Well, OF COURSE that's the way the brain works!

 

cover art by Rich Buckler

I love the twisted logic of Comic Book Science and I wouldn't have a comic book universe work in any other way!

Why was it so important for the Hulk to be captured in Incredible Hulk #199? We find out in issue #200 (June 1976--writer: Len Wein; artists: Sal Buscema and Joe Staton). Doc Samson puts an Encephlo-Helmet on Hulk, which allows Banner's personality to take control. Samson will then use a shrink ray invented by Hank Pym to sent Banner/Hulk into Glenn Talbot's brain to destroy the mental block that is keeping Talbot in a coma.

In a Comic Book Universe, this is a perfectly reasonable plan. 

AND it turns out that if you enter a person's brain while you are microscopic in size, the brain will generate special anti-bodies in the form of your arch-enemies (both good guys and bad guys) to stop you. They will be powerful enough to give the Hulk a run for his money and will end up destroying the Encephlo-Helmet.

The Hulk, now reverted by to his usual personality, finally encounters the mental block. And, OF COURSE, the mental block is a sentient slime creature with a lot of tentacles. Haven't you ever studied basic physiology?

I know I'm kind of making fun of all this, but I'm not really. This is imaginative storytelling. Even when couched in science fiction trappings, a Comic Book Universe is a fantasy setting, with sometimes only a tenuous connection to real life.

And that's the way it should be. There needs to be an internal story logic, but a C.B. Universe allows a good writer to take the story in all sorts of fun directions, allowing good artists to in turn run wild with his own imagination. This is exactly how it should be.

Anyway, after the Encephlo-helmet is destroyed, Doc Samson continues to track the Hulk via gamma radiation. The Hulk destroys the slime monster/mental block, but without the helmet to control his metabolism, Hulk begins to grow back to normal size. This would be a bad thing while he's still inside Talbot's skull. Samson does the only thing he can think of--shrink Hulk to subatomic size. That saves the now-cured Talbot, but seems to doom the Hulk.

But the Hulk has been in the micro-verse before. In two weeks, we'll start looking at his return visit. Next week, we'll return to the Lonely War of Willy Schulz.