Betty Ross - Return

Return

Unknown to Betty, her father and everyone else, Talbot was still alive and being held prisoner by the Gremlin at Bitterfrost, a top secret Soviet installation in Siberia. A man named Gregori Kronski was subjected to surgery that made him a double of Talbot. The Gremlin used his Psiclone device to imprint the memories and personality of Talbot in Kronski's mind, and those of Kronski's in Talbot's. Kronski was then sent to the United States, claiming to be an escaped Talbot. However, a bomb was concealed within Kronski's body. Gremlin's plan was to use the bomb to assassinate the President of the United States when the latter came to visit Gamma Base, where Talbot was stationed. Colonel Jack D. Armbruster saved the President's life, but both Armbruster and Kronski were killed when the bomb exploded. The real Talbot was eventually later rescued by General Ross, Clay Quartermain and the Hulk.

During his time in captivity by the Gremlin, Talbot was made into a mindless husk. In order to unblock Talbot's mind, Doctor Leonard Samson had the Hulk (who was Banner under control by a special helmet) unblock what was keeping him in a mindless state. The process was a success. However, The Talbots' marriage later became strained.

When General Ross suffered a nervous breakdown, Talbot returned to the military as a Colonel and it was later revealed that he had fired a ray gun that sent the Hulk to the Sub-Atomic universe after the Hulk stormed into Gamma Base looking for Jarella, now deceased, who was cryogenically frozen. This incident proved to be the last straw in Talbot's already deteriorating relationship with Betty, and their marriage later ended in divorce. Blaming the failure of his marriage on Banner, whom he also tried to have court-martialed, Talbot died in Japan while trying to destroy the Hulk there. Betty admitted to Rick Jones afterwards that she had never stopped loving Banner all the while she was married to Talbot.

When Betty learned that her father conspired with M.O.D.O.K to kill the Hulk, Betty accused him of treason. Realizing Betty was right, Ross nearly committed suicide and then disappeared.

Banner again achieved a state in which he could control his transformations and maintain his normal personality and intelligence while in the form of the Hulk. But this time, however, Betty was upset because she wanted Banner to be rid of the Hulk, not to control him, and left him once again. Banner then briefly became romantically involved with his new assistant and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Dr. Katherine "Kate" Waynesboro. But due to the influence of the evil dream demon Nightmare, he once again lost control over the Hulk, who had become more savage than ever before, and his relationship with Kate ended shortly after.

The Hulk disappeared from Earth for an extended period, and Betty began dating a man named Ramon. Upon learning that the Hulk had been sighted on Earth once again, Betty left Ramon and returned to Gamma Base, where the Hulk was subjected to a process that split Banner and the Hulk into separate entities. Believing himself finally cured, Banner proposed to Betty, and she accepted. Betty's father appeared at the wedding, armed with a gun and demanding that the marriage not take place before shooting Rick Jones, who tried to stop him. Courageously, Betty confronted her father, accusing him of domineering her throughout her life, as well as calling him out on his hostility towards Banner over the years, and cowered him into surrendering the gun. Then finally, Banner and Betty were pronounced husband and wife.

However, Banner began dying as a result of being physically separated from the Hulk. The two were secretly merged once more and Betty soon discovered this. General Ross later died before his daughter's eyes when he sacrificed his life to destroy an unnamed mutant that nearly killed both Betty and Banner seeking a strong host to be parasitically linked to.

Betty later became distraught on learning that Banner had sometimes consciously triggered his transformation in the past and was even now willing to become the Hulk in order to deal with very menacing threats. Betty left her husband and returned to Ramon, but then changed her mind and abandoned Ramon as well. She was then captured by the Leader, who set her free after learning that she was pregnant with Banner's child, but after being tormented with terrible nightmares by the demons Nightmare and D'Spayre, Betty loses her unborn baby.

She was eventually reunited with Banner, but soon afterward the Hulk seemingly perished in a tremendous explosion at Gammatown. Believing Banner and the Hulk dead, Betty left for New York City, where she eventually began training to become a nun. Betty spent some months in a convent to recover from the ordeal, but eventually reunites with Banner. They spent years living together as fugitives until the Hulk's enemy Abomination used his own blood to poison Betty, which would appear to be the work of the Hulk himself (due to the high levels of gamma radiation present in both of their bodies). Betty was placed in cryogenic suspension by her father.

In a later retconned storyarc Betty was seemingly revived by the Leader; underwent surgery which considerably altered her appearance; was granted superhuman strength; and for a time aided her fugitive husband as his shadowy contact, Mr. Blue.

The "Tempest Fugit" story arc explains her resurrection as a reality-distorting hallucination created by Nightmare, and also introduces Betty's daughter Daydream, supposedly magically conceived when the entity raped her in her sleep. This version of events was confirmed in stories by later writers.