If you think the Leader looks weird in Captain America: Brave New World, you should try the comics

Captain America: Brave New World never actually refers to returning Incredible Hulk character Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) as The Leader — cowardly, if you ask me. But when the supervillain’s bulbous green head is on screen, Brave New World doesn’t skimp. 

As my coworker Petrana Radulovic put it in discussing the movie’s CG, “Red Hulk’s intricately designed, visceral torso wasn’t the only overly textured body part in the movie. I could trace each wriggle of Samuel Sterns’ bulging, gamma-mutated externalized brain. (And I really wanted to clean out those wrinkles with a cotton swab.)” 

Classic comics fans may wish for the classic Leader design, where he’s got a big green eighthead and a thick, widow’s peak-ed head of hair. But I would argue that a gross-looking Leader also has a venerable pedigree in Marvel Comics. 

Who is the Leader, anyway? 

The Leader’s deal is not hard to explain. You just have to put yourself in the shoes of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in 1964, as they were trying to create the Hulk’s archnemesis, his opposite number. Where Bruce Banner was a brilliant scientist, Samuel Sterns was a dimwitted janitor in a scientific facility. And where unintentional gamma exposure gave Hulk functionally infinite strength, it gave Sterns functionally infinite intelligence. 

And where Hulk got big muscles, the Leader got a very tall head. Because his brain was so big, because he’s so smart. Hey, it’s good mid-century supervillain design! 

While the Samuel Sterns of Captain America: Brave New World hasn’t reached the towering head-height of his comic book counterpart, he makes up for it with all those gamma-mutated brain bulges, in this writer’s opinion. It’s not like The Leader’s only ever had one look, either! 

There was the time he was red for a while (In 2012’s Thunderbolts.)

And the time he ascended to another plane of existence (In 2000’s The Incredible Hulk.)

And then there was his transformation in 2018’s Immortal Hulk…

Suffice to say: It’s informative to remember that Hulk comics don’t just come from the long tradition of literature that literalizes the monster within, like Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. They also come from the long, long tradition of monster stories at Marvel Comics, ones that have given us characters like Groot and Fin Fang Foom. Monstrous forms are part and parcel of the whole thing. Whatever else is going on in Captain America: Brave New World, its grotesque character design for the Leader plays right along.