Warning: contains spoilers for Immortal Hulk #47!
While fans love to debate which hero deserves the title of Marvel's strongest Hulk has become Midgard's God of Wrath, Captain Marvel tangles with his ally Red Harpy, aka Betty Ross, confirming that despite her own incredible powers, there's no match for gamma strength.
Marvel's critically acclaimed Immortal Hulk has acted as both a retrospective of Bruce Banner's comic history and a reinvention of the Hulk, taking the loose threads of the Green Goliath's comic tapestry and weaving them into a tale of cosmic danger and misunderstood monstrosity. With plans to hollow Hulk out and use his immense power to end the cycle of cosmic rebirth, the One-Below-All recently kidnapped Bruce Banner from his own mind, leaving the Savage Hulk and Sunshine Joe personas to survive without their usual gamma strength. Thankfully, Joe subsequently gained access to cosmic radiation, creating a new, beefed-up Hulk, who returns to life only to be accosted by the Avengers.
Seemingly infected by the Hulk's own rage, the Avengers offer no mercy, and Hulk is only saved from their wrath by the arrival of the Red Harpy and the new Gamma Flight team. ive of Hulk and Joe, but not Bruce Banner, Betty Ross has taken to remaining in her Red Harpy form whenever her former partner is around, explaining that it's her true form, and one in which she feels more able to communicate. Pinning Captain Marvel, she attempts to talk She-Hulk into saving Hulk from his former allies, only for Carol Danvers to unleash an energy blast while Ross is distracted. When She-Hulk objects, saying Red Harpy was willing to talk rather than fight, Captain Marvel replies, "To you. And while she was doing that, she was crushing my rib cage... We're not all gamma people, Jen."
Carol's assessment that "gamma people" possess a unique level of strength and invulnerability is a fascinating comment that illustrates just how incredible the Hulk's strength is. While Red Harpy isn't as strong as the Hulk, her grip was apparently an immediate danger to Captain Marvel, and one she couldn't break through muscle alone. Given Captain Marvel has only recently been given the prominence she deserves, fans aren't as clear on Carol Danvers' strength as with characters like Superman or Spider-Man, and her rare Binary form and MCU depiction have further muddied the water.
Given her power to redirect energy, a sufficient power source should allow Captain Marvel to vastly increase her strength, and linking herself to a white hole has allowed Carol to become Binary in the past, turning her from an earthly protector to a cosmic hero who can withstand the explosion of a planet. Despite this, Carol rarely assumes her Binary form, and The Immortal Hulk #25 showed that Hulk's ultimate form - the Breaker of Worlds - is capable of wiping out planets with its bare hands, meaning that even in the heroes' rarer, powered-up forms, gamma strength still exists on a whole other level.
Like Thor, Captain Marvel may be outmatched by the Hulk's strength, but she's still capable of hurting him, and he only escapes when She-Hulk, won over by Red Harpy, betrays her team and helps her cousin escape. The joy of clashing heroes is always in seeing who wins this time, and how they do it, but in the Avengers' battle with the Hulk, Captain Marvel makes it clear that when it comes to superstrength, there are gamma people, and then there's everybody else.
