Hulk has clashed with the Avengers countless times, but usually, it’s out of love. Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are often just trying to protect innocent people from Hulk’s rampages. Fair enough, but sometimes, the Avengers could just be super-jerks to the Green Goliath.
While Hulk was technically one of the original Avengers in 1963’s Avengers #1, the group’s founding was largely a hunt for the man-monster. Much like the movie adaptation, Avengers #1 saw Loki accidentally forming the Avengers while trying to use Hulk to defeat his half-brother Thor. When Loki shows up, the Hulk is in hiding, acting as a performer in a circus. Later, when the Hulk uses his colossal strength to save a train on a broken track, Loki uses his illusions to make it appear the Hulk was the culprit who wrecked the tracks in the first place.
Rick Jones and his Teen Brigade call out with ham radios to any heroes who could help stem the Hulk’s threat and Iron Man, Ant-Man, and the Wasp answer. The three soon-to-be-teammates spend most of Avengers #1 chasing the Hulk and battling him in a factory. Before anyone gets seriously hurt, Thor arrives with Loki as his prisoner, having figured out Loki’s scheme.
While the now-iconic cover of Avengers #1 depicts the five original Avengers battling Loki, the only one who truly threw down with him was Thor. The Hulk did nothing but fight off his attackers, who believed the lie that the Hulk was nothing more than a rampaging beast.
The Hulk’s time in the Avengers was short-lived. He quit at the end of Avengers #2, and considering everything, it’s tough to blame him. In Avengers #2, the team was infiltrated by an alien villain named the Space Phantom who could mimic the appearance of different heroes. Unsurprisingly, he chose the Hulk as his victim, and used the giant green monster to beat up the Avengers a bit before switching into a different body. When the smoke cleared and everyone realized what had happened, the Hulk was angry at what the Avengers said about him when they believed they were fighting him.
That could have been the end of it, but in Avengers #3, the Avengers actively hunted the Hulk and battled him once more. The Hulk fought them off and eventually allied himself with the aquatic outcast Namor the Sub-Mariner in an attempt to destroy the team and get them off his back.
In 1988, the High Evolutionary was ticking off the whole Marvel Universe in an event called Evolutionary War, which ran through Marvel’s annuals. The finale was in Avengers Annual #17, but there was a problem: the Avengers had disbanded. An alarm summoned a band of reserve Avengers anyway. At the end of Incredible Hulk #350, Hulk is finishing an epic battle with The Thing of the Fantastic Four, when X-Men’s Beast happens upon the Hulk and strong-arms him into helping the Avengers. Keep watching the video to see all the times the Avengers treated the Hulk like garbage!
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Since day one… | 0:15
Day two | 1:20
Blackmail | 2:14
In Memoriam | 3:11
A battle in the desert | 3:54
Civil War II | 4:37
Onslaught | 5:33
More recently | 6:31
Age of Ultron | 7:23
The Exile | 8:37