Savage She-Hulk Primer
It all started over rights issues. In the late 70s the Incredible Hulk TV series was a huge success. However, Stan Lee, began to worry about a spin-off show that Marvel wouldn’t own. See, around that time there was another popular show called the Six Million Dollar Man (ask your grandparents), and they did a spin-off with a female character. Since Stan Lee knows a thing or two about owning the rights to the work of someone else (just ask the estate of Jack Kirby), Stan wanted to secure the rights to a female Hulk character. So he and John Buscema rushed to pound out the first issue of Savage She-Hulk. She-Hulk would be the last character Stan would create for 12 years. After penning the first issue Stan left the character to other creators. So unlike other creations, such as Spider-Man, or the Fantastic Four, the fact that this was a rush job really shows. Stan didn’t give a shit about She-Hulk other than the potential for making money off television rights, a fear that didn’t really materialize.
Anyway, Savage She-Hulk ran for 25 issues and other than the premiere issue the entire run was written by David Kraft and pencilled Mike Vosberg. The pair didn’t really know what to do with the character and the stories were a mish-mash of Jennifer Walter’s romance woes (because she’s a woman you see), her alter-ego being on the run for crimes she didn’t commit (that gets old real fast) and whatever villain of the month that Kraft could fart out. None of the villains introduced in this title were overly memorable, had any staying power. At best, they would be used as gag characters later on (such was the case with the Man-Elephant)
The entire run is painfully boring to read and She-Hulk would be better utilized in the pages of the Avengers, Fantastic Four, and then her second series, Sensational She-Hulk, which was whelmed by John Byrne. Byrne had a weird infatuation with She-Hulk and what he did with the character actually worked, but that’s something we’ll get into another time.
