Don't make the Hulk angry, you wouldn't like him when he's angry. That has been the Marvel Universe's number one rule ever since the Hulk debuted in The Incredible Hulk #1 in 1962. The story behind that rule is almost as famous. Unassuming scientist Bruce Banner spent his childhood in fear of his abusive father. When Bruce is accidentally bombarded with gamma rays, all of that repressed anger takes over, transforming him into a giant gray -- later green -- creature that the world dubs the Hulk. And while Bruce can transform back into his old self, he rarely stays that way for long. The second someone looks at him funny or insults his mother, it's bye bye Banner, hello enormous green rage monster. Anger is basically the Hulk's whole shtick -- he literally can't exist without it.

But that doesn't mean the Hulk is the only comic book character out there who could benefit from some anger management classes. In fact, there are a whole bunch of folks out there who might have an even greater capacity for crankiness than the ol' Jade Giant himself. This article will look at 20 of the most mercurial, temperamental and flat-out nasty characters ever created. Whether they were physically altered for maximum rage potential or they just have a super-sized ax to grind, each of the heroes and villains on this list gives the Hulk some serious competition in the rage department. So please don't be too loud while reading this. We wouldn't want to risk disturbing anyone...

20 DOOMSDAY

This handsome fellow was created specifically to become the toughest being in the universe.  An ancient alien mad scientist swiped a Kryptonian baby and killed it repeatedly, each time in a different way. After each death, the future Doomsday would become immune to whatever killed him. By the time Doomsday was an adult, he had died thousands of times, meaning that there are now thousands of ways he cannot be be put down.

So what does a nigh-unkillable, seven-foot ball of fury who hates humanity do with himself? Most famously, he whaled on Superman until he died in the highly publicized "Death of Superman" storyline.

19 BATMAN

Bruce Wayne witnessed his parents' demise when he was a small child and he's been angry ever since. Part of this is the result of perfectly understandable trauma. Who wouldn't be affected by such an event?

But it's also partly a strategic decision. After his parents' deaths, Bruce made a vow to bring all criminals to justice so that no one would have to suffer the way he did. In order to sustain that war on crime, he purposefully holds on to his childhood rage. Staying angry keeps the pain and his own promise fresh in his mind, allowing him to forge ahead with his self-imposed mission.

18 ATROCITUS

The Red Lantern Corps is an intergalactic group of supervillains. While the more famous Green Lanterns are chosen based on their great willpower, the Red Lanterns are chosen based on fury. If a person allows their anger, however justified, to get the best of them, they are liable to find themselves in possession of -- and possessed by -- a Red Lantern Ring.

Atrocitus is the leader of the Red Lantern Corps. While he is not particularly pleasant in general, he especially hates the Green Lantern Corps, and he created the Red Lanterns for the express purpose of obliterating them. Anyone who starts an entire hate-based space club to get back at their enemies has got to be one angry dude.

17 LAURA KINNEY

Anyone cloned from Wolverine is bound to have some emotional issues. Combine that with a childhood full of relentless training and torture and you get X-23, aka Laura Kinney.  She was raised to be a weapon rather than a person. To ensure that she kills on command, her handlers spent years conditioning her to react violently to a specific trigger scent. The minute she gets a whiff of it, Laura will kill everyone she sees until the scent is gone.

But even without the scent, Laura is not to be messed with.  he even tried -- and very nearly succeeded -- in killing Wolverine, believing that neither of them should exist. Now she actually is Wolverine, having adopted the name to honor her father.

16 MANGOG

Long ago, an alien race annoyed Odin so much that the ruler of the Asgardians decided to teach them all a lesson. He took every one of the "billion billion beings" that made up this race and fused them into a single being called Mangog. Needless to say, Mangog holds a massive grudge against the Asgardians, and the royal family in particular.

Mangog menaced Thor for years, starting in Thor #154. Since he feeds on hate, there is really no way to permanently stop him so long as hatred exists. Recently, Jane Foster threw him into the sun. Somehow, we still don't think that will be enough to calm a quintillion people's combined fury.

15 GUY GARDNER

Each Green Lantern has a personality trait that defines him. John Stewart is competent. Hal Jordan is stuffy. And Guy Gardner is grouchy. A lot of his anger stems from his childhood, which he spent futilely attempting to impress his abusive father. He got into a lot of trouble with the law, until he pulled himself together and started working towards a career as a teacher.

Guy may not be a criminal anymore, but he hasn't completely mellowed out. He'll pick fights with anyone, consequences be darned. In one famous incident, he challenged Batman to a fistfight and got knocked out in one punch. Unsurprisingly, he became a Red Lantern for a short time, although Green Lantern Kyle Rayner snapped him out of it.

14 DAMIAN WAYNE

This kid never stood a chance of being well-adjusted -- his dad is the famously broody Batman, and his mom is Talia Al Ghul, member of the League of Assassins and daughter of would-be world ruler Ra's Al Ghul. By the time Damian hit double digits, he was an expert martial artist and more than prepared to join his father's war against crime. Or so he thought.

Damian's skills as a fighter may have been up to par, but his attitude left a whole lot to be desired. Anyone who punches his adopted brother off a dinosaur is in serious need of a chill pill. He's doing a little better now, but we still wouldn't want to have to tell him anything he doesn't want to hear.

13 AMYGDALA

The amygdala is the part of the brain that helps control a person's emotional responses. Amygdala the supervillain is Aaron Helzinger, a man who ironically does not have any amygdala at all. This makes it nearly impossible for Aaron to control his temper. Even the mildest inconvenience can cause a violent outburst.

Like Blockbuster, featured elsewhere on this list, Amygdala was first introduced as a nemesis for Batman. However, when he's not going on rampages or being manipulated by smarter villains for nefarious purposes, Amygdala is actually a pretty nice guy. He later turns up in Bludhaven as a friend and ally of Batman's protege, Nightwing.

12 SUPERBOY-PRIME

Superboy-Prime started out as a good guy in Crisis on Infinite Earths. He was just a super-powered kid who'd lost his world, but then something happened. As the boy grew into a man, he became more and more resentful that other, seemingly inferior worlds survived while his didn't.

Superman-Prime complains to everyone who will listen about how much better his own world was and then rips his audience's arms off just because. He kills multiple Teen Titans in Infinite Crisis, and he spends the entirety of Countdown to Final Crisis throwing an epic tantrum that spans multiple universes. Unfortunately, Superman-Prime's brand of anger is an especially whiny one, making him an annoyance rather than a compelling character.

11 JUGGERNAUT

Cain Marko is Charles Xavier's stepbrother, and he spent their entire childhood mercilessly bullying Charles. Clearly, Cain had issues from a young age. Years later, while the grown siblings served together in Korea, they stumbled across an ancient temple that housed a mysterious gemstone. Cain grabbed the stone and was transformed into the Juggernaut.

The new powers did nothing for Cain's attitude. Rather, they just give him the ability to bully Charles and Charles' students, the X-Men, in new and exciting ways. He truly is unstoppable, and the only way the X-Men can get a break from him is to teleport him to another dimension for a while. But when he comes back, he's generally in a worse mood than before...

10 QUICKSILVER

Quicksilver has occasionally shown an extreme dislike for humans, even going so far as to team up with his daddy, Magneto. But he saves most of his bad temper for his own friends and family. In his earliest days as an Avenger, he constantly feuded with Captain America and Hawkeye, questioning their decisions and jockeying for the position of team leader.

The only person he ever seems fond of is his sister, the Scarlet Witch, but even that love is conditional. When Scarlet Witch announces her intention to marry the Vision, Quicksilver throws a tantrum. He disowns her on the spot, holds a grudge against the Vision for years, and "forgets" to invite the Avengers to his own wedding to Crystal of the Inhumans.

9 PANTHA

Rosabelle Mendez, aka Pantha, has no idea who she really is. This partially explains why she is in such a bad mood all the time. During her time with the Titans, Pantha is abrasive and rude to the point of being cruel. And that's just how she treats her teammates. The folks she considers her actual enemies get worse than barbed remarks.

About the only Titan who comes close to matching Pantha's level of rage is Baby Wildebeest, who makes his own Hulk-like transformation when sufficiently stressed. Eventually, Pantha did reluctantly bond with Baby Wildebeest, as well as their fellow Titan, Red Star. And then she got her head punched off by Superboy-Prime in Infinite Crisis.

8 ABOMINATION

Emil Blonsky was a Russian spy before he, like Bruce Banner, got caught in a gamma ray explosion. Also like Bruce, Emil was transformed into a large green creature with enormous strength. But there the men's experiences diverge. While Bruce loses his intellect as the Hulk but can change back to normal on occasion, Emil retains his smarts but is stuck as the Abomination.

Rather than using that intelligence to do something constructive, Emil lets his anger consume him and devotes his life to screwing over Bruce. He even goes so far as to kill Bruce's wife, Betty Ross. That proved to be a bad move in terms of Abomination's continued existence. Betty's father, the Red Hulk, pummelled him and then ended him once and for all.

7 RED SKULL

It takes a lot of rage to be as hateful as the Red Skull. And in the world of comics, there is no more prominent or more devoted to hate than the Red Skull. Born Johann Shmidt, he was trained by Hitler himself to help bring his twisted vision to fruition. Red Skull's particularly virulent brand of hatred should have died at the end of World War II, but a freak accident put him in suspended animation and allowed him to survive to the present day.

The Red Skull has spent his entire adult life promoting hatred and violence against just about everyone. He hates Captain America and Bucky, he hates men, he hates women... actually, it would be quicker to list the people he doesn't hate.

6 BLOCKBUSTER

Mark Desmond was a brilliant but weedy scientist. He developed a solution that he hoped would make him a brilliant and brawny scientist. Unfortunately, it instead turned him into the brainless brute known as Blockbuster. He clashed with Batman and Robin several times starting in the '60s, and even the Caped Crusaders had trouble against his enhanced strength and blind, unthinking fury.

But Blockbuster does have an "off" switch, so to speak. The only thing that can calm him down is the sight of Bruce Wayne, who once saved him from drowning. Blockbuster joined the Suicide Squad in Legends and died shortly thereafter.

5 TERRA

"The Judas Contract" is one of the most famous storylines to come out of the '80s. This is in large part thanks to the story's antagonist, Terra, aka Tara Markov. She hates absolutely everyone. Why? Don't ask or she'll drop a boulder on you. At 15, she is already out there trying to make it as a criminal. When Deathstroke suggests they team up to destroy the Teen Titans, Terra readily agrees.

Terra infiltrates the Titans, posing as an eager if volatile young heroine while plotting the demise of her oblivious new friends. In the end, Terra's rage comes back to bite her. In her final battle with the Titans, she loses control of her powers and brings a mountain down on top of herself.

4 HAWK

As a teen, fiery Hank Hall gained superpowers from one of the Lords of Chaos. Calling himself Hawk, Hank used his newfound strength and agility to fight crime. Make no mistake, Hank was definitely a good guy but he was also a hothead. He often wanted to use far more violence than necessary to bring his adversaries to justice.

For a while, the worst of Hawk's temper was blunted by his brother Dove, the avatar of a Lord of Order. But when Dove died in Crisis on Infinite Earths, Hawk became even angrier than usual. He went full-on supervillain in Armageddon: 2001 and Zero Hour. As of now, he's back on the side of the angels, with a new Dove to keep him in check.

3 DEX-STARR

One of the most famous and adorable members of the Red Lantern Corps, Dex-Starr was once an ordinary house cat. But when a sadist murders his beloved owner and leaves Dex to drown, a Red Lantern ring senses his rage and comes to his rescue. From that day forward, Dex's mission in life was to use the ring to find his owner's killer and make that person pay.

And we are absolutely, one hundred percent certain that this person is going to get what's coming to him one of these days. An angry cat is bad enough. An angry cat who can fly, generate force fields and vomit acid? That's the stuff of nightmares.

2 GENOCIDE

In "Rise of the Olympian," the Cheetah reanimates Wonder Woman's future corpse with dirt from the sites of Earth's many genocides. The resulting creature, appropriately named Genocide, has no empathy, no tenderness, no kindness -- in short, no positive emotions of any kind. All it feels is an unquenchable desire to hurt others in any way it can.

Genocide harbors a particular hatred for Wonder Woman. It makes a special point of ending innocent people and accosting Wonder Woman's friends, all because it knows that will hurt Diana most. Wonder Woman later throws Genocide into the ocean and leaves it to drown.

1 WOLVERINE

Hugh Jackman's portrayal aside, Wolverine is known for having several distinct characteristics. He is short, hairy, Canadian, and very, very surly. But the bad attitude is not entirely his fault. After years of being experimented on, manipulated and used by others, and misjudged even by friends, anyone would be a bit moody.

That being said, Wolverine does have a soft spot or two. Much like Batman, Wolvie claims to be a loner while simultaneously adopting every teenage misfit he comes across. But if anyone underestimates him for that reason or any other, they're probably going to find themselves with claw-shaped holes in their chest in short order.