This is Wedding Bells Are Ringin', a month-long examination of notable comic book weddings, since this is June, after all, and that's a time for weddings. I let you all vote and you voted for this feature to spotlight real AND fake weddings. I've decided, then, to only go with weddings that actually ended with marriages, whether dreams or not (in other words, everything but called off weddings).

Today, we look at the tumultuous wedding between Bruce Banner and Betty Ross in Incredible Hulk #219 (by John Byrne, with background inks by Keith Williams).

In Incredible Hulk #315, Byrne had Bruce Banner separated from the Hulk and became a distinct person. At the end of that issue, while Bruce is still recovering from the separation, he is visited by Betty Ross, his old love!

The problem is that Doc Samson couldn't bear to see the Hulk just taken in and experimented on, so Samson freed the Hulk. The issue there is that now, without Banner to anchor it, the Hulk was just a mindless savage and Samson realized he had to capture the Hulk. Banner, as well, felt a responsibility to catch the Hulk, so Banner actually formed a "Hulkbusters" team.

In Incredible Hulk #319, Byrne split the issue into two panels on each page, with one panel showing a vicious battle between the Hulk and the Hulkbusters and Doc Samson and the other panel showing Rick Jones returning to the series to act as Bruce's best man at the wedding.

However, tragedy strikes when Betty's father, Thunderbolt Ross, who was thought to have killed himself, shows up with a gun! Rick tries to stop him and he SHOOTS RICK!!

Betty, though, in an epic teardown, breaks her father down and gets the gun from him...

Rick, though, doesn't want the wedding to stop on his account...

And ultimately, Bruce and Betty agree to just finish the ceremony...

And that is the bizarre way that Bruce Banner and Betty Ross tied the knot, with the father of the bride moping in the background and the best man on the ground, bleeding from a gunshot wound. Nothing is ever simple for ol' Bruce Banner!

If any one has suggestions for a future wedding spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com