Today, we look into the reasons why the Hulk's pants were always purple.

In Comic Book Questions Answered, I answer whatever questions you folks might have about comic books (feel free to e-mail questions to me at brianc@cbr.com).

Reader Jay S. wrote in to ask if Marvel ever actually explained why the Hulk's pants were always purple for so many years (and how they stayed on for so long).

AN AMUSING ORIGIN FOR THE HULK'S PURPLE PANTS

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The interesting thing about the Hulk's purple pants is that when he debuted, he didn't wear purple! However, at the same time, he also wasn't green yet! In Incredible Hulk #1 (by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and Paul Reinman), the Hulk is decked out in some orange-ish garb...

Later in that issue, Banner got changed into a purple suit and we see the first purple outfit torn by the Hulk (thanks to reader Ryan, as I had totally forgotten that Banner got changed and then transformed a second time later in that first issue)...

However, in the early issues, Hulk wore torn shirts, as well. They rocked the initial look (torn shirt and torn pants) for the first three issues until finally settling on the "just the pants" look in Incredible Hulk #4 (by Kirby, Lee and Dick Ayers), but the amusing thing is that the first purple-panted Hulk is actually a robot Hulk built by the government to test their Hulk attacks on!

The Hulk, himself, rocks blue pants in that issue...

In the following issue, however, the Hulk finally wears the purple pants and that's what he wears from that point until, well, pretty much the late 1980s (give or take a few issues here and there and the time that Banner was in control of the Hulk's body in the early 1980s, but even there, he typically wore purple pants)...

So why purple pants?

Early on in the just recently finished Immortal Hulk series, writer Al Ewing had a clever explanation for the Hulk's love of purple by revealing that Bruce Banner, in college, bought a bunch of the same outfits so that he would never have to waste time thinking about what to wear and he intentionally stocked up on purple suits because he figured that they would become fashionable in the future, as seen in this flashback to Bruce's college days in Immortal Hulk #4 (by Ewing, Joe Bennett, Ruy Jose and Paul Mounts)...

This evokes a similar joke that Peter David made in Incredible Hulk #357 (by David, Jeff Purves and Jim Sanders III) where Banner discovers a surplus of stretch purple pants...

Heck, years before that, in Incredible Hulk #122 (by Roy Thomas and Herb Trimpe), Thomas joked by having the Hulk derail a train that was carrying...purple men's suits...

Funny stuff (thanks to reader Ken for suggesting the David one).

STAN LEE WEIGHS IN ON THE PURPLE PANTS

Naturally, Stan Lee was asked about this question a few times over the years. One of the last times (well, in print, at least), was in 2011 when Eric Spitznagel of Vanity Fair asked Lee a few questions about one of the pressing issues of the era, what was up with Hulk's pants?

Spitznagel

Vanity Fair: If it weren’t for the Comics Code, would the Hulk’s pants have ripped off like his shirt?

Stan Lee: I guess it probably would have. So occasionally the Code did some good things.

Vanity Fair: Did you ever try to make sense of the Hulk’s magical purple pants? Why did they always conveniently remain intact while the rest of his clothes were ripped to shreds?

Stan Lee: I just figured that Bruce Banner had probably been a friend of Reed Richards [Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four], and Reed had given him some elastic trousers. There’s an explanation for everything, but you may not be technically advanced enough to follow me on all of this.

Honestly, Stan's explanation is as good as any, really. And as Spitznagel noted, it really was the Comics Code that explained why the pants stayed on. Just like how in the 1990s when Rogue was in the Savage Land with Magneto and her clothes were torn to shreds...just with enough fabric to cover the parts of her body that you can't show in a Code-approved comic book.

THE "REAL" REASON WHY THE HULK WEARS PURPLE PANTS

Seven issues apart, in Incredible Hulk #120 and #127, editor Roy Thomas got real with fans about why the Hulk wears purple pants, which is that they wanted the Hulk to have a consistent look and since purple was what was determined early on, purple was what he got stuck with, and it was essentially his costume, just the same as any other superhero who is consistently drawn in the same costume...

I suppose it is possssssssssible that Stan Lee wrote the response in #120 and Thomas in #127, but I assume both are Thomas...

MARVEL GETS CLEVER WITH ITS EXPLANATIONS FOR THE HULK'S PURPLE PANTS

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In Incredible Hulk #160 (by Steve Englehart, Herb Trimpe and Sal Trapani), Bruce Banner gets himself a new mod suit...

but when he turns into the Hulk, his pants are back to being purple...

And here's where editor Roy Thomas really started to think outside the box. He noted in the letter column for #164 that it certainly appeared that whatever outfit the Hulk wears, it eventually becomes purple pants.

Thomas didn't theorize WHY, but a couple of years later, a later Incredible Hulk editor sort of filled in the dots while answering a different reader's query.

In Incredible Hulk #196 (by Len Wein, Sal Buscema and Joe Staton), the Hulk falls down to Earth from outer space and his purple pants notably do not burn up as he hits the atmosphere...

When a fan questioned that, Wein (or possibly Marv Wolfman, but I think Wein) responded that his take on things was that the Hulk's gamma radiation changes his clothing so that it becomes more difficult to destroy...

Wein (or Wolfman) is silent on whether that same radiation also changes the color of the pants, but when you combine it with Thomas' point about outfits always ending up purple, then that just seems like a logical thing to tie those two things together, right? You'll often see people talk about a "No-Prize" letter where a fan came up with a specific theory along these lines, but after reading over a hundred Incredible Hulk letter columns, I am going to say that that letter does not exist and that people are instead misremembering Thomas and Wein's letters FROM the editor on the topic, but you know all of the various articles that mention the "No-Prize" never actually saw the letter they're supposedly citing, instead choosing to do what I call Ouroboros linking (where basically they just all cite each other for the source).

Anyhow, there ya go, Jim! If anyone else has a comic book question, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!

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