The One Below All is the reason Bruce Banner cannot stay dead, and that fact should bother you more than it does.

For decades the Hulk was a science accident with anger issues. Then Al Ewing pulled a curtain back and showed us a green door in the floor of reality, with something enormous breathing behind it.

That something is not a supervillain. It does not scheme, it does not gloat, and it does not want a throne. It wants everything to stop.

Table of Contents
Who or What Is the One Below All
The Below Place and the Green Door
The Origin: How God Got a Hulk
Brian Banner, the Leader, and the Bodies It Wears
One Above All vs One Below All: A Side by Side Look
Where the Story Stands Now
The Big Question: Is It Actually Evil
FAQ
Related Reads

Who or What Is the One Below All

The One Below All is a malevolent cosmic entity that rules the Below Place, described as the bottom layer of Hell and the lowest point of reality itself, and it is the dark counterpart of the One Above All, Marvel's supreme creator. It was created by writer Al Ewing and artist Joe Bennett during their 2018 run on The Immortal Hulk.

Worth flagging honestly: reference sites disagree on its exact debut issue, with some citing The Immortal Hulk #4 and others #5, "In Every Mirror," which is the more commonly accepted debut. The groundwork, the Green Door and the Below Place, was actually laid earlier in Avengers #684.

Here is the part that makes it genuinely unnerving. It has no mind of its own. Canon describes it as a creature of terrible desires and nothing else, which is why it needs to borrow a personality, a body, and a soul to wear like a mask before it can act directly in our world.

The Below Place and the Green Door

Gamma radiation in Marvel is not just physics anymore. There is a mutagenic third form of gamma energy, and it is an emanation of the One Below All leaking out of the Below Place.

That single retcon rewires the entire Hulk mythos. When a gamma mutate dies, the soul crosses into the Below Place through the Green Door, waits, and then returns to life through another Green Door with no memory of what it saw down there. Hulk, She Hulk, Abomination, Doc Samson, the Leader; all of them are on the same cosmic subscription plan.

The bitter irony is that the door cuts both ways. Bruce Banner's gamma bomb cracked the first Green Door open and infused him with the entity's power, and that same door is the barrier keeping the thing behind it from walking out. Every resurrection is also a knock.

The Origin: How God Got a Hulk

This is where the lore turned from horror story into theology, and it happened years after Ewing left the book.

Phillip Kennedy Johnson's Incredible Hulk run gave us the backstory. The One Above All created everything, with one exception: a being called the Mother of Horrors, later named Vinruviel, who sprang from no creator but herself. She corrupted creation, and when the One Above All came to confront her, she wounded him and infected him with her corruption. That infection produced the first manifestation of the One Below All.

What followed was not justice. It was a tantrum with the power of God behind it. The entity burned her children, gods and demons and titans alike, tore a void into the fabric of creation, chained her at the bottom of it, and left the corpses of her offspring arranged around the prison as a warning. Then it receded, and the One Above All was left ashamed of what was now inside him.

So when Immortal Hulk #50 revealed the twist, that the One Above All and the One Below All are the same being, it landed as tragedy rather than shock. Marvel's God has a Hulk. The Hulk is just the smaller version of the same problem.

Brian Banner, the Leader, and the Bodies It Wears

Because it cannot act alone, the entity's history is really a history of hosts.

The Leader's arc is the best horror beat in the whole saga. He spent years trying to harness the thing, and the moment he succeeded, it simply wore him. In the finale, Savage Hulk and Joe Fixit tore the depowered Sterns out of it, and Jackie McGee, a reporter with new gamma abilities, landed a blow on Marvel's dark god.

One Above All vs One Below All: A Side by Side Look

The "who wins" debate is a trap, and fans have been arguing it in circles for years. They are two aspects of one entity, so neither can overpower the other; as the lore phrases it, as the One Above All it builds, as the One Below All it breaks, and it breaks so it can build again.

If you want the full ladder, our Marvel cosmic hierarchy breakdown from Galactus to the One Above All puts every tier in order, and our piece on the One Above All as Marvel's actual God covers the creator side of the coin.

Where the Story Stands Now

The Green Doors closed at the end of Immortal Hulk, which severed the connection and left the entity trapped, and that felt like an ending until Marvel showed us the cost.

Incredible Hulk #16 revealed that the One Below All had been using the Green Door to keep watch on the Mother of Horrors' children and hold them dormant, so shutting the door did not lock evil away; it took the guard off duty and let the Age of Monsters begin.

From there the entity's absence became the plot. In Incredible Hulk #30, the Eldest tore Bruce out of the Hulk's body, opened her mother's prison, found her dead, and consumed the remains, and the closing narration spelled out the new status quo: the Green Door shut, the One Below All gone, the Mother of Horrors gone. That launched Infernal Hulk in November 2025, a run that has since put the creator himself on the page and is building toward Hulk War in 2027. If you want the wider family tree, try our every Hulk form ranked by power.

The Big Question: Is It Actually Evil

Immortal Hulk #50 refuses to give you a clean answer, and that is why the run holds up.

The entity destroys so creation can start over. By that logic it is not a villain; it is a function, the cosmic equivalent of a controlled burn. But the origin undercuts the tidy version, because the first manifestation was rage and shame, not policy, and God hid it in the basement rather than own it.

Then the book hands the question to the Hulk. Asked whether he would be Geburah, severity in service of balance, or Golachab, burning destruction for its own sake, he answered by saving the Leader, the man who had tortured him for years. The thing behind the green door never got that choice, because it never had a self to choose with. Bruce Banner did, and he used it on mercy. That is the whole thesis of the saga in one panel.

FAQ

Who is stronger, the One Above All or the One Below All?

Neither, because they are the same entity expressing opposite functions. Immortal Hulk #50 established that the One Below All is the dark aspect of the One Above All, so a straight fight is not really coherent in canon.

Is the One Below All the strongest villain in Marvel?

By raw scale, yes, it sits above Hell lords like Mephisto, and canon states its power in the physical world greatly eclipses theirs even while sealed. Whether it counts as a villain is debatable, since it acts as a balancing force rather than a schemer.

What is the Green Door in Marvel?

A metaphysical barrier connecting the Below Place to the real world. Dead gamma mutates pass through it, wait in the Below Place, and return to life through another door with no memory of the trip.

Which comic should I read first?

The Immortal Hulk by Al Ewing and Joe Bennett, all 50 issues, ending in October 2021. Follow it with Phillip Kennedy Johnson's Incredible Hulk and Infernal Hulk for the current era.

Will the One Below All appear in the MCU?

Nothing has been announced, and commentators have long argued the concept is too abstract for the films, so treat any casting or movie rumor as speculation until Marvel Studios says otherwise.

Related Reads

• The One Above All, Explained: Marvel's Actual God
• Marvel Cosmic Hierarchy: Who Actually Sits Above Galactus?
• Every Hulk Form, Explained: Ranked by Power
• Living Tribunal Powers: The Complete Guide to Marvel's Cosmic Judge
• Who Can Actually Beat Galactus?