The Incredible Prometheus

 This summer I'm teaching at a writing camp.  I was hired to teach two new courses to help draw in more boys into the camp:  Action/Adventure Writing and Writing the Graphic Novel.  Having never taught either of these before, I began to bone up on what was out there.

I found a book by one of my favorite comic authors, Peter David.  In his book about creating comic characters he acknowledges the draw of mythology and how most stories are echoes of mythological stories.  One parallel that he drew that I thought was interesting was The Incredible Hulk and Prometheus.

David's point is that both are tortured souls for what they brought to mankind.  Prometheus gave man fire, which was used for war and destruction as well as good things.  For his efforts he is punished by a giant eagle (or vulture) who eats his liver every day.  Bruce Banner was trying to develop gamma radiation and in order to get his funding he worked on using it for military purposes.  His punishment is to constantly turn into a mindless green monster.

The parallel is weak in that I do not believe that Stan Lee really meant to draw this parallel, but the idea is nice.