This is day eight of this year’s Jack Kirby Tribute Month. Today’s prompt is Betty Ross, daughter of Gen. Thunderbolt Ross, and long-running love interest of Dr. Bruce Banner!
Betty Ross was a normal, non-powered human (at least back when Jack and Stan were writing her) in The Incredible Hulk. But she was one of the characters in the early days of the strip who served to create the dynamics of it. Her love for Bruce Banner, despite her domineering father’s dislike of the relationship, was an aspect of those storylines that helped to propel them for quite awhile. Without her as a bright spot, Bruce Banner’s life would’ve been quite dark. It’s exactly the sort of plot element Stan and Jack played with very well in those days.
Trying to think of how best to portray Betty, I hit on the triangle of showing her with Bruce Banner, and the Hulk looming over them.
Hope this works for you. And feel free to return tomorrow, to see who appears next!
I had to snicker with your phrase… “normal non-powered human.” I loved that dynamic you artistically eulogize so well in this image. I found the earlier Hulk stories more interesting than those in later books for the elements you bring to the surface here. And then throw in the war hawk monster “Thunderbolt” Ross, and you have much more material to draw (and I mean that literally) from. Thanks, Mark.
Glad you like this tableau. Sometimes I come up with an idea that sort of sums up the whole dynamic of a group of characters or a strip, and I like it when I can do that.
I was fumbling about for the best way to describe Betty, that she didn’t have any particular superpowers, so “normal, non-powered human” was what I came up with on the fly. A lot of strips over the long haul seem unable to leave their normal human characters without superpowers, which is kind of a shame, really. Not having superpowers doesn’t make a character boring or unimportant to a comic. At least, not in the hands of a good writer.