“Could you beat your dad in a fight?”
            It was summer and sometime after 12am. Four of us (Jordan, Adam, Dan, and myself) sat around a card table playing Texas Hold’em, drinking bear, smoking cigarettes, and rolling weed.
            “Now, in the future, or in the past?”
            “Does it matter?”
            “What kind of question is that? Of course it matters.”
            At that point in the night the cards didn’t matter. What was more important for me was not going home. At that point in my life, the card table and circle of friends were all that was getting me through to the finish line of graduating high school the following year, going to college, and never returning to Peoria if I had my druthers.
            “I mean, think about it. As a kid, our parents were giants. They were like gods with the power to destroy our world with the swing of a belt. Then, there was no way we could win. But now. Hell yeah, we could beat our fathers in a fight. Especially you, Jordan. You’re dad’s pretty much on an oxygen tank most of the day anyway.”
            Jordan chuckles, gives Dan the middle finger, checks his cards, knocks on the table twice to check, takes a sip of bear, and releases a puff of smoke. I can’t tell if it’s an actually cigar or just a casing with weed. Probably the latter.
            “Nah, I think it’s more psychological.”
            Adam, like myself, wasn’t drinking or smoking. It’s not that he never drank or smoked, but more that it only occurred rarely or on special occasions. He looked at his cards, threw two chips into the center pot and continued.
            “Like, my dad, he works out a lot. He’s always in the basement doing pull ups and jumping rope. Like he’s afraid of getting old or something. I mean, I run cross country, wrestle, run track, but I still don’t think I could beat up my dad. Even if he’s on his death bed and I’m in my thirties working out like he is. I feel like he’s always going to be able to whoop my ass.”
            The table mulled over Adam’s words as the flop revealed nothing for me and ended with Adam winning the blind and stacking the chips with his own.
            Soon afterwards, I cash out and begin the short walk to my cousin Cassandra’s house. I walk through a patch of grass connecting Jordan’s yard with his neighbor’s, cross the empty intersection, quietly open the front door, go to the basement, and lay on the couch, ensuring I don’t wake up my mother asleep in the other room. While lying on the couch, the conversation replays itself as I attempt to get a few hours of sleep before getting up to complete my paper route. As I lay there, I think to myself, “I’d beat the shit out of my father.”
            It’s been decades since that conversation. I’m now in my 40s, hundreds of miles away from Peoria, Illinois, and thinking back to that conversation at the end of the cull-da-sac on the humid summer night sitting in my office while reading the pages of The Immortal Hulk “In Every Mirror” (2018).

            After reading the first few pages the comic seems to be a throwback to earlier Hulk comics in which the Jade Giant must battle another super powered being or monster to prove “Hulk is the strongest one there is!” Here, in this comic, the monster is in the form of his friend and old college roommate, Walter Langkwoski. In the same manner as Bruce Banner, Walter was exposed to gamma radiation and transformed into a superhuman being known as Sasquatch. Usually, Langkwoski is capable of controlling his transformation into the Sasquatch, but something is different. Langkwoski doesn’t seem to be speaking or behaving like himself. This is proven true when Sasquatch tells Bruce Banner, his former friend and college roommate, he is not Walter while licking the blood of three dead physicians he has just murdered in a small community hospital. When the possessed monster attempts to kill Bruce Banner the Hulk surfaces and the two
beasts battle

.

            While attempting to defeat the other, destroying walls and equipment throughout the hospital, the Hulk interrogates Sasquatch, searching for answers pertaining to how / why the man beneath the fur and muscles is not Langkowski. The evil being lurking within the body of Sasquatch tells the Hulk to look for himself gesturing toward the reflective glass behind them. The Hulk turns, looks, and sees the creature he has pinned to the wall is not Sasquatch, but the grinning image of his abusive dead father. Immediately, the powerful confident expression of the Hulk transforms into the terrified child of Bruce Banner’s past.

After viewing the ghost of Brian Banner, the Hulk no longer dominates the fight. Instead, he cowers away in fear as he is beat, chastised, and denigrated between flashbacks of the trauma he endured as a child. Here, the Hulk is no longer “the strongest one there is.” He is simply a petrified child, groveling for mercy as he is beat into submission by the person who was supposed to protect him from harm instead of forcing him to endure it.

Eventually, the Hulk regains his confidence and does what Bruce could never accomplish as a child; he defeats his father. With fear filled and angry punches, the Hulk fights to protect himself and Banner. He screams in the face of the monster that is his father, “You’re just a man. A twisted old man who killed his wife, tried to kill his son, made him wish he had. You scared him. You scare Banner. You think that gives you power over me? Think it makes you important? Special? No. Not. Not special. Puny. Puny human!!”

Survivors of adverse childhood experiences like myself love this scene because it showcases what all survivors of wish they could have done to the perpetrators who forced them to endure a living hell as children. We wish we could yell at the parents who neglected our needs as children for their own addictive desires causing us to wonder why we were never good enough to be loved as much as their alcohol, drugs, or sex; we pray for the power to pummel the perpetrators of sexually abused and assault who stole our control and power for themselves when they stole our innocence, forcing us to feel perpetually weak as adults; we beg for gamma radiation to give us the ability needed to crush the unjust systems of society keeping us from achieving a complete family like the ones we view on TGIF. We want to be Hulk because the Hulk is the protector we wish we had that was capable to protecting our Bruce Banner; the child who was too afraid and small and weak to defeat those who hurt them while continuously forcing them to feel small and inadequate well into adulthood. As survivors of ACEs, we desperately want to “HULK SMASK!!” all that we fear and hate. Unfortunately, there are repercussions. And Adam was right, it is psychological.

The Immortal Hulk comic ends with the Hulk defeating the monster who had taken control of Sasquatch by absorbing the gamma radiation from the beast into himself, transforming Sasquatch back into Walter Langkowski. On the last pages of the comic, as the Hulk walks away from the hospital having defeated Sasquatch by confronting and overcoming his childhood abuser, the Hulk looks into window of a passing car to see that his reflection has transformed into that of his father, revealing a fear survivors of adverse childhood experience have of unleashing their inner Hulk, especially for men. There is the fear that if we tap into that anger, we will become that which we hate the most. When we stand up for our wishes, hopes, desires, and needs as human beings we will gradually become the perpetrators of violence, shame, guilt, and fear on others, becoming the villain, and eventually, one day, looking into the mirror and becoming indistinguishable from our abusers.

For the young men sitting at that card table in the past at the end of a cull-da-sac in Peoria, Illinois, defeating our fathers meant becoming our fathers; the villains who reigned over us as children with fear rather than love and compassion. Fathers who lorded over their domains with intimidation. In the past, on that night, if given the opportunity, I would have fought my father. I would have attempted to beat the crap out of him to make him feel the hopelessness I felt when neglecting his responsibilities as a husband and father, resulting in the foreclosure of our home on Wilson Dr. and two years of living in the basements of relatives while attempting to remain sane and graduate from high school. I would have punched by knuckles bloody if it meant he felt a fraction of my disappointment when he was not in the stands clapping as I received my diploma in addition of scholarships and awards that would pay for me to attend college. I would have wanted him to feel the sheer exhaustion from listening to countless screaming matches between him and my mother that extended throughout the night and into the morning as I punched, bit, and scratched with all my might the puny human that is my father to feel as strong and powerful as the Hulk.

That was then, but what about now? As an adult, would I still fight my father to unleash the Jade Giant locked away inside? No, I wouldn’t, because doing so would mean my daughters, wife, students, co-workers, and young boys I mentor would see a monster rather than a man capable of love, compassion, integrity, and honesty when they look into my eyes and see their reflection. Calming my inner Hulk means developing the skills needed to look into the mirror and see a man I’m proud of rather than a cheap imitation of those who hurt me as a child.
But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to.