>>121256981You're not wrong, but I would put forward what changed was less the Hulk's power level and more *how* his stories were told.
In the 60s and 70s they were formulaic in the mold of "mostly calm Hulk faces a challenge, is defeated/captured until raging Hulk overcomes that challenge". At the beginning of the book he get taken out by sleeping gas or is held in a fairly mundane steel prison cell, at the end he has leveled an entire military base or caused a dormant volcano to erupt. The power level was always there, it was just reserved to the last couple of pages of the book.
With the coming of deconstructed storytelling and multi-issue arcs, that one-book formula fell aside and Hulk was increasingly shown pulling off those stunts early in the book when he'd previously only been shown doing at the issue's finale. The *perception* shifted, that this strength level was the new-normal but it'd always been there just not shown until the nature of the storytelling format called for it.
But I do think with this perception-shift came an accompanying powercreep, the writers were both showing his strength level more and in doing so having to up those shows of strength to outdo former feats.
