Amadeus Cho, aka Brawn, is a brilliant young man and skilled hacker who became a Hulk and gained the powers connected to that physiology. He was introduced by Greg Pak and Takeshi Miyazawa in Amazing Fantasy Vol. 2 #15 (January 2005) as a 19-year-old Korean American who won the Excello Soap Company’s “Brain Soap” competition. Since this proved that Amadeus was the seventh smartest person in the world, Pythagoras Dupree, the game’s creator and sixth smartest person alive, tried to kill him to maintain his ranking. Pythagoras’ attempt resulted instead in the death of Amadeus’ parents, and Hulk saved the young man from being killed too.
After ten years, and several heroic adventures, Amadeus removed the Hulk from Bruce Banner and put it into himself in Totally Awesome Hulk. He started hunting monsters around the world with the help of his sister, Maddy, and he took on Lady Hellbender with She-Hulk. Enchantress manipulated him into helping her takeover the Ten Realms, then he was saved by Maddy and Thor, and together they stopped Enchantress and her army.
During the “Civil War II” event, Amadeus became enraged when Bruce Banner was killed and sought to confront his murderer, Hawkeye. Black Panther confronted Amadeus with his own Hulkbuster, but the fight ended early when Maddy contacted him about an insectoid monster in Texas. Now more enraged than totally awesome, Amadeus nearly lost the fight because the monster fed off his negative emotions.
Later, he joined Ms. Marvel, Shang-Chi, Silk, Jimmy Woo, and Jake Oh to fight an alien invasion by Seknarf Seven, dubbing themselves the Protectors. The heroes and some civilians were captured by the aliens, where they engaged in battle until Alpha Flight arrived with reinforcements and helped defeat the aliens.
Amadeus appeared in the “Weapons of Mutant Destruction” storyline when he was attacked by Adamantium cyborgs. He joined Old Man Logan, Sabretooth, and Domino to raid the Weapon X Project’s base to discern their plans. Amadeus fought H-Beta, then engaged H-Alpha in combat, but the latter escaped with William Stryker. Frustrated, Amadeus parted ways with Old Man Logan, and recognizing that his Hulk persona was getting out of control, he sought ways to confront it away from others.
