Quote Originally Posted by Keltest View Post
Given that real life gamma rays don't turn people into green monsters based on their personal demons, I don't think Marvel gamma radiation is the same thing, or intended to be the same thing.
1: It was back in the 60s when this was all being done the first time. While Bruce was mutated by a "Gamma bomb," his arch-nemesis The Leader gained his superhuman intellect and psychic powers because he was a janitor at a laboratory conducting chemical research and was tasked with disposing of canisters containing waste material. One of the canisters was faulty and cracked open and radioactive material inside mutated him.

2: Per more recent comics, you need a specific genetic marker (the "gamma gene") or something that emulates its properties to become a Hulk. Otherwise, you'll just ****ing die.

3: Even more recent comics, while attaching overtly supernatural aspects to Gamm Mutates as part of a general trend of lampshading the "science doesn't work that way" tendencies of older comics as well as a recurring theme of supers being in the middle ground where conventional science overlaps with magic, the mystical properties of gamma radiation in the marvel universe are explicitly in addition to their IRL scientific properties. The mystical whoohah that turns people with the right genetic factors into metaphors for their own mental issues is referred to as "the secret third form of light" with real-life properties(being a particle or a wave most prominently) being summarized before going into detail about the new ones.

4: Further supporting this point: There are people who have powers related to Gamma Radiation who are not hulks and do not have the same properties to their powers as Hulks. Quiet prominently, Spider-Man, whose radioactive blood lets off a radiation signature that is not only explcitly referred to as gamma, but is explcitly of an identical frequency as the radiation let off by The Hulk which has been a plot point in a few crossover comics.