Since his origin in The Incredible Hulk #1, Bruce Banner’s closest friend has been Rick Jones. Originally an irresponsible teenager who wandered onto a gamma bomb test site and got Banner exposed to the radiation that turned him into the Hulk, Rick has since grown into a more mature, capable individual who has assisted other superheroes and even led entire groups of people during a crisis. Hulk considers Rick one of his few friends – but in a very disturbing alternate timeline, an evil version of the Hulk not only killed Rick Jones, he did so in one of the most sadistic ways possible.
The story occurred in legendary Hulk writer Peter David’s novel Hulk: What Savage Beast. The novel took place in an alternate timeline where Banner was a smart “merged” Hulk (popularly referred to today as “Professor Hulk”) and expecting twin boys with his wife, Betty Banner. Hoping to give his sons a more normal life, Banner agreed to undergo an experimental procedure that implanted a chip in his brain, enabling him to revert to his human form.
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However, this all turned out to be according to the manipulations of an evil alternate future Hulk called “The Maestro.” Banner had previously encountered the Maestro in the comics by journeying to his alternate timeline, where the Maestro had conquered the world, leaving only a frail, elderly Rick Jones to inspire a small resistance group. Although the Hulk managed to defeat the Maestro by sending him back in time to the moment of the gamma bomb explosion that created the Hulk, disintegrating him at Ground Zero, this wasn’t the case in all versions of the future timeline…
In one of these parallel worlds, the Maestro had actually succeeded in wiping out Rick Jones’ resistance early on, slaughtering every man, woman, and child in his rebel camp. When it came time to face off against his former friend, however, the Maestro had a more gruesome fate for Rick. Initially offering Rick mercy if he begged for his life, the Maestro received only defiance from his oldest friend, who told him to “Get stuffed.” Taking inspiration from this insult, the Maestro literally had Rick’s body stuffed like a taxidermist’s animal. He then left Rick’s preserved body in his museum of superhero artifacts.
One of these gadgets turned out to be the Timeond, a gem owned by Doctor Strange, which enabled the Maestro to travel back in time and manipulate his past self. Turning into an elderly version of Bruce Banner, the Maestro masqueraded as a friendly scientist who could revert the Hulk into his human form using future technology (and thus render his greatest enemy powerless). The present-day Bruce Banner successful reversed the procedure and traveled into the future to fight his evil self – but was horrified when he saw what he had done to the world, the innocent people who used to live in it… and his old friend Rick Jones.
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