Let's Talk Sam

Oh I know a lot of you have been waiting for this one because if anything "why do you love this character so much ? It's so unusual" is the question I got the most over my life, on internet but also IRL. Why would you love a villain ? Why this one ?

And that's a good question because for years I've been completly unable to answer that, it was very random, or so I thought. Though now, after a decade, I think I do understand.

So let's dive in my own life and talk about Sam Sterns.
it's gonna be long and clumsy lol be warned

I started reading comics very late. I'm French and it was not a common thing here. We always had comics but it wasn't a common thing (it's still not that popular but it's way easier to find any here), my generation would only know comics through 90s cartoons such as Batman, the Justice League, Spider-Man, X-Men and Hulk. I don't remember watching Hulk but I know it was a thing because of the channel name showing up in old VHS, but I perfectly remember everything else.
So most of us only knew Justice League members, X-Men and Spidey and that's it. After that we got Batman, X-Men and Spidey movies that kinda reinforce that.
It was only through the MCU that we really started finding comics on sale everywhere here, I think, or maybe I didn't pay attention before that because I was just not into it.

When I was 26-27, I decided to get better. Long story short I have a lot of severe health issues so I spent 10 years of my life doing pretty much nothing but trying to survive the pain and the depression. It's not that I don't want to talk about this part of my life but rather that I don't remember it so I can't. It's not very interesting anyway.
At some point I got better and in order to rebuild my body I had to do 45min of training bike and if you do soft cardio you know how incredibly BORING it can be so I was watching tv as I was training.
It was the French Disney XD back then and it would air Ultimate Spider-Man and Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H., which was my very first introduction to Sam. I just remember watching the episode where Devil Dinosaur go giant and thinking "this evil dude would be kinda handsome if it wasn't for his ugly-ass giant forehead" and that was it, I didn't really care that much about him, nor about the Hulk show itself. But Marvel somehow made me feel better back then, MCU and Marvel cartoons were the first thing I could watch without having panic attack so once I was done watching everything I wanted more and I started reading comics.

My older brother only had two back then, old Iron Man and old Hulk, I took Hulk because I always loved these old Hollywood monsters vibe. When I was a kid I was so into Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, werewolves, good ol' ghost stories with victorian haunted mansions and such. I don't know why but it's something I always loved and when I think about it most of my fav medias were related to this kind of aesthetic.
I'll probably make a Let's Talk Monsters another time but basically I always had a huge huge thing for this kind of horror (or just aesthetic, sometimes it's not horror) featuring monsters and I always had a very very deep soft spot for mad scientists. So of course, when I had the choice between Tony Stark and Bruce Banner I took the Bruce Banner road, even if I liked MCU Tony waaaaay more than Bruce back then.

So I read the first issues of Hulk, before it was published in Tales to Astonish and after that I went straight up to the Red Hulk era (so Fall of the Hulks, World War Hulks) because it had characters I already knew through Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. such as Red Hulk himself, Skaar, A-Bomb, She-Hulk. I wasn't thinking about Sam yet, I didn't even know he was the main villain of the Fall of the Hulks/World War Hulks era, I thought my brain would focus on the Hulk family that I already knew and liked.

But instead it focused on Sam.

It was really wild and weird, I always had hyperfixations but they were always short and I would often change and go back to some, like a circle. I'd be into something and have it consume my whole life for a month or so and go to something else the month after and have it consume me again etc... And there was always a reason.
For Sam it was different, I didn't know why, I didn't understand why and most importantly that burning passion I felt for him never vanished. To this day I still love him like the first days I was reading and discovering him even if I know everything already.

And I often wondered why. I guess there's a lot of reasons.

1) Sam is a villain

Let's take some time to talk about villains and what make them so interesting and loved.
There's a few reasons that can make you like a villain. Sometime one of these reason is enough, sometimes it's all of them. Let's talk about that first.

Villains are unforgettable. Good villains at least. Villains are meant to elevate the hero, without them no story, our heroes have no way to prove themself, to grow, to learn, to shine and even to redeem themself sometimes. So they have to be strong, threatening, they have to feel powerful enough to have us wonder how our hero will beat them, they must push them to their limits and beyond and even question the Heroes' moral. Heroes grow through them and if we grow through heroes who grow through villains then we grow through villains as well.

They must be impressive and unforgettable and therefore have a good writing and an elaborate look. They should make you feel as threatened as the hero and that goes through a lot of codes and symbolics that are meant to just haunt your mind.

If you look at Disney Villains, you'll see how unique and different they all look like. A fun fact about this is how Hans from Frozen is hated because he looks so "normal" (aka like a casual Prince) and I think that's super interesting on a design note, people expected him to be "boring" and "a Prince" because people developped some kind of boredom thoward heroes who are all "alike" (especially in Disney, again, because they all answer the same beauty norms but we'll talk about that later below) and maybe because of that impossible 100% virtuous personality that makes us feel like losers when we fuck up. And I think Hans actually had a good design because he was meant to trick you and annoy you, he was meant to be unlovable (so highly annoying "oh yet another Prince") but he was meant to make you believe in his kindess, so he had the design of a Prince and they used the boredom toward Princes as well to make him unlovable. It's a very simple design choice that worked very well, he looked nothing like a villain.
It's all about the look. It's part of why I love villains so much as someone who was meant to be a chara designer haha.

But look alone isn't enough to have a good villain, that's why you have incredibly cool look and mediocre villains or very good villains with an average look. So why do they feel so cool ?

Because they're so powerful, so outstanding, threatening, smart. They're the embodiment of power but more than that villains often feel like freedom in the way they can and will do whatever they want as long as it serves them. Villains are everything we wish we could be.
Villainy is just incredibly badass.

Incredible Hulk 281 (1983) written by Bill Mantlo pencil by Sal Buscema

Villainy is appealing. Yes, villainy is highly seducing. No matter who you are, you suffered injustice at least once in your life, people hurt you, made you felt miserable. And you can't just be ok with the suffering, deep inside you'll always crave vengeance and power. To stop being nice and just whatever we want as long as it serves us.

So there's something truly satisfying about all these villains going rampage and destructive.
We all wanted to be a villain at some point of our life. Keeping negative emotions burried inside of us isn't good, these emotions are here to protect us, we need them. That's why we enjoy horror and violence in fiction, it's an outlet that help us deal with violent pulsions and negative emotions. So of course watching a villain burning the world down feels good sometime, through them you feel avenged and it feels kinda good so even if we try to not admit it, we like projecting into them. That's why we can love villains like Darth Vader who commit genocide. Projecting to them is like being able to go rampage without really hurting or destroying anyone. It's pretty healthy when you think about it, being able to avenge ourself without hurting anyone. Being able to hate without hating anyone. Having power without the consequences. Destroying the unfairness of the World through them. Feeling their wrath.

Villains question our world and moral. You have two kind of villains. The evil villain who does villain shit for the sake of being evil and the tragic villain or villain with good motive.

In both case, villains are used to point something bad or unfair about our world.

That's why I'd honestly rather trust people who are into villains than people who are into heroes. And I'm talking about being into VILLAINS, not the weird "this villain is bad but they're right, they're the real hero #joker" or "it's not their fault if they're evil", I'm talking about people who are totally ok with their villains being bad and who know they're bad and who enjoy the villainy.
Villains teach us limits. They teach us that everybody can turn bad and that no matter how "well" you mean you're no better than anyone else. They push you to always question yourself and your own behaviors. And as I said above, you also learn to question the world you live in rather than accepting it. Villains push you to question yourself and the world while having you keep a limit to not fall into bigotry, egocentrism and so to grow with an open mind. Because you know that what killed your villains was always the lack of self questioning, thinking they were better than everyone else leading them to think they were all powerful, ignoring their weakness and ultimatly failing and falling.
There's a very good Sam moment in Immortal Hulk when he becomes all powerful because he understand that :

Immortal Hulk 34, writing by Al Ewing, pencil by Butch Guice

And I love this moment, it's one of the best Sam moment ever, he lost his gamma and he realized how his own egocentrism prevented him to grow, to become stronger and smarter. In this moment, Sam is learning about modesty, he's learning that the only thing preventing him to get stronger was himself, because his arrogance had him think he already know everything, that he was always right, preventing him from learning. He understood that his ego was his own enemy and it's a life lesson I love and embrace. Being smart is admitting that you know nothing and nothing is more dangerous than idiots who think they know everything.

If you're aware that you don't know shit and accept it you'll open your mind to learn, you'll learn through your own failure, you'll grow, your vision with evolve with yourself. That's why the word "woke" was created, it was never meant to be insulting (and it's still not), it means you're aware that you don't know shit and need to learn, because in order to learn you need to put your ego aside and listen to others, you need to stop being the center of attention, it's that simple, that's also why it says a lot about people who use that as an insult and a "virus". It's not about pushing some imaginary agenda, it's about learning and understanding people, growing with respect.
As I said, even villains have good lessons to share, we also learn through their own experience.

I remember some guy saying that Frollo from the Hunchback of Notre-Dame saved his life because through Frollo he recognized his own behavior and misogyny. And it's a very interesting and common approach, loving a character because through their toxicity you question your own. 

While people who are into heroes think "saving the word" and by saving the world I mean their very twisted vision of what a world should be, is a good enough reason to do what they do, because they're rightful and therefore they're RIGHT. That's why most bigoted people are into heroes (especially vigilents because they don't answer laws). Captain America, Superman, Punisher, Batman, they're so loved by bigots and litteral neo-nazis because these people think they're saving the world and that's a good enough reason to do what they do. They think they're good and if they're good they're right and if they're right then there's no reason to question themself, nor the world they're trying to "protect" from the evil marginalized people who want to steal everything from them, because that's the thing about heroes, they're often rotten by bigotry. As I said above heroes often (it's less true today but it used to be way too accurate) follow a society standard in both their look and attitude, the overly seductive muscular manly man idiot who has a kind heart even if he's written as a jerk, the very hot and naive damsel in distress with childish traits. They're not meant to help you grow, they're meant to teach you how you should grow to fit in.
People who are into villains learn that everyone, including themself, can become a villain no matter how good they intention are, they learn the limit between freedom and pure bigotry and hatred while people who are into heroes learn that it's ok to hate and punish whoever they see as bad. And the bad is often the marginalized.

Villains are marginalized. Have you noticed that most of the people who are into villains are marginalized people ? LGBT+, women, poc, disabled, neuroA etc... While most grown-ass white cishet dudes are into heroes.
There's a reason to that (nb : remember that "most of" doesn't mean "every single person" alright ? So don't get angry like "I DON'T", it's not about you).
It's less true nowaday but when I was a kid villains were margianlized. In their appearence, in their personality. You had POC inspired villains, you had LGBT+ inspired villains. Most of them were still white and straight because they didn't want any problem I guess (or because they didn't want to put poc or LGBT+ in their projects at all) but most of them are either poc or LGBT+ coded (or both).
You take Disney for exemple. Most men are thin, mannered, sophisticated, effeminate, they're the opposite of what a good man should be (strong, tall, viril). Most of them are homophobic gay clichés.
Women, in the other hand, most of them are either single or widow, often too old to have kids, loud, independant. They're the opposite of what a good woman should be (able to bear a child, pretty, young, silent and submissive). Most of them are homophobic lesbians and mean feminists clichés.

And that's the thing with fiction, especially kids fiction, it's here to give a moral and to teach you social codes.
Heroes, especially super heroes, often defend a statut quo. Even if they question it they never really try to change things, they teach you that violence is never the answer and yet, if History taught you one thing it's how without violence none of us (especially marginalized people) would have rights atm. Heroes protect an established order while villains question it.
And you don't want people to question society and your own statut, do you ? So to avoid having them think "damn, this villain is right" you give them Supremacist ideas so kids will be taught that questionning our society = nazi. And it works. How many time a day do you see people online saying that poc, LGBT+, feminists and such are the real nazis out there for wanting the right to exist while throwing litteral nazi supremacist ideas themself ? Because that's what they're taught.
That's why villains are smart. Because questioning the world you live in is "bad", imagine realizing how unfair the world is.

Sam is a perfect exemple of all that. He's very gay coded, to the point Marvel themself made jokes about his sexuality. His relationship with men, especially Bruce Banner, are often very ambiguous and that's normal, Sam's power is his charism and his ability to seduce people rather than his brain, that's why he's called the Leader (someone charismatic) rather than "Super Brain" or whatever, 'cause that's how he has people following him, he's a form of Devil through temptation and Immortal Hulk made that point pretty clear but I'll make a "Let's Talk" about it later. So of course he's flirty and seductive with everyone. If anything Sam should be bisexual.
And it's not even something Immortal Hulk established, it's way older than that. Look at how he's behind Talbot, on his shoulder, whispering him the lies he needs to hear, pure seductive Devil.

Incredible Hulk 139 (1971) written by Roy Thomas, pencil by Herb Trimpe

His look, his behaviors, his writing are very LGBT+ coded.

And of course he's smart, like, it's the whole point. He's smart and as such he questions our society and the thing is, he's often right. He's often right but you can't agree with him because he's also a supremacist (and a mass murderer btw), thinking some people are superior to others etc... So we can't agree with him and that's the point. You see his good ideas and you go "if a supremacist villain think this way then these idea are wrong". That's why I like Immortal Hulk a lot, I'll go back to Immortal Hulk and to that topic specifically but the whole point of that story is there's no good and no evil, what you think is good might be bad, what you think is bad might be good, just a matter of perspective. Sam is a God while Bruce is a Devil etc... That's why you have people thinking their villains aren't that bad, because they're "right" in their mindset, that's why a lot of villains slowly turned into anti-hero with time as well, because they're right.
And Sam often makes good point. When he mocks capitalism, when he mocks virilism and it works because in both case capitalism and virilism is what lead characters to meet their fall, it wasn't Sam, he was just here to laugh at them like the Devil before dragging his victims to Hell.

And that's also what I love about these manipulative very smart villains, they're way more seductive than any other kind of villain to me, I love their sass, their grins, I love how manipulative they are because through their manipulations they manipulate us as well, it makes them more impredictible and interesting.

The World made me suffer in a lot of way and I've been taught so many time that I don't belong in it. The World taught me that in people's eyes I wasn't born a human and I didn't deserve anything, that I was always an annoying useless waste of ressources for a lot of people who don't even know my existence but assume that people like me don't deserve to live "natural selection" or whatever. So of course I'll love monsters who try to destroy that World. Because through these monsters I feel avenged but through them I also remember that no matter what the World says I'm a human and that I should cherish my humanity. That's the thing when we love a villain, through them we love and cherish the part of ourself that we rejected.
And maybe we love flawed irredeemable characters because it gives us hope that we can be loved with our "flaws" too.

That's probably why I love characters like Zuko from Avatar, Riku from Kingdom Hearts, these people who took the wrong path and who learnt and grew.
I'm still bitter about this World but I found peace and a reason to care about it over time.
As I said above, you're being taught that you deserve the pain and reject. So eventually, like a lot of marginalized people, I would just hate myself too, because it was apparently a normal thing to do because I was taught I was to blame for not being normal and that normality should be the only thing I crave.
So the thought that everyone can have a second chance, even villains who hurt, is comforting. Because even if we never hurt anyone but ourself, through self hatred comes hurt, sometimes physical, sometimes psychological and sometimes both. And through hurt comes guilt and you need to appease that through a second chance.

And that's also something I love about Sam, he's suffering an internal conflict. 

Ultimate Marvel guide book

He could very well take the right path given the chance. In fact it happened in the now dead mobile game Avengers Academy and it was super cute.

Avengers Academy (AvAc for short)

But it's merely exploited (in fact the first time ever you saw him show remorses was in Immortal Hulk 50 so after almost 60 years or writing) so I love him for that too.

2) "He's just like me fr"

Maybe you saw that quote at least once. People showing a meme or something weird and saying "they're just like me fr" while talking about the character. While it's a joke, we all need representation. If you think you don't need it then congrats, you're part of a population highly represented so you never had to ask yourself about it. But even inconsciously, we love things that either ressemble us or the things we want to be. That's why you have people loving Goku, because he's the strong guy they want to be. And people will say "duh I love Sonic but I don't wanna be a hedgehog", sure, but you still wanna be as cool as him.

And you also need people like you to understand yourself. And that's probably why I love Sam so much.

Some people don't understand how you can love a villain and even projecting yourself in them because, y'know, they're villains.

It's weird having to say "of course I don't agree to the mass murdering part and their evil shenanigans" because it should be common sense, having a fictional character killing a bunch of nameless fictional PNJ isn't the same has having a real person doing real shit. That's probably why the villain in the MCU She-Hulk show was so lame to men and so terrifying to women. Because for men revenge porn isn't real and "revenge porn is not nearly as horrible as Thanos snapping his fingers and killing off 50% of life" but for women a dude leaking your nudes is way more realistic than some purple guy destroying half the universe through a snap, it's something that can really happen to them, they can project themself through Jen's horror and that makes it way more terrifying, because unlike the purple alien it can happen to them.
We mentionned Frollo above and that's why he was always (and still is) my fav Disney villain, but in the same way as Sam is, I don't "like" Frollo, I hate him, he scares the fuck out of me through his realism. Frollo isn't some kind of wizard, he's powerful through his social statut and he's threatening through his bigotry and position of power, he's litteraly the average kind of bigot in power who are poisonning our Govs, he's real. But I love his writing and design and how threatening he is through his realism. It's not the same as liking and projecting into Darth Vader who killed Jedi in space because he's super powerful and badass, they're just not the same kind of evil.
We can't project ourself in the mass murdering part of some green guy with a giant forehead throwing a gamma bomb on a fictional city because it's just way too unrealistic so that's really not we would care about this character. That's why I said earlier that these villains allow us to burn down the World and express our anger. It's like drowning your Sims character for fun, beheading your Barbie doll, we all did this and we didn't end up being murderers.
People who are into characters with toxic traits often joke about "this is the love of my life but I would rather die than spending 2min in the same room". 
Their crimes aren't acceptable, but they're not realistic enough to have you really care about it or wanting to do so the same or whatever bullshit people will tell you to shame yourself for liking a villain, that's the thing. They're lovable to us because they're not and CAN'T be real.

Through Sam I learnt A LOT about myself, I grew as a person because when I learnt about him, when I made all my theories about him, when I created my own version of him (we all do that, no matter how hard you stick to the canon you'll always have a very personal vision of a character, that's why bigots get upset when you say their fav are LGBT+ or if you turn them black, they take it as a personal insult and if representation wasn't important to them they wouldn't give a damn about what you think of their fav and how you portray them, they're very hypocrites) I was in fact exploring myself. And I'm not only talking about something spiritual but also my own medical diag.
For exemple I have an issue that makes my brain go too fast and has me overthinking everything, feeling highly uncomfortable and annoyed around people because they're not "fast enough" and getting anxiety because of anticipation, that's something Sam goes through. Just like how he's ADHD, like me, how he suffers asthenia, like me etc... As I was reading about him I just found out about me and a lot of stuff that are now official diag, allowing me to work on it for a better and more comfortable life.

That's also why representation matter, because in a world that casted you away you can finally find someone who understand you. Sure they don't exist but your feelings for them are very real, that's why you cry or get scared or angry while watching fiction, so it's still a comfortable thought, that the character you love and care about is like you (even if it's an evil prick, but as I said marginalized people are mostly represented through villains so we take what we can).

Ironically Sam taught me patience, he taught me to stop caring about everything and everyone, he taught me to care about myself too and that's something I love in Hulk as a whole. It doesn't teach you to avoid "bad" feelings, bad energy, bad moods, to never feel angry or sad, it teaches you that it's part of life, of who you are and more importantly that these feelings are meant to protect you. Bruce's problem isn't that he's feeling anger, it's how he never allowed himself to express it. His Hulks are keeping him safe and sane and he would be more at peace if he allowed them and his anger to exist.

Sam, however, is the other way around. He's about hatred, a feeling he burried for years until it exploded and now he's only about it, he let his hatred consumed him because he could never express it.
Bad emotions are like fire, that's why they're often represented this way. Fire is very dangerous if you touch it but used in the right way and with care you can warm yourself, feed yourself, it litteraly keeps you alive. Bad emotions work like that, you need them but you have to stay in control in order to avoid burning yourself.

So through him I learnt to direct my bitterness and use it as a tool, like someone using fire. If someone wants to see me fail (and trust me when you're existing online it happens more often than it should haha) then I'll work even harder to have an happy life. I live for the people I love but I also work hard to throw my happiness at people I hate.

Through Sam I also became stronger and more confident. Because he has that cold "you don't deserve any of my energy" cunty (and kinda sexy ngl) thing that I love and admire. I often mentionned how Sam used to be very shy and passive and that's what I used to be. I understand his anger and hate because I was too kind to people who never cared about me. Out of kindness but also out of fear, I didn't want to get in trouble, like him. So of course I wanted to have my own Leader too, to be able to stand for myself, to be confident, to be strong, to be smart. Being smart was always important to me, that's probably why I always loved these mad scientists. When you're smart you understand the World and when you do you're powerful and independant. So I wanted to be a bit more like him, but without his failures, so without the ego and the hatred that would blind him.

He taught me to stay humble. As I said, even villains have good lessons to share, we also learn through their own experience.
And because people see me as the "biggest fan" and think about me when they see him or think about him when they see me I feel like I have this "duty" of being a cool human being to honor him, idk, so he's one of my best motivation to better myself. Because if I'm a cunt people will think that Sam is a cunt, it is what it is. How many people thought Sam is cool because they I'm cool ? (a lot according to my DMs).
Someone jokingly say that I was working out to impress IMAX Sam (talking about his upcoming MCU appearance) and I said she's right. She's right because I wanna be good enough for the passion I feel through him. Because I want people to think "cool" when they see Sam through me.

3) Healing
"ok ok we get why you like villain but there's a lot of villains like Sam so why him specifically ?", ah I can't really answer that. I guess that's because I found him in the most painful moment of my life, at the very very beginning of my recovery. I guess my brain just think this little sparkle of happiness he gave me while I was drowning in an ocean of pain and suffering is the reason I started healing. Maybe that's why obsessions are similar to addictions, they're born the same way, your brain craving happiness through anything it can find.

People who love fiction like I do are people who felt painfully lonely at some point. Even when people love us and support us sometimes you feel lonely because you keep everything to yourself, because you don't want to hurt, because people can't understand. And sometimes you find comfort through fiction.

Sam taught me to stop caring about people's opinion on me. You have no idea of the amount of people who think my obsession for him is weird or cringe but I don't mind because I'm not ashamed of him, because expressing my love for him is therapeuthic. My passion for him is more important than pleasing some idiots whose life are so empty they feel "cringed" by a stranger. All I do is minding my own business to heal through respect and honor, if it's cringe then I'm cringe and I'm pretty damn proud of it.

But yes, my brain did start using Sam as a way to cope. Just like you use a stressball to calm down, my brain just use Sam for pretty much everything. When I have these moment of deep depression and feel nothing my brain just forces him in (like, it feels really forced lol I guess that's how most people feel about me when I talk about Sam, as if my brain was throwing random Sam thoughts). I suffer a very high lvl of anticipatory anxiety because I think too much and too quick so my brain tends to create a lot of awful scenarios in my head to deal with boredom and talking or writing about Sam is its way to stay busy and to not think about the pain or the dark thoughts that come with such a curse.
It doesn't matter how bad I feel, if I get something new about Sam, a very good art or a news or whatever I'll feel a genuine deep happiness. It doesn't last if I'm in a very bad moment but it still happens and during these small moments I still think "it's worth staying here" and it's nice .
My loved ones can only reassure me through their physical presences (through touch more than words, if that make sense, basically a hug is more efficient than kindness with me which is ironic because I don't like being touch so much). Sam is fictional but my feelings for him are pretty much real, I know for some it sounds weird but all our feelings for fictions are real, otherwise why would you get upset or sad or scared through fiction ? And while I don't love him nearly as much as I love my closed ones, he has an advantage they don't : he's fictional. He can't be "here", he can't touch so, unlike everyone else, I don't need his presence. He's not as efficient as them to calm me down but he can help me out even when I'm all alone and makes me remember why I stay here when my brain chose to make me forget about it.

So maybe that's the reason I love him so much, a coincidence, seeing the kind of character I love in the right moment of my life, when I needed something to focus on. Maybe it's no deeper than that.

But with time I started projecting myself into him, projecting my own struggles and personnality into him, probably as a way to comprehend myself and feel some kind of self-love, also as a way to cope and keep going. It's hard loving yourself, especially when your pain is created by your own body and brain, but loving a fictional mass murderer is somehow easier haha what can I say ? We're terrible at giving ourself the love and attention we deserve. So projecting into Sam and creating my own egocentrical headcanons  is a way to accept myself like I accept Sam I guess.

Because when I had to look at death and when it took all my dreams and hope away from me, when I was unable to dream or project myself into the future anymore, all I had left was my silly obsession for Sam.

4) He's Sam

That's it, he's Sam. He can be very funny and dumb, a pure villain cliche or he can be cold and threatening, scary even.
He's smart and very interesting when properly written. But he can also be dumb af and I like both, I like him as a pure threatening villain or a goofy cliché.
He's a Hulk villain and God knows how much I love Hulk and villains.
He's sassy and I love sassiness, it's super sexy haha.
Sam is Sam, he's both that kind shy threatened guy and that evil egocentrical bitch.

I just love Sam for being Sam and I'm not sure there's a real reason to that.

He keeps me alive, I'm not sure why but he does. He makes me happy. He gave me a reason to live and fight, to stay here and to smile. Unconsciously, Sam became the symbol of my healing process. So does "why" really matter ?

And I hope that all of you are able to find your Sam and to express it the way I do. That's how I wanna conclude this post.

Enjoy~

Incredible Hulk 124 (1969) written by Roy Thomas, pencil by Herb Trimpe