The Incredible Hulk #149

Cover date: March 1972

Writer: Archie Goodwin

Artist: Herb Trimpe

Inker: John Severin

The Hulk is under sedation at Project Greenskin following last issue, giving Betty an excuse to mope (as she does), and while wandering outside the base, wishes upon a ‘falling star’ for things to be different for Bruce and her. The ‘falling star’, however, is a spaceship crashing to Earth, from which emerges The Inheritor.

Unfortunately, the cover doesn’t show how completely ridiculous this Inheritor guy actually looks....

After dispatching a couple of poachers (because he hates humans, and he is the rightful inheritor of Earth, hence his sobriquet) , The Inheritor comes across a truck transporting that ol’ radioactive material that was always being driven across America during the Seventies, and as The Inheritor bathes in the radioactive material he remembers....

Meanwhile, after escaping his restraints and trying to escape the bunker, Hulk is downed by some tranquiliser gas and reverts to Bruce Banner. He is then convinced to help out with finding a cure for his condition, and has a bit of a think about his feelings for both Betty and Jarella (who went home to her atom last issue).

Anyway, The Inheritor has made his way to Project Greenskin in search of some more radioactive stuff, and tears up the joint resulting in Bruce being pinned beneath some heavy machinery. Cue the Hulk!

Some fighting ensues, The Inheritor gets his radiation fix, and he remembers exactly how he came to be. It seems the High Evolutionary mutated a low order of life into one of his New-Men, but after this New-Man expressed his lack of subservience to humans, the High Evolutionary had him banished from Earth, no doubt chalking it up to a bad day at work.
Have you guessed yet which low order of life The Inheritor was before the High Evolutionary switched on his genetic accelerator?

The Hulk and The Inheritor end up falling into the underground base through the retractable roof, and The Inheritor is hit by the radiation siphoning experiment Bruce was working on when he was so rudely interrupted earlier.

Yep, he devolves into a.....cockroach, which the Hulk flicks away while looking for The Inheritor.
I actually quite enjoyed this, despite the ending being broadcast very early on; and the art of Trimpe and Severin is top class, except when drawing The Inheritor that is.

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