She-Hulk in the 2000s
One thing’s for sure, this run of She-Hulk was not your typical superhero book. It ran for two volumes. Volume 1 ran for 12 issues and was written by Dan Slott with most of the art done by Juan Bobillo (with assists from Paul Pelletier) It was a surprise hit and led to a second volume Slott as the writer and a host of artists issue #21, but we’ll get into that in a little bit.
What killed She-Hulk in the previous decade was that they kept on trying to do funny superhero stories, which was — by that point — it was like reading someone try to imitate Mad Magazine. The only person who was able to do the character justice was John Byrne. However, what all writers failed was always focusing on She-Hulk the superhero while forgetting about She-Hulk the lawyer. This is where Dan Slott’s run on She-Hulk was so great. It focused on the right thing. It also presented funny and entertaining stories without trying to imitate John Byrne’s fourth-wall-breaking slapstick. That had been done before. Slott’s run on She-Hulk was all about how crazy the legal system could be in the Marvel Universe, not only from the perspective of the characters living there but for readers. Slott also had She-Hulk’s powers start to malfunction and use it as a plot device to talk about women having body-image issues, which was a smart way of taking a character who was usually portrayed as glamourous to believably become insecure about how her body looks. She-Hulk was fit and looked good, while Jennifer Walters was short, and kind of frumpy.
He also created an entire cast of characters that you end up genuinely caring about when he created the staff at the law firm of Goodman, Lieber, Kutzberg & Halliway. Of all the amazing characters one of the most unique was Awesome Andy, the Mad Thinker’s former android that now works as the office boy for the firm. Slott took an emotionless android that was usually used only to mindlessly fight superheroes and turned it into a deep character with multiple layers and a character arc that is both fascinating and — in the end — heartbreaking.
One of the biggest draws to Slott’s run on She-Hulk was the court cases which answered a lot of lingering questions about superheroes from a legal perspective. The best example is in the fourth issue of the first volume. In that story, Spider-Man is convinced to sue the Daily Bugle for libel after all the years of anti-Spider-Man editorials written by publisher J. Jonah Jameson. The story is chock full of Spider-Man history, a demonstration that if there is one character that Dan Slott knows, it’s Spider-Man. But it also presents all sorts of interesting twists and turns and it is proven in court that, actually, the Daily Bugle has proven to be more of a menace to society than Spider-Man ever has. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Spider-Man story without a bit of a downbeat at the end and although Spider-Man wins the case, he technically can’t claim anything without revealing his secret identity, which of course he doesn’t do.
Slott took this even deeper in the second volume in the first four issues. It gets strange when the courts manage to get the aid of the Time Variance Authority to get an impartial jury by pulling people out of points in history prior to the crime. One of these jurors turns out to be Hawkeye, who — at the time of the story — was killed during the Avengers Disassembled event (a death that was very shortlived as I’m sure you know now) This causes a moral issue with She-Hulk who battles with the urge to forewarn Hawkeye of his impending death. Her attempts to warn him to get noticed and She-Hulk has herself put on trial on what would turn out to be the 100th issue of a She-Hulk book in She-Hulk (Vol. 2) #3. The story has the She-Hulk’s entire life put on trial to determine if she is a valued contribution to the timeline. If she loses the case she’s at risk of being erased from existence. The issue is a huge love letter to the She-Hulk’s history, blemishes and all. In the end, She-Hulk wins her case but is put in charge of the Two-Gun Kid, a cowboy from Marvel’s westerns that had previously visited the future. This adds an additional layer to the cast having the Two-Gun Kid try to readjust himself to the modern age and his job as a licensed bounty hunter working for GLK&H.
Issue #6 and 7 plays out like an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Units in spandex when the She-Hulk is involved in a rape trial of Starfox, her former teammate in the Avengers. The story raises the ethical and legal questions of a superhero whose power is to manipulate the emotions of others, in this case manipulating their sense of desire. In past stories, Starfox was always portrayed as a romantic ladies man, but this story paints his powers in a more sinister light. Especially since he admits that his powers were used in all of his romantic conquests, which is pretty rapey. To take that story to the next level, Slott continued this plot thread by having the Awesome Android mimic Starfox’s ability so he can make his co-worker Mallory Book fall in love with him. He also uses his powers on She-Hulk and her then-boyfriend John Jameson, prompting the two to get impulsively married. While the She-Hulk/Jameson marriage was used to play up laughs, particularly playing off the hatred John’s father has for superheroes. What was less funny was when Andy realizes what he is doing is wrong and has to face the consequences for what he has done, namely dealing with Mallory’s anger over Andy manipulating her into a romance she actually did not want. The epilogue to that arc “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Awesome Andy But Were Afraid To Ask” appeared in She-Hulk (Vol. 2) #14. It tells how the Awesome Android became Awesome Andy and ends with a remorseful Andy give up his own autonomy because he screwed up so bad. I kind of wonder if the choice of title for this story is intentional as it is a play on the title of a Woody Allen movie and he’s someone with a checkered sexual history as well. There was also a Civil War tie-in put in the middle of all this romantic drama. In that story, She-Hulk represents members of the New Warriors who are having their secret identities being publicly outed. Since the New Warriors were widely hated by the public, it tackled the question of how much privacy individuals in a high profile criminal case are allowed to have.
By this time, Civil War was over and the Hulk was off Earth in his own title as part of the Planet Hulk event. In She-Hulk, Slott did a story arc titled “Planet Without a Hulk” where She-Hulk is forced to join SHIELD and join their new team of Hulkbusters hunting down the Hulk and his old foes, unaware that then SHIELD director Tony Stark had already exiled Bruce Banner into space. The most interesting part of this arc was issue #19. In that story, the Hulk’s longtime foe the Leader is put on trial and it is used to explain the character’s wonky continuity. See, the Leader had been either killed off or seen in different forms over the years with no rhyme or reason. For example, he was seemingly killed off, then shown to be possessing the body of another character, and in yet another story was depicted as a disembodied head. This story partially answers it, but the real explanation as to how the Leader had cheated death so many times is later revealed during the Fall of the Hulks story arc.
Eventually, Dan Slott left She-Hulk to work full time on Amazing Spider-Man, a title that he totally deserved to do. But before he left, he still had one last story to tell. One running gag in She-Hulk was characters asking if she slept with the Juggernaut. Which is something that was depicted in an issue of Uncanny X-Men at the time, which was a weird choice and a lot of people thought it was very out of character for her. Likewise, there were a bunch of comics where characters were acting out of character or appeared in stories where they had no reason to be there. For example, in early issues of the Avengers: The Initiative featured the characters Wiccan and Hulkling among the various heroes that were part of the Initiative. However, the two characters were against superhero registration in Civil War and were outlaws after the fact for their refusal to register, so them being at Camp Hammond was very incorrect. Well, issue #21 of She-Hulk was a way to explain it all away in an absurd way that was fun. In that story, it’s revealed that an interdimensional corporation was offering people in one universe to take vacations in the Marvel Universe as their super-powered counterparts. So yeah, who slept with the Juggernaut? The She-Hulk from Earth-A. So when in doubt, blame it on Earth-A, I guess.
With Dan Slott gone from the title, She-Hulk continued for another 17 issues with Peter David as the writer. David took things in a completely different direction, having She-Hulk give up being a lawyer in order to become a bounty hunter. This run fucking stinks. There is a lot of reason. Primarily, was the fact that David completely tosses out the entire supporting cast that was ever-present in Slott’s run. Which totally sucks because they were all interesting characters in their own right. At the very least, you’d think that he would have had She-Hulk working with Two-Gun Kid since he was also a bounty hunter. Instead, he introduces us to a new character a Skrull named Jazinda. Also, for a story about She-Hulk being a bounty hunter, there is not a whole lot of bounty hunting going on.
Instead, She-Hulk spends most of her time dealing with Jazinda’s entire race since she’s a Skrull and this all happened around Secret Invasion. Fighting hacky old villains from Savage She-Hulk, and teaming up with X-Factor for no reason other than Peter David was writing both books. She also sleeps with Hercules (finally), and forms the Lady Liberators to overthrow a dictator. These are all things that don’t work very well with She-Hulk. Also, since David doesn’t usually do humor, the title becomes utterly devoid of any kind of mirth. The magic that made this run of She-Hulk a hit when Dan Slott was writing it was gone and the title suffered greatly from it. Peter David made the same mistakes with She-Hulk as Steve Gerber did a decade before. As you can expect, She-Hulk’s book was deep-sixed not long into David’s run. The character would get another go in the next decade but that’s a story for another time.
