They may share a similar color scheme, but DC’s Green Lantern and Marvel’s Hulk have rarely crossed paths, despite frequent crossovers between the two companies. Eagle-eyed fans may recall the two had a brief fight in Unlimited Access #1 when the dimension-hopping hero Access accidentally transported the savage Hulk to Coast City, causing him to come in conflict with Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern.
However, the two characters later appeared again in the same book. And while most fans would expect their second meeting to be even more epic (and destructive) than their first encounter, the meeting actually took place when both characters were at their weakest.
The encounter actually happened during the 1990s when Bruce Banner’s psychiatrist Doc Samson succeeded in merging the many Hulk personalities in Bruce’s mind into a single being known popularly as the “Professor Hulk” (or “Smart Hulk” in Avengers: Endgame). This Hulk had Banner’s intelligence and personality, the green Hulk’s body and strength, and the grey Hulk’s craftiness and attitude. Although this seemed to be the ultimate expression of the Hulk’s strength and intelligence, Banner, fearing that he could still lose control, unconsciously included a psychic safeguard in this new Hulk.
To keep the “Professor Hulk” from getting too powerful, Banner made the Hulk revert to his powerless human form if he ever got too angry. This new “Hulk” spoke and acted like the savage green Hulk but didn’t have the strength to back up any of his threats. Although Professor Hulk normally remained calm during battle, in The Incredible Hulk #425, he sees his wife Betty Ross Banner become critically injured and becomes so enraged he turns into the “Savage Banner.”
The following issue sees “Savage Banner” locked in a mental institution where Doc Samson tries to get through to him. Banner briefly escapes, however, and runs through the asylum where he knocks over a brown-haired mental patient who claims the slightest disruption of his concentration could cause all reality to collapse. Samson later picks up the man and calls him “Mr. J.” While he appears in only a handful of panels, DC comics fans immediately recognized the patient as Hal Jordan, the greatest Green Lantern of all time.
To understand the sight gag of Hal Jordan showing up in a mental institution with the Hulk, readers need to understand what was happening simultaneously in DC’s Green Lantern comics. During the 1990s, Hal Jordan had gone insane after witnessing the destruction of his home, Coast City, and took on the supervillain identity of Parallax. He stole power rings from other Green Lanterns (which he killed) and tried to use the power to rewrite history and reverse the destruction of his home.
This puts him into conflict with the Justice League (and the new Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner), and Jordan is eventually “killed” by Green Arrow (although he’d later be resurrected as the Spectre and eventually become Green Lantern again once “Parallax” was retconned into an alien force that possessed Jordan).
At the time The Incredible Hulk #426 was published, however, none of those later events had happened yet, so readers were bemused to see Hal Jordan appear in the Marvel Universe as a delusional mental patient. Artist Liam Sharp made sure to draw Jordan with white streaks in his hair (later revealed to be a sign of Parallax possessing Jordan) while writer Peter David had “Mr. J.” claim his “power ring” protected him from all harm and that he had brought Doc Samson back to life (a jab at DC’s Jordan’s attempt to resurrect Coast City).
Odds are, however, that the “Mr. J.” who showed up in “The Incredible Hulk” is not a dimensionally displaced Green Lantern, but Hal Jordan’s non-powered counterpart in the Marvel Universe. Marvel has a history of letting non-powered versions of DC heroes show up in cameo roles (Clark Kent regularly covers news events for Marvel and Bruce Wayne once tried to seduce Mary Jane Watson). Hal Jordan, sadly, seems to have gotten the short end of the stick as his counterpart is a delusional mental patient who only thinks he’s a Green Lantern.