Shang-Chi Fought The Hulk Over A Dinner Check

Both Shang-Chi and The Incredible Hulk are friends and fellow Avengers, but when it comes time to pay for a meal, all bets are off and the two Marvel heroes attack with ferocity. Both characters are known for their fighting prowess, but the two are quite different: the Hulk is incredibly strong but lacks finesse while Shang-Chi is widely considered the best hand-to-hand combatant in the Marvel Universe (but obviously lacks the Hulk’s super-strength). In Totally Awesome Hulk #15, the heroes fight over an incredibly important item in an incendiary incident: a check at a Korean restaurant.

It’s worth noting that the Hulk Shang-Chi fought is not Bruce Banner. Rather, this is the new Hulk Amadeus Cho; as one of Marvel’s young super-geniuses, Amadeus was already following in Doctor Banner’s footsteps even before he acquired the powers of the Hulk. Saving the Hulk after a horrific radiation meltdown, Amadeus became incredibly strong (and as green as his superhero namesake), but retained his own intellect, neatly sidestepping the most problematic aspect of Bruce Banner’s Hulk powers: his uncontrollable rage.

In the Amadeus-centric series Totally Awesome Hulk, the young genius teams up with other Asian-American heroes including Silk, Jake-Oh, Jimmy Woo, and Shang-Chi. Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan) also appears in the issue, and together the heroes attend a bone marrow registry event. After copious amounts of signing autographs and posing for pictures, the heroes make their way to a Kalbi restaurant in the city. After exchanging some details about their personal lives (“My father’s a crime lord” says Shang-Chi solemnly), the waitress arrives with the check.

Jimmy Woo and Shang-Chi begin the skirmish (Woo even shoots Shang-Chi with a SHIELD paralyzer weapon), but Amadeus jumps into the fray and eventually wins with his hand on the check. This is a fun diversion from battling supervillains, but in some Asian cultures (and the families of the heroes) it’s quite important to be the one at the table willing to pay for the meal. This isn’t always the case with Americans, who usually pay their own way (or try avoiding paying for the meal altogether using more unscrupulous means).

The Asian team of superheroes is a welcome sight, especially after the decades of almost-exclusively white heroes dominating comics. Amadeus Cho, in particular, has a completely different attitude from Bruce Banner (who in all likelihood wouldn’t go out at all). Shang-Chi is clearly a team player (he even pays for karaoke later in the night), but the Hulk is fast enough to keep up.