Daredevil Just Officially Became Marvel’s New Hulk

After 62 years, Marvel has announced a classic superhero is about to become its new Hulk, complete with a gamma-powered redesign. Bruce Banner may be Marvel’s most famous Hulk, but he’s not the only one, and a hero he has allied with multiple times is about to take his place.

Daredevil Is About to Become the New Hulk

This May, Marvel will celebrate fifty years of its iconic WHAT IF…? title – stories which radically change Marvel lore and history in exciting new ways. To celebrate the occasion, ‘Stormbreaker’ artist Netho Diaz answers the question “What If… Daredevil’s Accident Gave Him the Hulk’s Powers?” by turning Matt Murdock’s Daredevil into Marvel’s new Hulk.

The resulting variant cover shows a Hulked-out Matt Murdock, wearing a red blindfold and pants, running along the side of a New York skyscraper.

Marvel’s ‘Stormbreakers’ are up-and-coming artists hand-picked by Marvel, with the publisher offering up projects designed to provide these newer creators a spotlight – often in the form of variant cover initiatives.

In Marvel lore, Daredevil was struck with a canister containing a radioactive isotope when he was a kid. Diaz’s cover imagines the canister was instead packed with gamma radiation, turning Matt Murdock into the Hulk instead of Bruce Banner. The cover will appear on select covers of June 10’s Daredevil #3, from Stephanie Phillips and Lee Garbett.

This cover is just one of several Marvel is releasing to mark the occasion of What If…?‘s anniversary, and while only the cover art exists so far, Marvel is beginning to make a habit of testing new ideas as variant covers before investing in them. Recent team the New Champions were introduced as variant covers, and likewise Captain Marvel’s latest costume and the character Gwenpool.

Fans shouldn’t be surprised to see a full comic issue tackle this What If…? premise if interest in the variant cover is high enough.

Most of Marvel’s Biggest Heroes Have Official Hulk Forms

Fans have been waiting a long time for Daredevil’s Hulk form. In 2010, Marvel’s World War Hulks event bathed iconic Avengers and X-Men with a variety of transformative energies, including gamma. As a result, heroes including Cyclops, Thor, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and Storm adopted their own creative Hulk forms.

Like the Hulk, these heroes found themselves with lessened intelligence and hair-trigger tempers, fighting amongst themselves in various tie-in comics. They also received body horror-themed power upgrades – for example, Cyclops growing a dozen extra eyes and Wolverine’s claws expanding and becoming serrated.

None of these transformations were more chaotic than Deadpool’s, whose gamma exposure not only turned him into “Hulkpool”, but sent him careening across across time and space in the two-issue Hulked-Out Heroes tie-in.

Sadly, Daredevil didn’t get to take part in World War Hulks, meaning that it’s only sixteen years later that fans get to see what he might have become, all thanks to Netho Diaz.

More Transformations Are On the Way in Hulk Lore

If you’re a Marvel fans who loves the idea of Hulk-themed transformation, then look forward to the upcoming event Hulk War: Infernal Rage, from Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Nic Klein.

In recent comics, Hulk’s powers and body were stolen by the demonic Eldest, creating the Infernal Hulk. The new Hulk’s aim is to unleash the multiverse’s dark energies, creating a ‘new Age of Monsters’ on Earth.

It’s been heavily implied that Marvel’s biggest heroes will become hosts to the great monsters of the past, likely via extreme transformations – something the Infernal Hulk has already started doing to its human victims.

After 62 years, Daredevil is finally Marvel’s newest Hulk – but with an entire Age of Monsters soon to arrive, his monstrous transformation is just the first of many.

Daredevil #3 is coming June 10 from Marvel Comics, with Hulk War: Infernal Rage #1 coming soon.