I believe very few creators these days have any wish to be associated with what I've heard refered to as "the Len Wein 'Moron' Hulk," especially now that there are sooooo many other options available to them.

The Hulk offers so much opportunity for naked savagery, endless violence, "berserker rages," and hey, punching out know-it-all characters you've always secretly hated, like that overgrown swaddling infant, the Watcher! Sooo much else you can do: MPD stories, lukemia and cancer metaphors, "the descent of man," the questionable morality of being a daily 9/11 attack on the lives of everyone around you...

Reader sympathy used to lie with both characters, Banner and the Hulk. For awhile, it was just Banner. Of late, sympathy is last thing any creator wants his stories to generate. What they're going for is the "badass" effect. Readers, they feel, don't want to feel bad for the Hulk. They especially don't want to feel anything for the dweeb he unfortunately changes back into occasionally. They want the Hulk to Rip It Up and Tear It Down... Whatever "it" may be. Doesn't matter. Also, the more Hulks, the more Ripping Up gets done... Three Hulks, Three times the Ripping Up. Five Hulks? Five times the Ripping Up. Seven Hulks? Seven times... Well, you get the idea. Maybe at some point the calculation goes geometric... At that point, Hot Damn! So why not have every... single... character who's ever been in the book become a Hulk? There's no reason not to!!!

Currently I'm told the set-up is that we should all be so lucky as to have the Hulk stick around since Banner is the calculating, murderous, oh-so-much-more-dangerously-badass of the two...

No one wants to go back to the status quo, because, well, it's so... Quo, y'know? Besides, the readers all know the original set-up. As the now famous quote goes, "If they don't already know this stuff, why are they reading it?"

By the way, regarding that extended storyline, I was onboard for most of that one. It did help set the tone for much of what happened to the industry later by unfortunately adhering to what I've come to call "Trial of the Flash Syndrome."

Cary Bates had an idea for an extended storyline, but he was going to wrap it up and move on to the next story soon. Then the book was cancelled, but wasn't scheduled to actually leave the stands for another year and a half. Bates apparently asked himself, why come up with another story at that point? Just keep writing this one...

So he did. End... Less... Ly... The Trial of the Flash would... not... stop... It was a mercy when that awful book ended. With the Hulk, the Banner-As-Hulk storyline just kept generating stories, so Mantlo kept going with it. Why change? Besides, with issue 300 coming up in few issues, why not wait 'til then? Mantlo did come up with another direction in which to go, and I thought it was a valid one, but, yes, once the "Banner-In-Control" bell was rung, there was no unringing it. Later writers began to experiment with further and further changes to the generally understood formula to the point where the book occasionally became unrecognizable.

I still like Mantlo's "Banner-In-Control" period. As Troy pointed out on an episode of Community, there used to be a show called "Happy Days" and there was an episode where a guy really did jump over a shark, and you know what? It was the best one!

Now the whole regular cast is Gamma affected.
But Wait! There's More!
We also have:
Skaar=He's the Hulk's son that he had with an alien lady, while off planet.
"Savage"She-Hulk=Thundra

**

And to think... there was a time when Marvel used to mock DC for the relentless de-uniquing of their characters!