Fictional Character Biography
Jim Wilson first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #131 as an angry young man who befriends the Hulk. Throughout the years, Jim Wilson would often appear as a friend of Bruce Banner, following Banner/Hulk throughout much of the 1970s as one of the few people that Banner could trust. The Incredible Hulk #232 revealed that Sam Wilson, the superhero Falcon, was Jim's uncle.
In The Incredible Hulk #388, Wilson enlists Rick Jones to play a benefit concert at a hospice for AIDS patients. On the drive from the airport, Wilson reveals to Jones that he is HIV-positive, and that his girlfriend left him. Wilson also informs Jones that an L.A. mob boss named Lang hired some thugs to kill Jefferson Wolfe, the "longtime companion" of his son, Tyler Lang, who is also HIV-positive. Lang blames Wolfe for giving Tyler the disease, and deeply resents the fact that Wolfe still appears in good health himself. When that fails (thanks to some timely help from the Falcon), the mob boss hires a supervillain named Speedfreek to crash the charity concert and kill Wolfe. During the assassination attempt, the palms of Jones' hands are badly slashed by Speedfreek, and Wilson receives a bloody chest wound. Rick is afraid to touch Wilson's wound, and after the Hulk defeats Speedfreek, it is up to him to rush Wilson to a hospital. Jones and the Hulk later secure evidence to send the mob boss to prison.
Wilson is again seen in The Incredible Hulk #420, in which he is attacked by a mob protesting the fact that a court has ordered an HIV-infected boy to be allowed into a public school. The Hulk is able to rescue Wilson from the mob, and takes him to the hi-tech medical facilities at the Mount, the secret headquarters of the Pantheon, the superhero group which the Hulk was a member of at the time. He learns that Wilson actually has AIDS now, and has had it for some time. In addition to the broken ribs he sustained in the mob attack, he is suffering from pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, and does not have long to live. Remembering the blood transfusion that the Hulk gave his cousin, Jennifer Walters (which turned her into the She-Hulk), Wilson asks Bruce Banner to give him a transfusion of his blood, hoping that the Hulk's blood would act as a cure to the virus. Banner initially refuses to take the risk of creating another monster, but eventually pretends to be giving Wilson a blood transfusion. Wilson reveals in private to Dr. Harr, the attending physician caring for him, that he was not fooled by Bruce's ruse, but played along anyway. Shortly afterward, Jim Wilson succumbs to the disease and dies.
After Wilson's death, Bruce donates a large sum of money to the hospice that Wilson worked at in order to allow them to comfortably exist for the next few decades.
Jim Wilson's father, Gideon Wilson, inexplicably blames the Hulk for Jim's death and joins Gamma Corps to seek revenge, although in the end he admitted to himself and the Hulk that he only blamed the Hulk for his son's death in order to avoid facing his own guilt for his failures as a father.
Read more about this topic: Jim Wilson (comics)
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