Rick Jones, the teenager whose dare created the Hulk and assembled the Avengers
In Marvel's very first Hulk comic, a teenage orphan named Rick Jones drives onto a gamma bomb test site on a dare. Bruce Banner shoves him into a trench and takes the blast himself. Guilt keeps Rick at the monster's side, and a garbled radio call from his friends later brings the original Avengers together.
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced Rick in Hulk No. 1 in May 1962. Raised in an orphanage after losing his parents young, he became the only person who knew Banner's secret. In one story he could even steer the Hulk with his mind, though the creature's volatility eventually pushed him away. He then started the Teen Brigade, a nationwide network of teenagers on ham radios. When Loki tampered with their message meant for the Fantastic Four, it reached Iron Man, Ant-Man, the Wasp and Thor instead, and the Avengers were born.
Over the following decades Rick served as a sidekick to one hero after another. Captain America, still haunted by Bucky Barnes, reluctantly let Rick don his late partner's costume, and that training helped him survive among superheroes. Later he was bonded to the Kree warrior Mar-Vell through wristbands called Nega-Bands, the two swapping places between Earth and the Negative Zone. During the Kree–Skrull War a hidden power in Rick, the Destiny Force, briefly let him halt both alien fleets.
He has repeatedly gained and lost powers. Hoping to create a being that could restrain the Hulk, he dosed himself with gamma radiation, a plan that backfired, and in a 1986 arc he became a Hulk-like creature. In 2008 writer Jeph Loeb and artist Ed McGuinness turned him into A-Bomb, a blue gamma giant resembling the Abomination. After Banner's alternate persona Doc Green stripped his powers, Rick reinvented himself as a hacktivist.
His life offscreen was eventful too: he wrote an autobiography titled Sidekick and hosted a talk show with his wife, Marlo Chandler. On screen, Luke Perry voiced him in the 1996 Incredible Hulk cartoon, and in a 2013 series built around the Hulk's team of agents, Seth Green voiced his A-Bomb form.
Source: Rick Jones (character)
