The whole thing was an exercise in breaking the fourth wall. She-Hulk existed as a maguffin to mug to the audience, take the occasional pratfall, and deliver whatever meta-jokes about comics Byrne wanted to make that month.

I'm kinder towards the series than you; I think it was kinda fun. But it also takes Byrne permanently off the list of people who can complain about the character serving the story, let alone the list of people who can complain about that specific character serving the story.

That's cool. I just have a higher threshold of tolerance than most, it seems to me. While I certainly am witness to JB's often bizarre & arbitrary online behavior over at the JBF, I don't see it as the horror & evil that most Detractors try to make it out to be.

As I have often said, I see it as the glass is half full, while most Detractors see it as the glass is shattered.

You'll have to forgive Poor Ceci, Alex. This is another one of those cases in which someone just refuses to get it.

I'll link you to JB's FAQ which explains things rather well...

While in the past I have debated with others (including Peter David) that I don't believe that the Sensational She-Hulk stories that were written by JB were considered as canon (the nature of the storytelling, to me, just indicates that they were imaginary tales). Peter David summed it up, at least for me, when he hinted at just that fact while he was writing Incredible Hulk (or was it in an issue of Captain Marvel?) in an issue in which She-Hulk guest-starred & acted as though she were breaking that fourth wall & the Hulk (or Rick Jones, maybe?) acted like she was behaving loopy...it was hilarious...as most of Peter David's humorous shots at other titles & talents tends to be.

In any case, while others are trying to imply a contradiction, what they are missing is the seriousness, or lack there of, involved. My theory (uh oh) is that the Sensational She-Hulk stories were not meant to be taken seriously. What JB is complaining about when he talks about "shoehorn stories" is when the characters are involved in canonical stories (if you catch my drift) & the intentions are to be taken seriously, in terms of characterization and/or storyline purposes.

Sensational She-Hulk (at least as written by JB in said series) was just a fun experiment & in terms of canon, should not be taken seriously.

You'll have to forgive Paul, Alex. He's pretending to ignore me, but still can't resist reading and responding to my posts. So he's using you to reply to me.



Wow, Byrne says exactly what I just said... that the intent of his series was to use She-Hulk to break the fourth wall and make meta-jokes about comics.

Glad to know you think my explanation is so sound, Paul.



Of course, if Byrne's stories weren't meant to be canon, then the fact that the graphic novel didn't have the same tone as his series shouldn't have mattered. But Byrne was clearly upset by it enough to walk off the title at the time, and then complain about it more than 20 years later.

So while Paul may insist that Byrne's She-Hulk wasn't meant to be canon, the guy who wrote it certainly seemed to think that canonical stories should match the continuity he established.

Oh. Now it is all so clear. I was so serious then in my existence I could barely pull a pin out of my clenched buttocks. I didn't get it.

Thanks.

I honestly have no idea if you're being sarcastic.

I thought the world was very serious, and I tried to understand the world through a serious mind. All it gave me was an enormous headache.

Then I lightened up.

I liked the initial idea of Sensational She-Hulk. It clearly stemmed from Byrne's love of the TV show, Moonlighting, which had been popular a couple of years earlier. Unfortunately, Byrne, whose humor tends to be overly sarcastic and mean-spirited, just wasn't funny enough to pull it off.

My favorite aspect of that book was the use of forgotten D-list villains. The book though never played it straight enough to succeed as a super-hero adventure book nor was it funny enough to be a very funny humor book.

The series is most noteworthy for Byrne's vicious fights with editor Bobbie Chase.

Works like a charm! Every...single...time!

Vicious? Poor Troy. A professional disagreement, in a Detractors' overactive imagination, turns into vicious fights.

Today's Special Words are: Lighten Up