Jim Wilson (comics)

Jim Wilson is the name of a fictional African American Marvel Comics book character that was a longtime friend of Bruce Banner and Rick Jones. In the 1990s, it was revealed that Wilson was infected with HIV, and a few years later he died of AIDS.

Fictional character biography
Jim Wilson first appeared in the Incredible Hulk #131 as an angry young man who befriends the Hulk. Throughout the years, Jim Wilson would often appear as a friend of Bruce Banner, following Banner/Hulk throughout much of the 1970s as one of the few people that Banner could trust. The Incredible Hulk #232 revealed that the superhero Falcon was Wilson's uncle.

In Incredible Hulk #388 Wilson picks up Rick from the airport, who has agreed to play a benefit at a hospice for AIDS patients. On the drive from the airport, Wilson tells Rick that he is HIV+ and that his girlfriend left him as soon as he told her. Wilson also informs Rick that a homophobic L.A. mob boss hired some thugs to kill his son's longtime companion (Jefferson Wolfe) who the crimelord blames for his own son's (Tyler Lang) homosexuality and the fact that he is dying of AIDS faster than Wolfe. When that fails, the mob boss hires a supervillain named Speedfreek to crash the charity concert and kill Lang.

Rick and the Incredible Hulk are able to defeat the supervillain and get evidence to send the mob boss to prison. However, Lang dies, and Wilson is badly injured by the supervillain while trying to protect Tyler and his longtime companion. Rick is unwilling to touch Wilson's bloody body, and it is up to the Incredible Hulk to rush Wilson to a hospital and force the doctors to care for an HIV+ patient. Wilson is again seen in the Incredible Hulk #420 where he is attacked by a mob of bigots that are protesting the fact that a court has ordered an HIV infected boy to be allowed into a public school. While the Incredible Hulk is able to rescue Wilson from the mob and take him to the hi-tech medical facilities at the Pantheon, he learns that Wilson now has full blown AIDS and that he only has a few hours left to live. Wilson asks Banner to give him a transfusion of his blood, knowing that the Hulk's immune system would act as a cure to the virus. Banner initially refuses to take the risk of creating another monster, but eventually pretends to be giving Wilson a blood transfusion, while in his last moments of life Wilson concedes that the transfusion would not be a good idea.

After Wilson's death, Bruce donates a large sum of money to the hospice that Wilson worked at in order to allow them to comfortably exist for the next few decades. It is never explained how Wilson became infected with the disease. In fact at the end of the Incredible Hulk #388, Bruce tells Rick that it should not matter how he got infected. His father, Gideon Wilson, blames the Hulk for Jim's death and joins Gamma Corps to seek revenge.