Why Hulk vs Green Lantern Is Closer Than You'd Think, Even Though Hulk Wins

Hulk versus Green Lantern pits two of the most iconic green heroes in comics against each other, and both are essentially unlimited power sources. It comes down to unlimited rage versus unlimited willpower, and only one of them is left standing at the end.

Bruce Banner was not supposed to become a monster. He was one of the smartest men on Earth, a brilliant nuclear physicist working on a gamma bomb test for the US military when a young man named Rick Jones wandered into the test site. Banner ran out to save him, the bomb detonated, and instead of dying Banner took the full blast of gamma radiation, which rewrote his entire body on a biological level. Whenever his stress spikes or his anger explodes, Bruce Banner transforms into the Hulk.

Hulk's Strength Has No Real Ceiling and Keeps Scaling With His Rage

The Hulk is not just strong, he is a walking engine of rage powered destruction. His biggest advantage is simple: the angrier he gets, the stronger he gets. His strength is not fixed, it scales, and the longer a fight goes on the more powerful he grows. Some characters in Marvel have even suggested his power does not have a measurable upper limit, it just keeps increasing.

That scaling produces some ridiculous feats. His footsteps alone have caused tremors threatening to devastate entire regions of the United States. He has held together the tectonic plates of a planet to stop it tearing itself apart. In one clash he generated enough force to destroy a small planet, he has smashed apart asteroids bigger than Earth, and he has traded blows with beings capable of threatening entire universes.

It is not just raw lifting strength either. Hulk's punches are basically natural disasters, creating earthquakes felt hundreds of miles away and shock waves powerful enough to level massive structures. When Hulk really loses control, entire battlefields start collapsing around him.

Hulk's Raw Power Has Broken Abstract Concepts and Punched Through Spacetime Itself

What makes Hulk genuinely scary is that his strength does not just apply to physical things, it sometimes applies to things that should not even be punchable. There are moments where his raw power has broken abstract concepts and metaphysical barriers. He has punched through dimensional walls and barriers between realities, smashed through time space distortions, shattered force fields designed to contain cosmic level beings, and cracked constructs made from pure energy or conceptual matter.

There is even a moment where Hulk literally punches through spacetime, forcing his way through a sealed dimension through brute strength alone, no magic, no tech, just anger and muscle. Once his rage hits a certain level, the normal rules of physics start to stop applying to him. Space, time, energy, eventually it all becomes just another thing he can smash through, which is why characters in Marvel sometimes describe him as less of a superhero and more like a force of nature.

Hulk's Durability, Healing Factor and the Green Door Make Him Nearly Impossible to Kill Permanently

Strength is only one part of the equation. Hulk has survived nuclear explosions at point blank range, been buried under collapsing cities and walked away, been blasted into space and kept fighting, and endured the pressure and energy equivalent of a star while still moving. Even attacks from some of the most powerful heroes in Marvel barely slow him down.

If you manage to hurt him badly enough, he heals. His regenerating from destroyed organs, massive internal injuries, and severe brain damage. Eyes that are gouged out grow back, shattered bones repair themselves, and the angrier he gets, the faster his body recovers.

That ties into something deeper about Hulk. Gamma radiation in Marvel is connected to a dark cosmic force known as the one below all, a primordial entity tied to destruction and the darkest side of existence. Gamma mutates like Hulk are linked to this power whether they realize it or not, which is why Hulk has something called the green door, a metaphysical gateway connected to the realm of the one below all. When a gamma mutate dies, their soul passes through that door and eventually comes back, meaning Hulk has returned from death multiple times.

Hulk Is Also Surprisingly Fast, With a Signature Move That Levels the Battlefield

Despite being known as a brute, Hulk is surprisingly fast too. He has caught sniper bullets with his teeth, grabbed rockets mid flight, intercepted aircraft before they could escape, and kept up with characters like Thor and the Silver Surfer, who operate at faster than light speeds. Instead of flying he jumps, but those jumps can launch him miles into the sky, sometimes high enough to escape Earth's atmosphere entirely.

One of his signature moves has him slam his hands together, creating a massive shock wave of compressed air that can blast enemies away, snuff out flames, and send hurricane force winds ripping across the battlefield. Between the limitless rage scaling, insane durability, powerful regeneration, and the ability to come back through the green door, Hulk is not just another superpowered hero, he is basically a living natural disaster who does not run out of stamina and does not calm down mid battle.

Hal Jordan Is the Greatest Green Lantern Because the Ring Chose the Most Fearless Man Alive

Hal Jordan is the first Green Lantern for sector 2814 and, in the in universe consensus, the greatest Green Lantern who ever lived. The Guardians say it, his enemies say it, and the ring itself said it when it flew past the closest available candidates across the entire country to find a test pilot from Coast City. The ring does not just look for someone tough or smart, it looks for fearlessness above everything else, and nobody has ever been more genuinely completely fearless than Hal Jordan.

The Green Lantern ring runs on willpower. You can imagine literally anything and the ring builds it in hard light, and the stronger your will, the stronger everything you build becomes. Hal outputs more raw willpower than any other lantern in the universe, to the point where he once built an entire pocket universe inside his own ring using nothing but his will, calling it Will World and describing it as an infinite sea. He even managed to build his own ring completely from his own willpower. At his best, Hal should be able to stand toe to toe with the likes of Superman.

Hal Jordan's Feats Include One-Shotting Amazo and Overriding His Own Ring to Kill Krona

The ring lets Hal build literally anything as a hard light construct, a giant fist, a planet sized barrier, a cage, and he has used that to do some genuinely wild things. He has restrained Superman and knocked Clark around. He one-shotted Amazo after Amazo had already absorbed the combined stats of the entire Justice League, all their strength, speed and powers. He has built constructs the literal size of Earth, helped push the moon back into its proper orbit, and helped stop a planet on a collision course with Earth by shoving it into deep space. He has punched straight through Cyborg Superman after hitting him with a blast described as hot as the sun, and he beat a villain who was amped on the magnetic force of the entire universe.

His most impressive feat has to be one-shotting Krona, a Guardian of the universe wearing rings from all seven lantern cores at once, who had absorbed the seven emotional entities, the living embodiment of the entire emotional spectrum and the actual source of power behind every ring that has ever existed. To do it, Hal overrode his own ring's hard coded programming against killing a Guardian, meaning his willpower was simply stronger than that built in rule.

Green Lantern Can Take a Hit and Move Fast, and the Ring Does Far More Than Just Constructs

Green Lantern can definitely take a hit. He has tanked a nuclear detonation at point blank range, survived being kicked clean through a planet, and shielded both himself and Superman during a 300 megaton explosion even after being slammed into a moon hard enough to shatter it. Cyborg Superman burned half a dozen holes straight through him and he kept fighting.

Speed wise, Hal is faster than most people think. He flies from Earth to the moon almost instantaneously, passes Mars in under 15 seconds, and once caught the Reverse Flash after the speedster had already blitzed Superman and Wonder Woman in the same moment, nearly breaking the speed force barrier himself. The ring also offers full matter manipulation down to the molecular level, time travel, freezing time across a thousand miles, spatial warping, teleportation, dimensional travel, healing, intangibility and invisibility. As I see it, the ring is a universal problem solving tool with no real ceiling except Hal's imagination and willpower, and both of those are essentially limitless. "In brightest day and blackest night, there's nobody better to have that ring."

Comparing Strength: Green Lantern Hits Hard, but Hulk's Power Has No Ceiling

Green Lantern's strength and constructs get clowned on sometimes, like almost anything can break them if the plot demands it, but they really can pack a punch, and even Superman admits it. Hal has beaten Kryptonians before, including besting General Zod all up and down while under two yellow suns, which would have made Zod even more powerful than usual. He has helped stop planets from crashing into Earth, sent them flying back into deep space, and put the moon back in its proper place.

But Hulk is Hulk, and when it comes to strength, Hulk is stronger, because his strength does not have a ceiling. Worldbreaker Hulk's footsteps nearly broke the entire eastern seaboard, with two more steps threatening to lose the whole east coast. He broke a Jupiter sized planet with his punches, and the shock wave from a single punch shook the crossroads, a nexus with infinite dimensions attached to it, meaning the shock waves from one punch rippled through the entire multiverse. He destroyed Onslaught's armor with one hit, supported the weight of an entire star on his back, punched through time multiple times, powered up a planet level shield that held back Celestials, and broke the chains that bound Eternity, the living embodiment of the Marvel universe, and walked away. All of this gets worse the angrier he gets, with no real upper limit.

In crossovers, Hulk has been able to easily break Green Lantern constructs before. Green Lantern has been able to knock the Hulk around with his constructs, but that is not always a good thing, because if you are not putting Hulk down, all you are doing is making him angrier, and you do not want to make the Hulk angrier.

Comparing Durability: Hulk's Immortality Through the Green Door Meets Green Lantern's Construct Shields

Hulk is ridiculously tough. He has taken 100,000 supernovas worth of energy, tanked Black Bolt's scream, a sound that cracks planets, without going down, taken hits from Galactus, from gods like Thor and Hercules, beatings from Zeus and Thanos, and planet shattering blasts, and shrugged it all off. It also does not hurt that he has one of the best healing factors in Marvel and heals proportionally to his anger, regenerating from a literal skeleton and healing from being ripped in half. Hulk is now immortal, literally, since the green door reopened to keep him in the fight as champion of the one below all against the mother of horrors, meaning Hulk cannot be killed and will always come back.

Green Lantern's constructs are not just for strength, they also help him take a whole lot of attacks. When written properly, they might be some of the most powerful things in the universe, and it is insanely hard to get through them. He once created a full planetary shield around Earth that held back a quarter million Kryptonians. He has been hit with moon shattering blasts several times and kept fighting each time, taken hits from Lobo, Black Adam, Cyborg Superman, Superboy Prime, Superman, Wonder Woman and Darkseid, and survived supernovas fairly casually.

Comparing Speed and Versatility: Hal's Ring Gives Him Options Hulk Simply Does Not Have

Hal is an ace test pilot with a thing for speed, and sometimes he will push himself so fast his constructs begin nearly falling apart, then go even faster, almost creating speed force singularities. He can fold space with his speed, traveling across the universe in moments, and he once captured Zoom moments after Zoom had outsped Wonder Woman and made Superman look like a statue.

The best thing going for Green Lantern in this fight is that he does not have to fight one dimensionally like Hulk does. The ring is one of the most powerful weapons in the universe and Hal is one of the best at using it, meaning he can create planetary scale constructs, compress a miniature star, manipulate energy and matter on an astronomical scale, and once shrank the Earth itself down to the point where its nucleus was the size of the sun. He can teleport, turn invisible, and turn intangible. He may have the strongest willpower in the universe, having overpowered his own ring's programming to kill Krona and having created his own power ring straight out of his own willpower, becoming a nexus of willpower potentially stronger than the central power battery.

Why I Still Think Hulk Wins This Fight

There is a problem, though, and it is a pretty big one. Hal Jordan consistently fights dumb. Even though he can do almost anything he wants, he often prefers to get into a close up personal fight, even against beings far stronger than him, and that is what he has done throughout his entire career, including against the Hulk himself. If he does that here, he is just going to end up getting smashed, because Hulk is powerful enough that if he gets his hands on Green Lantern the fight is almost as good as over. If Hal fought smart and competently, Green Lantern would have plenty of ways to put Hulk down, but I do not think he is likely to do that, especially not against the current Hulk, who is stronger than he has pretty much ever been before.

Both of these characters have essentially unlimited power, unlimited rage versus unlimited willpower. But at the end of the day, I really do see this going the Hulk's way. The Hulk wins.

Who do you think actually takes this one?