For various and sundry reasons, the Incredible Hulk casts a long shadow over my pantheon of superheroes…and what better time than now to examine each and every one in agonizing detail? It’s all because of that damned TV show. See, a long time ago, on a farm far, far away, my parents had a brief flirtation with mid-eighties middle-class status symbols. They got the VCR. They got the VHS. They got the satellite dish. One of those unwieldy, forty-foot fuckers that typified success for millions. Sure, go plant a ten foot tall metal tree in my back yard. Boy, that’ll really add value to the house.

By the time I came around, we got exactly two channels on the damn thing. Everything else was snow, bandwidth to bandwidth. Until the Sci-Fi Channel. One day, there it was: twenty-four hours of good ol’ fashioned science fiction programming. The Visitor, The Prisoner, The Twilight Zone, Planet of the Apes, Battlestar Galactica…and The Incredible Hulk, every day at four, staring Bill Bixby. I’d get off school and bam, there it was,  Lou Ferrigno large and in charge. I developed quite the ritual around it, as I did with all the good shows. And like all the good shows, eventually, Hulk disappeared without a trace. {More}