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marvel - How do the Incredible Hulk's pants stay on but not his shirt?


I guess I can live with the fact that the Incredible Hulk changes size drastically when he transforms, but why does his shirt rip off and not his pants?


I think that we need a little better answer than "it keeps us tied to the fact that inside he's still human".



Answer



Stan Lee answered this question in an interview with Eric Spitznagel of Vanity Fair (March, 2011). You can read the transcript on ComicBookMovie.com.




VF: If it weren’t for the Comics Code, would the Hulk’s pants have ripped off like his shirt?


Stan Lee: I guess it probably would have. So occasionally the Code did some good things.


VF: Did you ever try to make sense of the Hulk’s magical purple pants? Why did they always conveniently remain intact while the rest of his clothes were ripped to shreds?


Stan Lee: I just figured that Bruce Banner had probably been a friend of Reed Richards [Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four], and Reed had given him some elastic trousers. There’s an explanation for everything, but you may not be technically advanced enough to follow me on all of this.



This is known on TV Tropes as Magic Pants.


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