Warning: contains spoilers for The Immortal Hulk #45!
The Hulk‘s longstanding “Joe Fixit” persona (aka the Grey Hulk, or more recently “Sunshine Joe”) has gone through some major changes lately. Originally, “Joe” was one of Bruce Banner’s alternate Hulk personalities and manifested as an intelligent but corrupt grey-skinned version of the Hulk. More recently, he gained a human, Banner-like form that was weaker than his original body but allowed him to be stealthier. In The Immortal Hulk #45, Joe changed again – becoming a new version of the Red Hulk who merged with the Savage Green Hulk to become a powerful hybrid monstrosity.
However, Joe’s greatest changes have occurred in his personality and his relationship with the Green Hulk. Although Joe now sees himself as the Green Hulk’s caretaker and guardian, there was a time in his life when he viewed the Green Hulk as his worst enemy!
The Original Hulk
Although the Savage Green Hulk is the most popular version of the Incredible Hulk, when Banner first transformed in The Incredible Hulk #1, he turned into the Grey Hulk. The change also occurred at sundown (the trigger for Joe Fixit’s transformations) and did not require Bruce to get angry or even stressed. In later appearances, it’s also revealed that sunlight can hurt this Hulk’s grey skin.
When the Grey Hulk first emerges, he’s intelligent but brutish, telling Rick Jones that now that he has such incredible power, he can take over the world. By The Incredible Hulk #2, however, the Hulk became green (thanks to a real-world printing problem that made his grey skin tone impossible to get consistent). While he initially remained intelligent, his personality continued going through major changes until he settled into the savage, childlike Hulk most people know.
Joe Fixit
The Grey Hulk would re-emerge years later after a botched experiment by Doc Samson caused Joe’s personality to become dominant. Once again, the Hulk began transforming at nightfall and displayed his crueler, more conniving personality. However, compared to the Savage Green Hulk, the Grey Hulk was less powerful. He started at a lower power base and got stronger at a slower rate than his savage counterpart. On the other hand, his healing powers were extraordinary, and he recovered from a fight with Wolverine at a phenomenal rate.
This Hulk also used his greater brainpower to become a Las Vegas enforcer and took on the name “Joe Fixit” (an alias given to him by his boss who named him after his favorite “big monkey” movie Mighty Joe Young). While he was happy living a hedonistic life, circumstances later forced him to abandon it and continue his antagonistic relationship with Bruce Banner as they switched back and forth every day and night.
Rivalry with the Green Hulk
Joe also developed an extreme hatred of the Savage Green Hulk, although this manifested gradually as he became more of his own person. Early on, Joe had a conversation with Ben Grimm (aka the Thing) in a bar where he accuses Ben of attacking him back when they first met. This indicates that Joe could access the Green Hulk’s memories and did not initially differentiate himself from the other Hulk.
A few issues later, however, Joe became furious when one of his villains, the Blob, claimed he wasn’t as strong as his former green alter ego. Enraged, Joe shouted, “I hate it when I’m compared to him!” and proceeded to mercilessly beat up the Blob. Later, Joe encountered a locked door in his mental landscape that both Banner and he had erected to block out the Green Hulk. Banner eventually opened the door and Joe was forced to come up with increasingly creative ways to keep the Green Hulk from getting out.
Furious that he had been locked away for so long, the Green Hulk called Joe “fake Hulk” and expressed a desire to kill him. Joe eventually opened the door himself and fought the savage Hulk. This resulted in a shocking transformation where Banner’s body mutated into a Green-Grey Hulk that ran amok and even tried to strangle itself. Fortunately, Banner was able to knock out both Hulks and end the murder/suicide.
Joe and the Green Hulk appeared to arrive at a form of understanding when Doc Samson got the two to merge their essences with Banner, creating “Professor Hulk.” While this seemingly destroyed the Green Hulk and Joe, their personalities actually remained buried in Banner’s psyche, and they continued to manifest physically.
A Change of Body and Heart
For a long time, Joe appeared sporadically in both Banner’s mind and the real world, but for the most part he remained inactive. Interestingly, he spent quite a bit of time with the other Hulk personas, including the Green Hulk, but did not seem to antagonize him anymore. In one storyline, he also remarked that time spent in Banner’s mind could feel like several years while much shorter spans of time passed in the real world. This, oddly enough, could have allowed the Grey Hulk to evolve and grow beyond his original corrupt persona.
Indeed, when Joe made his next major appearance in The Immortal Hulk, he was greatly changed. Instead of manifesting in his usual grey-skinned form, he now had a human body similar to Bruce Banner, albeit with a sleazier look. Still a pleasure-seeking miscreant, Joe took advantage of his new look to live a more covert criminal life, picking people’s pockets and embarking on multiple illicit schemes. While he wasn’t superhumanly strong anymore, he did have one new advantage — he could exist during the daytime and wasn’t bothered by the sun, inspiring his new nickname “Sunshine Joe.”
However, Joe’s greatest change was his relationship with the Savage Green Hulk. Where before Joe saw this Hulk as his main rival, he now found himself feeling very protective of the Hulk. He recognized this Hulk persona was a scared child and regularly yelled at superheroes like the Thing who got into fights with him. Later, when Banner left the group consciousness and the green Hulk lost much of his strength and body mass, Joe took it on himself to take care of his other self by letting the Hulk hide behind Joe’s human persona.
This is in sharp contrast not only to Joe’s prior relationship with the Green Hulk but also the usual Hulk/Banner relationship. Where before Hulk had to emerge to keep “puny Banner” from coming to harm, the now-human Joe Fixit chooses to protect the green Hulk from a dangerous world by dealing with most of life’s hassles — even though his body isn’t as physically powerful anymore.
A New Hulk Partnership
In The Immortal Hulk #45, Joe underwent another major change — after the U-Foes murder the Hulk, both Joe and the savage Hulk are transported to the hellish Below-Place, where they struggle to get through the “Green Door” and be restored to life. Unfortunately, the Leader tries to keep them there and while fighting against the villain’s minions, Joe absorbs cosmic radiation and transforms into a red-skinned Hulk. Prior to this, Banner’s old nemesis General “Thunderbolt” Ross had held the title of the “Red Hulk,” but it now seems Joe Fixit is taking over the role.
And that’s not the only big change — still seeking to protect the green-skinned Hulk, Joe shares his new power with the weakened savage Hulk, causing them to manifest as an intelligent grey/green Hulk with red veins in the real world. In sharp contrast to the green/grey monstrosity the two originally created when they fought in Banner’s mind, this new Hulk seems both healthy and formidable, showing what can happen when two Hulks finally work in harmony.
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