Advena Phillips

via @intimatevoid

This was an entirely different project originally. And then I started a new fic and decided to repaint the entire thing for a cover. (text version beneath the cut.)

This is falling under one of my favorite pieces of the year. And there have been quite a few.

revenge on @darya-bell (darya_bell on AF)

I was watching The Incredible Hulk last night, as one does, and got to the last scene with Ross and Tony, which like a lot of TIH has kind of dropped off the MCU’s radar because back in Phase 1 they were just throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck.  (It’s referred to in one of the old Marvel One-Shots with Sitwell and Coulson, but those are also on the list of things that have fallen off the MCU’s radar, though Disney+ added them earlier this year.)

The relevant part here is this one:

TONY: “You know, I hate to say, ‘I told you so,’ General, but that Super Soldier program was put on ice for a reason.

Now, the Hulk’s origin story in TIH is only in the opening credits of the film (something that the MCU didn’t do again until Black Widow), so most of the background for the project that later resulted in the Hulk comes from other people talking about it – Bruce doesn’t really talk about it in the film or elsewhere.  Our main information about the project (which external material calls Project Gamma Pulse) comes from Ross talking to Blonsky; Ross is obviously pretty biased.

ROSS: “You’re aware that we’ve got a Infantry Weapons Development Program.  Well, in WWII they initiated a subprogram, for Bio-Tech Force Enhancement.” BLONSKY: “Yeah, super soldier.” ROSS: “Yes.  An oversimplification, but yes.  And I dusted it off again, got ‘em doing serious work again, bold work. Across the hall they were trying to arm you better? Well, we were trying to make you better.” ROSS: “Banner’s work was very early phase. It wasn’t even weapons application. He thought he was working on radiation resistance. I would never have told him what the project really was. But he was so sure of what he was onto that he tested it on himself. And something went very wrong. Or it went very right. As far as I’m concerned that man’s whole body is the property of the U.S. Army.” BLONSKY: “You said he wasn’t working on weapons, right?” ROSS: “No.” BLONSKY: “But you were.  You were, weren’t you?  You were trying other things.” ROSS: “One serum we developed was very promising.”

Later on in The Avengers, on the Quinjet to the helicarrier Coulson gives Steve some information about Bruce Banner that frames the project a little differently.

STEVE: “So this Dr. Banner was trying to replicate the serum they used on me?” COULSON: “A lot of people were. You were the world’s first superhero. Banner thought gamma radiation might hold the key to unlocking Erskine’s original formula.” STEVE: “Didn’t really go his way, did it?” COULSON: “Not so much.”

External material gives the dates of the project from late 2001 (it was a direct response to the September 11 attacks) to 2005, when the Hulk incident occurred and the project was shut down.  Other external material (I’m pretty sure this is all from the novelization, but I’m not 100% sure) says that the reason Bruce experimented on himself was because they were running out of funding and he needed to show results as quickly as possible.

Let’s take a look at the serum that Ross gives Blonsky, shall we?  Which is not the same serum that Bruce injected himself with prior to getting hit with gamma radiation, assuming that we can believe Ross.  In this point I am inclined to believe him.

Now, the serum itself is super soldier blue; I’ve talked about my super soldier serum conspiracy theories before.  (You can also read my manifesto.)  I’m not interested in the serum.  Let’s take another look at the label on the cryo container, which I also talked about sometime back.  Here’s what it says:

CRYOSYNC STARK INDUSTRIES

PROGRAM: WEAPONS PLUS DEVELOPER: DR. REINSTEIN SERUM IDs: 7922-B209 7922-B209 7922-B209 7922-B209 BATCH No. D06-V2 VAR. No. RB-227.6

UNDER (?) CONTRACT US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

VITA-RAY

(In the comics “Reinstein” was Erskine’s code name; this was not carried through in the MCU, except for one piece of promo material for the Phase 1 box set; I’ll take what’s onscreen over promo material, so we’ll assume Reinstein is an entirely different person.  But that’s not really relevant here.)

Let’s look back at the Stark Industries part.  SI does, or did, weapons development.  To the best of my knowledge, SI does not work on biotechnology, though in IM3 Aldrich Killian tries to sell Pepper on Extremis.  (He also mentions a presidential ban on “immoral biotech research.”  We don’t know when this stems from in-universe; could be a direct response to the project that resulted in the Hulk, could be a direct response to the events of TIH, we don’t know.  Maya Hansen has been working on Extremis since 1999: it could be earlier.  At this point, we are not talking about anything involving CACW or FATWS, because I want to focus on the TIH parts and you can see my manifesto (Horizon) for that.)

That is a lot of background information.  Let’s zip back up to the top and look at that Ross & Tony exchange again.

TONY: “You know, I hate to say, ‘I told you so,’ General, but that Super Soldier program was put on ice for a reason.

Prior to this Ross and Tony have never interacted before – or at least not onscreen.  We know Tony doesn’t like super soldiers because he has major Captain America issues due to Howard Stark being in love with Steve Rogers and making it everyone else’s problem.  Stark Industries seems to have been involved in some parts of the 2000s-era project.

(Sidenote: I still think that the 1991 project that resulted in Howard Stark’s assassination was a separate, though related, project; again, see my manifesto on that.)

Here’s the conspiracy theory part:

I think Tony Stark, either directly (by stopping the checks if SI was funding them directly) or indirectly (by congressional lobbying), killed the funding for the Weapons Plus/Gamma Pulse project, leading to Bruce Banner experimenting on himself and becoming the Hulk.

Which I don’t think he was aware of at the time.  I don’t think he was aware of it for a long time afterwards, possibly not until he got SHIELD’s file on the Avengers Initiative at the beginning of The Avengers, where we can see that Bruce Banner is included. (Though we already know from Steve’s scene that SHIELD’s files can be a little misleading.)  But if SI, and specifically Tony killing the funding, was a factor in the creation of the Hulk, it lends some very interesting undertones to Tony’s insistence that Bruce/Hulk “suit up with the rest of us” in The Avengers, when they’re interacting for the first time.  (And if you listen to the scene, he says “accident,” with some interesting emphasis.)

TONY: “Hey, I read all about your ‘accident.’  That much gamma exposure should have killed you.” BRUCE: “So you’re saying that the Hulk – the other guy saved my life? That’s nice. That’s a nice sentiment. Saved it for what?” TONY: “I guess we’ll find out.” BRUCE: “You may not enjoy that.”

Kibellah in Paul’s giant robes… many are saying this