Hulk may claim to be the “strongest there is,” but being strong isn’t the be-all and end-all when it comes to winning superpowered brawls. Sometimes, it’s not about asking who is stronger than the Hulk – and there is indeed a long list of characters arguably stronger than the Hulk – but about who is best equipped to meet his strength with something else entirely and can thus overcome it.
The Hulk has indeed been defeated on numerous occasions in the pages of Marvel Comics, but he’d also have his hands full if he ever stepped out into the greater published multiverse of superhero comics. There are plenty of non-Marvel heroes lurking out there who could take down the jade giant if they ever had to, and through a wide variety of methods, at that!
1. Doctor Manhattan Can Do Whatever He Wants, Including Defeating The Hulk
First and foremost, Doctor Manhattan is one of the few characters in comic books that could feasibly wander his way into a cross-publisher conflict with the Incredible Hulk. He’s already crossed from the Watchmen continuity into the DC Universe proper, and there’s no real in-story reason he couldn’t pop on over to the world of Marvel Comics if he wanted.
The powers of Doctor Manhattan are very nearly without limit. He’s nigh-omnipotent and nigh-omniscient, and readers have already witnessed him taking down the entirety of the Justice League without breaking a sweat. In direct combat, it’s really just a question of whether to merely knock out the Hulk or disintegrate him right down to the atom, and that would be that.
However, a Doctor Manhattan/Hulk matchup comes with a substantial caveat. Doctor Manhattan perceives time as non-linear with all happening simultaneously, so while he can see the future, he cannot change it. Therefore, he would square off against the Hulk if that particular bout were supposed to happen – but if it were, it would undoubtedly be Doctor Manhattan who came out on top.
2. Superman Has Beaten The Hulk, And He’ll Do It Again
Of all the non-Marvel superheroes out there, Superman holds a noteworthy distinction as the only one to square off against the Hulk on multiple occasions. The Man of Steel has come away from the trio of crossover bouts with an unbeaten record of 2-0-1.
The first time they met, Superman just stood there taking punches from the Hulk like they were nothing and waited for his opponent to calm down and turn back into Bruce Banner.
The second time around, Kal-El was facing the super-intelligent “Professor Hulk,” but it didn’t make a bit of difference; Superman knocked him out cold with a super-roundhouse kick. Superman didn’t even need to tap into his wide swath of superpowers to win. Thus, he’s already better at smashing than the Hulk, and smashing is the Hulk’s whole thing.
The last instance saw Superman and Hulk tussle to a hard-fought draw until deciding to team up and destroy Lex Luthor’s gamma gun. History would suggest that, had the fight gone on any longer, the Man of Steel would have come out on top – and that he will again, should the two ever meet in the future.
3. Firestorm Could Draw The Gamma Right Out Of Bruce Banner
Firestorm, the Nuclear Man, might not be a household name on the same level as other members of the Justice League, but he’s still one of DC Comics’ heaviest hitters. Whether it’s Ronnie Raymond, Jason Rusch, Martin Stein, or whoever plugged into the Firestorm Matrix, they draw their considerable power from internal atomic fusion, and that makes them capable of trading punches with the likes of Shazam and Black Adam.
It also allows Firestorm to break down, manipulate, and absorb significant amounts of radiation – enough to snuff out the effects of a nuclear bomb. That’s bad news for the Hulk, who is powered by gamma radiation.
There’s no form of radiation Firestorm can’t handle, so there’s nothing stopping him from deconstructing Hulk’s gamma at the molecular level, absorbing it, and then redistributing it as something less destructive.
The Hulk has had his radiation drained before – most notably when Amadeus Cho did so and became the Totally Awesome Hulk – and it usually just turns him back into Bruce Banner semi-permanently. Bruce Banner is then relatively simple for Firestorm to deal with, if necessary.
4. Elaine Belloc Is Quite Literally Omnipotent, But The Devil’s In The Details When It Comes To Her Dealing With The Hulk
Elaine Belloc isn’t quite the God of the DC Universe. That honor goes to the Presence, an omnipotent being that stands in as DC’s take on the Abrahamic deity. Elaine is merely the chosen successor of the Presence, and so in time, she came to be roughly as powerful – and that’s a whole lot more powerful than the Hulk, even at his angriest.
In her earliest days, Elaine – daughter of an archangel – had a whole host of angelic abilities, including super-strength, flight, and atomic manipulation. But as she got in touch with her godly destiny, she grew mighty enough to control and alter the universe itself, and even create entirely new universes.
Thus, she could defeat the Hulk by just making him defeatable. Or by changing the rules of the Marvel Universe so that gamma radiation doesn’t cause limitless strength and immortality. Or by making it so he never existed in the first place.
Truly, the only limit to the ways in which Elaine Belloc could end the Hulk is her own imagination – and she’s pretty much omniscient, too.
5. At His Peak, Spawn Could Stomp The Hulk In A Number Of Different Ways
In his earliest forms, Spawn could have given the Hulk a fair run for his money. After getting in touch with his necroplasmic energy, Spawn eventually got strong enough to throw buildings around, and that’s to say nothing of his myriad demonic abilities – the Hulk does have a notable vulnerability to magic.
But then Spawn ate fruit from the Tree of Life and gained nigh-omnipotence, putting him on par with the Image Comics versions of God and Satan, and giving him control over the planet Earth in its entirety. With this powerset, Spawn could drown the Hulk in tidal waves, send him to Hell, or simply have the Earth open up wide and swallow the Hulk whole. Really, the possibilities are endless.
6. The Flash Could Think Of A Thousand Ways To Beat The Hulk In A Second, And Then Do It In Another
The Hulk has always had his trouble with super-speedsters, whether it be his annoying Avengers colleague Quicksilver or the relatively-unknown Speed Demon, a villain whose only act of note was nearly slaying the jade giant. And the Hulk has never met a speedster like the Flash.
Usually, the Hulk resorts to brute force when facing a speedster, either clapping his hands in their general direction or stomping the ground to knock them off-balance. That might work against the fastest the Marvel Universe has to offer, but Barry Allen and his fellow masters of the Speed Force are on an entirely different plane – literally!
Even the Flash’s thoughts move well beyond the speed of light, so he could think up a thousand strategies to defeat the Hulk, then try a bunch of them out before the jade giant even blinked. He could suffocate the Hulk by whirling him into a vacuum, hurl him through time, or, most gruesomely, molecularly accelerate a hand into his big, green heart. Even if the Hulk busted out one of his classic anti-speed techniques, the Flash could simply phase into another dimension – child’s play for him – so as to make himself untouchable, and then pop back in when the moment was right to strike.
Worse comes to worst, there’s also always the option to go back to any point in time pre-Hulk and stop Bruce Banner from ever getting irradiated. That’s Barry Allen’s specialty.
7. The Hulk Has No Defense For Zatanna’s Magical Mastery
The Hulk is the ultimate example of science gone wrong. He was an atomic scientist transformed into a green behemoth by an atomic science experiment, and the vast majority of his exploits can and have been explained by science – shaky comic book science, sure, but science all the same.
That leaves the Hulk with a significant vulnerability to magic. And no one does magic quite as well as Zatanna Zatara, DC’s own Sorceress Supreme.
Back in the day, Zatanna was limited to simple spells recited backward, but those days are long gone. Now she’s capable of doing basically anything she can think of, and she doesn’t even need to open her mouth to do so. She could use gravikinesis to make the Hulk too heavy to move, use molecular reconstruction to turn his gamma radiation into something else, or use darker magic to curse him for all eternity.
The Hulk usually struggles with Doctor Strange, and that means he’s no match at all for Zatanna, a magic-user on par with Strange – and whom he’s never even had the chance to meet before.
8. Invincible Could Fly The Hulk Into A Star
Mark Grayson is a superhero who lives up to his name. As Invincible, the young human/Viltrumite hybrid has taken some truly horrific damage – shattered bones, disembowelment, fourth-degree burns – and lived to tell the tale. He’s suffered direct hits from multiple hydrogen bombs and walked away. So, there’s really nothing the Hulk can throw at Invincible that he cannot handle. But the reverse is not true.
Since Invincible can survive pretty much anything, that allows him to put his opponents into situations that they themselves cannot survive. Grayson once infamously flew an enemy into the sun and tussled with them there for a while before flying away – not unscathed, but alive. If he were to pull the same trick on the Hulk, it would have a devastating effect, and if the Hulk tried the ol’ immortal routine thereafter, he’d just resurrect himself back into the middle of the sun.
9. The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen’s Mary Poppins Could Reduce The Hulk To Chalk
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen initially revolved around pulp characters from the public domain – Captain Nemo, Allan Quatermain, Mr. Hyde, and the like – but as the series wore on into the modern era, it got a little more extraordinary than that.
The League eventually found themselves facing the Antichrist in the form of a thinly-veiled Harry Potter pastiche. And to deal with the evil boy wizard, they brought in God herself – in the form of Mary Poppins.
The League’s Mary Poppins – never referred to by exactly that name – takes direct inspiration from ancient deities like Shekhinah and Binah, and she more or less is the spiritual embodiment of the concept of storytelling. As such, she reduces the faux Potter to a mere chalk drawing, and she could easily extend that ability to any fictional character.
Unfortunately for the Hulk, he’s very much a fictional character. Poppins could smudge him, alter him, or erase him from continuity altogether, and there’d be nothing he could do to stop her.