Make With the Funny Comics: She-Hulk By Luke Foster
Unless you've spent time as a reporter or felon, very few of you have much experience with the legal system outside of “Law & Order.” And if that's true, I know what you're thinking: “lawyer stuff is boring as crap.” Not so, I tell you. At least, not in the world of “She-Hulk.”
She-Hulk is also known as Jennifer Walters, a lawyer who needed a life-saving blood transfusion from her cousin the Hulk, which in addition to saving her life had the added bonus of giving her the ability to turn big, green, and strong. Lucky for her, she retains more or less all of her original personality in the change.
While Bruce Banner's cousin has had several of her own titles over the years, readers are probably most familiar with the current one (or two, since it was broken up into two volumes with unique numbering. But for simplicity's sake, work with me here and pretend it's just one), which Marvel comedy alum Dan Slott helmed for the first 39 issues.
At the beginning of this series, She-Hulk isn’t doing so well. Her cases as a prosecutor are getting overturned because of her notoriety as a superhero, and her partying and regular indiscretions (if you know what I mean) with men get her booted from Avengers mansion. But that all turns around when she’s invited to join the prestigious law firm of Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg, and Holliway in their superhuman division. The one caveat? She has to work as Jen Walters, not She-Hulk.
If there’s one thing that becomes very obvious upon reading “She-Hulk,” it’s that Dan Slott fully believes in the notion of comics being fun for fun’s sake and wants to make his comics like that, too. There’s just so much mirth in these books that you can’t help but enjoy yourself.
Slott has mined the depths of Marvel’s C-list stable for one of the most interesting selections of supporting characters in comics. She-Hulk dates John Jameson (Man-Wolf/Stargod), the Thinker’s Awesome Android – now named Awesome Andy – works in the office, the shape-changer Ditto is a process server, and the Two-Gun Kid later joins the staff as a bounty hunter.
She-Hulk is also coerced into being sort of a guardian for Southpaw, a teenage supervillain who has a few ties of her own to the law firm. She fills the key role of “super brat who annoys the hell out of our lead.” A key position in better law firms.
And when She-Hulk is drafted into S.H.I.E.L.D. to take on her cousin’s villains (while he’s vacationing on Planet Hulk), she is on a team with a Life Model Decoy named Cheesecake, a stunningly beautiful woman also trained in more than her fair share of martial arts. And not to be sexist, S.H.I.E.L.D. later supplies the team with a male version named Beefcake.
Not that her “normal” human counterparts are any less interesting. You’ve got Holden Holliway, who brings She-Hulk to work at the firm in the first place but also has a bit of an ulterior motive; Augustus “Pug” Pugliese, the tough-guy lawyer with a heart of gold and an unrequited crush on Jen; Mallory Book, the firms requisite ice queen; and Stu Cicero, a record keeper She-Hulk deals with a lot. Why? Read on. Oh, and remember Clay Quartermain from the old “Hulk” days? He leads that S.H.I.E.L.D. team.
GLK&H gets quite the variety of superhuman cases. Which shouldn't surprise anyone knowing that two of the partners are Lieber and Kurtzberg (come on people, think carefully). Jen's first involves a guy named Dangerman, who gets superpowers after being knocked into a radioactive vat. He sues Roxxon Corporation for giving him powers he doesn't want and messing up his life. They also get a case where a ghost wants to be a witness in his own murder trial, they help Spider-Man sue the Daily Bugle for libel, they defend Starfox in a sexual assault case, they represent Hercules when the Constrictor sues him for beating the crap out of him, and they get a time travel case where all the jurors come from the past. One of whom is Clint Barton, the late (at the time) Hawkeye.
She-Hulk also has to spend some time in space as a member of the Magsitrati, an outer space legal group that settles cases all over the galaxy. She's in a bit over her head, not that she notices. Of her first three cases, two get settled more or less through blind luck, and the third has all sorts of untold repercussions down the road. Then she gets into her biggest case yet: she has to fight against the Champion of the Universe – who was already the strongest fighter alive even before he got the Power Gem – to get him to leave the planet Skardon. Did I mention he already pummeled Beta Ray Bill, the Gladiator, and Adam Warlock before She-Hulk even arrived? Yeah, it wasn't pleasant.
So how does a big-time law firm go about building legal precedent for their cases? Comic books. Boxes and boxes of comic books. And because the Comics Code seal was on all of Marvel’s books until 2002, they’re all legally binding documents. Stu, your average law-school-educated fanboy diligently takes care of the records (along with two other nerds who join later on), all of which are actual Marvel comics from years past. Not only are they great for getting a few meta-laughs, but Slott uses them to happily address continuity issues that have plagued comics over the years. In fact, Slott tries to patch up continuity in ways that will make everyone happy, not to prove one side right and one side wrong, not only with the law firm's comics but with a rather clever story at the end of his run. He even addresses the notion from John Byrne’s “She-Hulk” run that our dear Miss Walters knew she was a comic character that could talk right to the readers and finally answers, once and for all, whether or not she actually slept with the Juggernaut back in the “X-Men” a few years ago. The answer: yes and no. What the heck does that mean? Read the fifth trade paperback and find out, Mr. I-Want-the Easy-Answers.
During his run, Slott was able to, um, slot the adventures of She-Hulk into all the big company crossovers with minimal difficulty, starting with “Avengers Disassembled” through “Civil War” and up to “Planet Hulk” and “World War Hulk.” And while I had read some of those bigger stories already (still waiting for the PH/WWH trades to ship as of this writing) I didn't need to know all that extra continuity to enjoy these stories. In fact, they stood just fine on their own, which is no small feat in this day and age. And not only that, but her role in these stories couldn't be filled easily by anyone else, whether it's because she's a Hulk or because she's a lawyer. Too bad that jerk Tony Stark didn't think of that in the “Planet Hulk” aftermath.
There are also a number of scenes that address the relationship between Jen Walters and She-Hulk. Specifically, Jen often wants to stay as She-Hulk because she likes the feeling of liberation and security she has as her green alter ego, while she often has trouble turning from Jen back to She-Hulk because of the subconscious knowledge that she is safer as Jen.
The disparities between a gamma-powered super-person's personality in the Marvel universe and their human selves came to a head near the end of Slott's run, when Mallory Book takes on the Leader's defense. Her claim is that gamma-powered beings often act far out of character compared to how they normally would because of the gamma radiation infecting them. Her star witness to that point? Jen Walters. So what did Jen do so differently as She-Hulk? She slept around a lot. A LOT. It took the court reporter 20 minutes to read off the names of all her partners, while Jen as a human only had three (including some guy in college named “Gary”). Though she still vehemently denied she slept with the Juggernaut, while the Leader just sat there laughing his very large head off.
Not that our girl couldn't settle down eventually, which she did when she married John Jameson. Can you imagine how much his father, J. Jonah Jameson loved having a superhero in the family? A superhero lawyer? Who sued him for libel on behalf of the man he hates the most? Dinner was fun.
But while there are plenty of silly moments, Slott was able to turn up the emotional content a bit for some issues. In the first volume, Titania comes after She-Hulk to once again have a hero-on-villain dustup, only to be immediately punched across New York into a landfill, not landing for a whole page. Hilarious, right? Right. But in the next issue, we learn Titania’s origin and early days, and when we finally end the issue and see her sitting in that landfill, the reader actually feels bad for her. And in the second volume, after a bit of romantic havoc thanks to Starfox’s powers gone awry, we get a spotlight on Awesome Andy, fresh from a bit of heartbreak. You too will believe a robot can cry. Even one without a face or mouth of any kind.
Slott left the title at issue 21 of the second series, turning it over to Peter David. In fact, Slott even had a couple characters make a joke about being in a Peter David comic, with one guy implying they could only be so lucky. I have not yet read any of those issues, mainly because there haven't been enough to collect into a trade paperback. And speaking of trades, Slott's run on “She-Hulk” was collected into five volumes: “Single Green Female,” “Superhuman Law,” “Time Trials,” “Laws of Attraction,” and “Planet Without a Hulk.” So whether you're looking for fun in the courtroom or in a superhero battle, this series has something for you.
Luke Foster is a writer and stand-up comedian and is making mad demands that you bring him ice cream sundaes right now.Posts: 21380 | From: PA | Registered: Aug 2002
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Loved Slott's She-Hulk run(s)! I tried staying on once Peter David took over but quicky dropped it due to lack of interest. Which is odd, because I usually love David's work. I suppose I just prefer Slott's She-Hulk flavoring.
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