The Hulk returns to having his own title after a forty issue run sharing space with Giant-Man and then Sub-Mariner in Tales to Astonish. As Marvel was wont to do back in the Seventies, instead of starting the character out in his own title starting with issue one (again), they had the Hulk continue with the Tales to Astonish numbering. Therefore, by the end of Volume II of the Hulk in 1990s (i.e. the Hulk comic we all grew up with) on issue 475, the Hulk had actually only spanned sixty comics minus that number, so all in all, this second run of the Hulk only lasted 360 issues before Marvel pulled the plug and restart Hulk again with issue 1 in a title simply called Hulk.

With issue 102 of The Incredible Hulk, both Roy Thomas and Herb Trimpe would stay with the comic for at least thirty issues before the personnel was mixed up again. Thomas' contributions to the Hulk adventures were very important as he finally lifted Hulk out of the Cold War corner Lee, Kirby and Ditko had painted him into. Trimpe's covers fully represented the kind of adventures Hulk was going to have inside the comic, unlike the covers of Tales to Astonish which were undynamic and often cryptic to the stories inside. Thomas created and borrowed powerful villains from the Marvel Universe for Hulk to battle: Sandman, Mandarin, the Inhumans, Rhino and many more. The Leader and his creations were not presented as much as they were represented with flair by Trimpe who excelled at making Hulk's enemies look more like equal combantants rather than suggestive, probable challenges for the Hulk.