New ‘Hulk’ has AMA fuming

You wouldn’t like them when they’re angry: A health advocacy group is taking “The Incredible Hulk” to task for presenting a key character who is chomping on a cigar “in nearly every scene.” The American Medical Assn. Alliance, a 27,000-member volunteer arm of the AMA, issued a news release on Wednesday describing the new PG-13 film with Edward Norton, Liv Tyler and William Hurt as “yet another Hollywood film that exposes underage audiences to unnecessary smoking.”

The group zeroed in on Hurt’s character, Gen. Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, a crusty military leader who is trying to hunt down the green-skinned monster. The release points out that in the 2003 Hulk movie, the same character never smoked and that adding the tobacco to his persona is gratuitous. The release makes no mention of the fact that in the Hulk stories published by Marvel Comics since the 1960s, the war-horse authority figure had often been depicted with a stogie. “The Incredible Hulk,” a Marvel Studios film distributed by Universal, opens Friday.