If push came to shove, Spider-Man knows that he could kill the Hulk if he absolutely had to, revealing a dark reality of superhero team-ups that most heroes don’t like to admit. The classic “hero team-up” trope is as old as superhero comics and always follows a similar formula. Two heroes meet, some kind of misunderstanding occurs that causes them to fight each other, eventually everything is cleared up and they team up to take down a bad guy. While Marvel’s heroes usually forgive each other after these battles, a confession from Spider-Man indicates that they certainly don’t forget.
Spider-Man does not go into much detail about how he would kill the Hulk, but he says he could in 2003’s Amazing Spider-Man #54 by J. Michael Straczynski and John Romita Jr. After a Gamma Bomb goes off in a Nevada desert, 13 mobsters who were killed and buried there in the 1950s are brought back to life, fused together into a vengeful monster called Digger. Using his knowledge of the Gamma-irradiated Hulk, Spider-Man is able to devise a way to take down Digger for good. In the aftermath, Mary Jane is surprised that Peter has clearly been thinking about ways to take down the Hulk.
Peter points out that every so often, he or a fellow hero will get possessed or mind controlled or somehow turned bad, and it’s up to the other heroes to stop them. “Everybody in our odd little community would deny it, but we all watch each other when we cross paths, looking for weaknesses, in case that day ever comes,” he says. Mary Jane presses Peter, asking if he’s thought about how to beat the Hulk and if he thinks he could. “Yeah. Yeah, I could,” Peter tells her. “But the only way to do it, to really stop him, would be to kill him.”
While he adds that he hopes that he never has to and that he doesn’t like to think about it, the matter-of-fact way in which Peter discusses the subject indicates that he has given a lot of thought to beating the Hulk and he knows exactly how he would kill him if it came to that. It’s a dark side to hero team-ups that is rarely focused on, but adds a new element to even the most light-hearted of superhero crossovers. Given the sheer number of team-ups in Marvel Comics in any given month, it’s safe to say that pretty much every hero has fought alongside every other hero out there. That means that in the back of their heads, they all know exactly how they would take each other down.
Anytime Spidey is fighting alongside another hero like Hulk, or even someone he considers a good friend like Human Torch, all the while he is noting weaknesses in his allies. This can probably apply to other members of the Marvel hero community. Veteran Avengers like Captain America have probably thought about how they could take down teen heroes like Ms. Marvel or Miles Morales, who in turn have given thought to how they could defeat Black Widow or Thor. It’s a level of cold-blooded pragmatism that one might expect in someone like Reed Richards or Tony Stark, but is surprising and slightly upsetting to see in your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.