This week sees the release of Fall Of The Hulks: Alpha, the first chapter in a story promising some level of closure to storyarcs that have stretch back to 2006 and, with any luck, thinning the Hulk Herd just a little. Because, yes, there are now seven different Hulks co-existing in the Marvel Universe, and that seems like at least five too many. We've come up with a scorecard for the Hulks of various colors, just to make it easier for you to jump onboard Marvel's latest big event.

The Originals
Bruce Banner and Jennifer Walters, these are your lives.
The Reds
Bruce Banner and Jennifer Walters, these are your potentially evil dopplegangers.
The Bastards
Bruce Banner, these are your children. Jen, you're off the hook for this one.

Fall Of The Hulks: Alpha is released on Thursday.

As the Hulk's son, he has the same enhanced strength and healing power as his dad, but is into tattoos and bad rock music.

Lyra
The result of the Hulk's DNA being stolen by a time-traveling feminist who came from a future where no man was worthy to father her child and sabotage had left technology unable to propagate the human race - I promise, I am not making this up - Lyra has returned to the present day to assure the future of her kind, Terminator-style, by breeding with Norman Osborn. Understandably, she realized that wasn't really something she wanted to do, but decided to stick around in this timezone to fight crime and find some other way to keep the future (and her past) safe.

Unlike her father, Lyra actually gets weaker as she gets angrier, as the result of genetic manipulation by her mother's race, the Femizons. Yes, the Femizons. I refer you to the part about me not making this up.

Hiro-Kala
After Skaar had left to go to Earth, Hiro-Kala was revealed to be the other Son of Hulk. Raised unaware of his parentage and as a slave, Hiro-Kala inherited his mother's powers, and has revealed himself to be an able and more-than-a-little-ruthless little bastard; he managed to avenge Galactus' destruction of his home world by tricking him into eating another planet that he'd "poisoned". Sure, destroying an innocent civilization and planet for revenge may seem extreme, but it got the job done.

As opposed to all of the other Hulks, Hiro-Kala isn't on Earth right now - which is probably good, or else he might poison here as well - and hasn't met any of the rest of his family yet.

We're not sure whether or not the Red Hulk has some large plan behind all of his actions, or whether it's just unsubtle writing, but so far we've seen the character kill two long-standing Hulk foes (The Abomination and the Wendigo, AKA the character that Wolverine fought in his first appearance - A moment of silence, please) and cause an earthquake in San Francisco, before joining up with various time-tossed supervillains in order to prevent the Hulk from finding true love. That's right, he's definitely evil. We just don't know why.

Red She-Hulk
If little is known about the Red Hulk, even less is known about the Red She-Hulk, other than the fact that she has similar powers to her male counterpart, and may or may not be the original She-Hulk, former X-Men spin-off character Domino or even former Daredevil spin-off character Elektra in a new radioactive form.

After a particularly destructive rampage, a collection of Marvel's superheroes decided that everyone would be happier if the Hulk was sent to a nice alien planet where he could do whatever he wanted without hurting anyone. Of course, things didn't go plan, and he ended up on a planet filled with enslaved aliens that he helped free, becoming that planet's ruler and, in the process, falling in love with Caiera, who becomes his bride before being killed by the explosion of the spaceship that brought him to the planet. (All of this is from the Planet Hulk storyline, soon to be a DVD animated movie:

In many ways, that trailer hits the highpoints of the story.)

Following the death of his wife, the Hulk got together with a bunch of freed slaves and returned to Earth to punish the heroes who'd sent him to space in the first place, blaming them for the explosion and Caiera's demise. After fighting a lot of superheroes and turning New York's underground into a modern Gladiatorial battle between Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic, it was revealed that it was one of the slaves who'd caused the explosion - He was worried that a happy Hulk was a soft Hulk, and so wanted to make him mad. Never a good move with the Hulk - and the Hulk pretty much let himself get defeated, turning back into Bruce Banner and being contained by the US military (This was World War Hulk).

He was released from captivity to fight the Red Hulk, but ended up having all the gamma radiation in his body drained by his crimson counterpart, meaning that he was stuck as Bruce Banner forever... Or, at least, for a couple of months; while Incredible Hulk #600 made the "Bruce Banner forever" claim in July 2009, it only took until October for Banner to get re-irradiated for future Hulk adventures.

She-Hulk
Jennifer Walters became a Hulk when she had an emergency blood transfusion from her cousin Bruce Banner. Unlike her cousin, though, she's had no history of mental illness, and so keeps the same personality when she hulks out, meaning that she's the respectable member of the family. That probably explains why she's been a member of so many superteams, including the Fantastic Four, Avengers and Defenders.

Currently, she's missing, following an explosion. The Red She-Hulk has claimed that she's dead, but, come on. It's comics. That never works.

Taking back the reins of Hulk from former Heroes' producer Jeph Loeb (Although, don't worry, he's going to continue telling stories about Rulk), Planet Skaar sees io9 favorite Greg Pak return to writing Bruce Banner in time to finish a trilogy that started with 2006's Planet Hulk and continued with the following year's World War Hulk. After accidentally sending the Hulk into a life as an intergalactic gladiator on an alien planet - and then dealing with his wrath when he returned to Earth - Reed Richards has discovered that the Hulk has a son. Only problem being, he hasn't realized that said son has now come to Earth for a family reunion that's centering more on the "I will kill you for being born" variety.

The storyline begins in Planet Skaar Prologue, available on Wednesday, and continues in the next couple of issues of Skaar, Son Of Hulk.

Planet Skaar Prologue #1 Preview [Comic Book Resources]