Marvel's The Hulk is making a big change with Infernal Hulk

The Hulk also has a new design that splits him into two

After more than six decades as its host, Bruce Banner is no longer the Hulk — and in his place stands something far worse.

In Marvel's The Incredible Hulk #30, out Wednesday, a new creature emerges: the Infernal Hulk. After luring the Hulk into a trap, the demon known as Eldest possesses Abomination’s body, then uses a blend of overwhelming strength and eldritch sorcery to rip Bruce Banner out of the Hulk and claim the body for itself. Bruce is cast into a dimension beyond reality called the Requiem Plain to die.

Eldest, the firstborn of the ancient Mother of Horrors, who has haunted the series since 2023’s The Incredible Hulk #1, has spent 30 issues scheming to steal the Hulk’s power and release her demonic mother from her prison. But when she finally reaches her, and Mother refuses to respond, Eldest (now in Hulk’s body) devours the Mother of Horrors, absorbing her essence and transforming into the Infernal Hulk. Readers will meet this terrifying new incarnation in its first issue this November.

“I’ve been promising Hulk fans the biggest, boldest status quo change in Hulk’s history, and that time is finally here,” writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson said in a statement announcing the new series. “The next few issues of Incredible Hulk give fans all the answers they’ve been waiting for about Eldest and the Mother of Horrors, and Infernal Hulk is the beginning of a terrifying new normal, not just for the Hulk series but for the entire Marvel Universe.”

In the final pages of The Incredible Hulk #30, Eldest, now with the memories of Bruce thanks to being joined with Hulk, laments Banner's passing, noting he was a monster way before he became The Hulk. She then wonders if the rest of the Avengers have the same darkness within them, which she seems to plan to find out herself. Infernal Hulk's design splits the lumbering beast in two: blue-gray Hulk form on the left, Eldest’s twisted purple demonic body on the right, and a shiny green gamma scar burning down the center where they divide.

“There are monsters way worse and more powerful than anything we’ve seen so far,” Johnson said. “Bigger and stronger than Hulk, with origins that go back to the foundations of the Earth. It’s time to take this story to the next level, and no corner of the Marvel Universe will be left untouched before the end.”

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The Infernal Hulk by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and artist Nic Klein will launch on Nov. 26.