Bad guys still won’t like him when he’s angry, but the Hulk is changing up things as part of the All-New All-Different Marvel initiative, which essentially reboots more than 50 of the company’s titles with an eye to adding racial diversity to the lineup.
In the newest incarnation of the Hulk, called “Totally Awesome Hulk,” the green guy’s alter ego will be Amadeus Cho, a 19-year-old Korean-American genius. Longtime readers will remember that he first appeared in 2006’s “Amazing Fantasy” series and that the original Hulk himself once saved and befriended him in the “Incredible Hulk” comic.
The new comic, which is scheduled for a December release, will be written and illustrated by Greg Pak and Frank Cho, respectively. Both men are Korean-American, making this series a landmark one for Marvel.
“The character always meant a huge amount to me. When I had the opportunity to create this new character, I realized there aren’t specifically that many Asian-American characters at this time in the Marvel Universe, and it was sort of a niche,” said Pak, who created Amadeus Cho nearly a decade ago, told Entertainment Weekly. “The other thing is that this felt like a natural next step for both the Amadeus and the Hulk stories. It wasn’t what we imagined 10 years ago when we created the character, that this is exactly where he would end up. But just given the character’s history, it makes total sense. And the story is totally true for both the Hulk story and the Amadeus story, so it’s a lot of fun when those kinds of things can naturally come together for something this big.”
Marvel editor in chief Axel Alonso also weighed in on how he selected the team and just how powerful Cho will be. “Frank [Cho] is extremely selective about what he does, and I called him with total confidence that he would jump on this,” he said. “I know he loves Amadeus Cho, I know he loves Hulk, and he’s Korean, and I think that one of the things that’s going to be special about it is that in Greg, Frank and [colorist] Sonia Oback, you have three creators who are working on what I would consider to be most high-profile Asian-American superhero you’ve seen. Come December, arguably the strongest character in the Marvel Universe is going to be Asian-American.”