While the Hulk has generally always bored me, I’ve always had a thing for She-Hulk. Not like a creepy fetish thing, but just an appeal to the character. It’s probably the fact that unlike her cousin who walks the line between special needs child and meathead, She-Hulk is a well balanced character. Her strength allows for epic scopes to her adventures. Her intellect allows for resolutions other than smashing things to pieces. And the fact that she is a big, green woman makes sure things are never taken too seriously.
So taking advantage of a 40% off sale at my local comic shop, I thought I’d pick up Essential She-Hulk, vol 1 and get to know Jen Walters a bit better. Let’s take a quick look at issues #1 and #2 of She-Hulk’s first series.
Savage She-Hulk #1: The She-Hulk Lives!
The first issue of Savage She-Hulk was written by Stan Lee and this fact alone it what has kept me from reading the early She-Hulk stories in the past. Stan Lee is notorious for his awful treatment of his female characters. I really couldn’t stand to see the same applied to Shulkie. But this is the only issue Stan wrote so I decided to bite the bullet and read it. How bad could it be?
Actually, it really isn’t that bad. In fact, it may be the best thing I’ve read with Stan Lee’s name on it. Jen is a capable, intelligent woman and the dialogue does not make for 60% of the page space. The issue is a real quick origin story, hitting all the points with a surprisingly fast pace. When I finished I was shocked as I have never read through a Stan Lee comic in one setting before.
The basic story is that Bruce Banner (the Hulk, remember?) is on the run and goes to the one person he can trust, his younger cousin Jennifer Walters. Jen is a Los Angeles defense attorney currently working on a case that will put mobster Nick Trask behind bars. The mobster, fearing Jen’s star witness’ testimony, hires a couple of goons to kill Walters. Good thing the thugs don’t know much about the element of surprise.
Bruce fights off the thugs, carries Jen to safety, breaks into a doctor’s house and gives Jen a blood transfusion. Somehow he is able to do all this while remaining calm so that he does not change into the Hulk, which would screw up the story. You would think that if Banner had this much control over his emotions all the time, he would never turn into the Hulk.
Bruce gets Jen set up in the hospital and is then taken in for questioning by the police. THEN he decides it’s okay to freak out, turns into the Hulk, punches a hole in the wall and is not seen again. The transformation all takes place off-panel, so the Hulk’s only appearance in the comic is in a flashback at the very beginning. It’s a strange choice not to feature the Hulk explicitly as I’m sure it would have sold a lot more copies of this fledgling series.
While in the hospital, the thugs make another attempt on Jen’s life. This attempt is even less successful as Jen transforms into a giant, green and very pissed woman. She then proceeds to chase the men down, cause thousands of dollars of property damage and get them to confess to Trask’s guilt within earshot of the police.
That cop’s going to feel like a jerk later.
Savage She-Hulk #2: Deathrace!!
David Antony Kraft takes over the writing chores with this issue and does a great job of creating an interesting cast and setting out of all the little details Stan Lee had in his issue. Artist Mike Vosburg also signs on with this issue, and he and Kraft will be the creative team until the series ends with issue #25.
The issue begins with Jen out of the hospital, in a back brace and back at work. She attempts to have the murder charges against her client, who is testifying against Nick Trask, dropped. But it turns out that her involvement as She-Hulk has mucked up the legal process and made the thug’s confessions inadmissible. Owned.
Oh, and we get to meet Buck Bukowski, the misogynistic assistant DA who speaks in football metaphors, wears safety goggles and smells like Old Spice and hot dogs.
Jen convinces the thugs to testify against Trask for protection against their former employer. And then Jen, who has been smart up to this point, decides to pay Trask a visit. Remember, this guy tried to have her murdered twice already.
Oh, and he plays with giant fucking snakes!
For some reason Trask doesn’t just kill Jen. She goes home and hangs out with her neighbors. Remember that doctor’s house Bruce Banner broke into to give Jen a blood transfusion? Well, his name is Doc Ridge and he’s now a recurring character. Cool, huh? What is not so cool is his adult son who still lives at home, looks like a 70s porn star and goes by the name of Zapper.
I did not know hate until I first beheld the face of Zapper Ridge.
More on that later.
Jen has some lunch with her neighbors when she receives a call from the DA’s office asking for her to come in right away to pick some documents. Jen’s friend Jill goes in Jen’s place, taking Jen’s car. And then it dons on everyone “WTF is the DA calling at the neighbor’s house?”
Jen races after Jill but her back injury keeps her from making any progress. She then turns into the She-Hulk, tosses Zapper to the side like a rag doll and takes chase after the car. Turns out Trask had Jen’s car tampered with and it is now without breaks and speeding through downtown Los Angeles.
Over the course of the chase, Buck Bukowski, in his Jetson’s style sports car, takes after Jill, thinking he will save her from She-Hulk. She-Hulk breaks tons of other people’s shit and Trask nearly kills a trucker looking for some extra cash for a shipment of equipment from Stark Industries. Eventually She-Hulk is able to block on coming traffic and position herself to catch the out of control car. But geuss who fucks everything up?
As a result of Bukowski not knowing his place, the tampered car flies off the highway and kills Jill. She-Hulk is then blamed for the woman’s death and becomes a fugitive. And because everyone thinks Jen was in the car, it is reported that she is dead. Jen is able to own Bukowski in court, getting the charges against her cilent dropped, but her friend is still dead and now Jen is thought to be dead by everyone but a small group of people.
Overall, I really enjoy Kraft’s gamma-irradiated soap opera. While the characters of Buck Bukowski and Zapper are unbelieveibly lame, they do serve a good purpose as She-Hulk smackdown fodder. And as you’ll see with the next four issues, the threads and subplots all interweave into a nice, unified story that beautifully flows from one issue to the next.
Another great thing is that right out of the gate, Kraft is undermining Stan Lee’s naive last words from the first issue, “Whatever Jennifer Walter’s can’t handle–the She-Hulk will do!” Kraft points out that not everything is possible for She-Hulk and this modern idea of the flawed, mistake-prone hero, is in strong contradiction of the unstoppable, rarely failing heroes that populated comics until the late 1970s.
If I have one criticism, it is that I wish that Jen’s back injury were a bigger part of her character. It would be interesting that the gun shot that resulted in her becoming the She-Hulk also left her Walters identity lame or even paralyzed. This would have created a lot more tension between the two conflicting sides of her personality. But still, the She-Hulk we do have is pretty damn cool by all accounts.
More She-Hulk reviews on the way. Until then, how are you feeling about things Jen?
