INCREDIBLE HULK #5 (1962)
by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby
You might wonder from the cover who exactly is Tyrannus.
Don’t worry: the very first page has a hilarious explanation!
This is set a long time before everybody knew about the Hulk’s real identity, so Bruce Banner is put in charge of figuring out a way to deal with him. And nobody seems find it weird that the scientist working for the military has as an assistant a random teenager without any scientific background whatsoever.
Between Rick Jones being accepted as Banner’s assistant and the similarly young Human Torch being in the crew of a spaceship, no wonder Peter Parker felt left alone: he was the only 1960s teenager NOT being part of a secret mission!
Also apparently Bruce Banner answers only to the President!? What kind of sense does that make!? I could understand if he was just a scientific consultant, but WTF!?
Speaking of things that make no sense: Betty just heard her father say that he knows how she feels about Banner… but THE VERY NEXT PANEL she angst about the fact that he must never know!
With the mother of all whiplash, we transition from THAT to Tyrannus spying on them to exploit her love for Banner. So yeah, she’s being so secretive about it that it’s public knowledge IN AN UNDERGROUND SECRET LAIR.
One of the reasons Tyrannus is often considered a poor substitute for Fantastic Four villain Mole Man is that they are both rulers of an underground kingdom with an army of humanoid monsters.
But it’s actually Mole Man who stole this trick for him: the “Moloids” would not appear until Fantastic Four #22, the second Mole Man story, which has a cover date a full year after this one!
So, uhm… we don’t learn how old Tyrannus is just yet, but considering he namedrops Merlin, he should’ve had a huge head start against nuclear energy!!!
So naturally after centuries of planning, Tyrannus is now ready to… make the Hulk jealous.
It’s an… eventful date.
After Banner has turned into the Hulk, he’s able to follow Tyrannus underground. 
However Tyrannus is able to knock out the Hulk with volcanic gas, in a scene depicted with a very nice effect we don’t see very often.
See, Tyrannus knows from previous issues that the Hulk cares for Betty, so by keeping her hostage he can control him.
Also as you can see, the concept of Hulk as a gladiator goes a looooooong way back.
I need to remind you that Tyrannus has planned CENTURIES for this.
Luckily for Tyrannus, this is only the fifth Hulk story so he’s not unstoppable yet.
This is impressive and all, but I get the feeling his slaves and his machines could’ve done all of this in pretty much the same time.
But I’m sure Tyrannus won’t completely throw away having the Hulk at his disposal before he’s done anything useful, right?
Rick Jones rescues Betty, and I have to love his attitude of “Who else could it be, us two and your father are the only supporting characters of this book”!
They free the Hulk, and when Tyrannus tries to stop them from leaving… he does what Hulk does.
Well isn’t that a convenient amnesia! It’s only fair she forgets… wait, what’s the point of making Betty forget everything? She didn’t learn anything about the Hulk!!!
To be fair, if I was part of this story, I would also like to forget it.
Interesting letters: you have to love the fact that “the whole story makes no sense” is considered a positive. This guy knows what the Silver Age is about!
Historical significance: 3/10
Tyrannus is not exactly a high profile Hulk villain, and this issue is not even that influential on his legacy.
Silver Age-ness: 10/10
On the DC scale this would be nothing, but… the immortal leader of an underground kingdom enslaves the Hulk by threatening his love interest only to get bored with him before he does anything!
Does it stand the test of time? 3/10
The Hulk serial on Tales To Astonish is one of the best material produced by Marvel in the 60s. His first series, which only lasted 6 issues, is… rough. This story in particular is one of the weaker ones: the villain is incredibly one-dimensional, we don’t learn anything significant about Hulk, Banner is just boring, and his supporting cast is made of stereotypes. There’s some fascinating artwork by Kirby, but even he is tame by his standards.
How close is this to the modern character? 6/10
The look is there (it’s a Kirby design after all), but the story doesn’t even cover the most interesting fact about Tyrannus… he’s actually the last Roman Emperor!
It’s baffling that he keeps being used over and over again with the same role of Mole Man. Couldn’t we see him in other time periods as well? There’s no need to always use the same old Kang or Apocalypse when this guy has been around since the 400s.
He’s also unusual because it’s quite rare to see an actual historical figure as a major supervillain.
Because Romulus Augustus was actually a real person, even though the comics insist of calling him “Romulus Augustulus” which was actually just a derogatory nickname.