Sensational She-Hulk in the 1980s
She-Hulk was given a second chance at her own title and the new title, Sensational She-Hulk, was written and drawn by John Byrne. Byrne decided to take a different approach to the character. The series was a comedy title with She-Hulk being aware that she is a comic book character. The series would then lampoon comic books. The series pitted She-Hulk up against some of Marvel’s more ridiculous villains, critiquing then-current comic book tropes, as well including “mandated” popular guest-stars and some oddballs. The series also reintroduced readers to Louise Mason, who was a masked adventurer in the 1940s known as the Blonde Phantom. However, in this title, Mason was a middle-aged secretary having long since aged out of heroism, but longs for her glory days and often lives vicariously through She-Hulk’s adventures.
Unfortunately, John Byrne was fired from the title over creative differences over this title and the She-Hulk: Ceremony limited series that came out the same year. Successive writers kept She-Hulk a humor book, but couldn’t capture the same sort of audience that the John Byrne run had. I’ll get it into that in more detail when I tackle the issues that were published in the 90s.
Byrne certainly popularized the idea of a character breaking the fourth wall as a comedic device in comics, something that you now commonly see in Deadpool comics. Despite the popularity of Deadpool, is the ity to break the fourth wall doesn’t quite capture the same thing that Byrne was doing with She-Hulk. Sadly, writers don’t tend to have She-Hulk break the fourth-wall very often, although sometimes they do the occasional nod to Byrne’s run.
