons the Fantastic Four and Jade Jaws kills the Thing and the Human Torch. Iron-Man and Thor battle the Hulk, with Stark getting killed. Hulk then turned his attention on the god of thunder, whose mystic mallet Mjolnir had fallen from his hands. Before turning into his human self, Thor killed the Hulk by snapping the Hulk’s neck.

To allow Banner a peaceful afterlife, Thor took him to Valhalla, the afterworld for the honored fighters who are dead.

And Ross and Talbot turn themselves into the authorities for the murder of Rick Jones.

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