Four Color Comics

She-Hulk: Single Green Female (issues 1-6)

Reviewed by: Miron

Reviewer’s grade: B+

A month ago, Johanna at Comics Worth Reading (and the usual suspects here at Four Color) rightly bemoaned the sexism that runs rampant through superhero comics. In closing the Four Color response, JD expressed a yearning “to see a big-name comic character along the lines of the marvelous Action Girl.” While I am not a woman, nor am I familiar with Action Girl, I here humbly offer up an exception to the rule that superhero comics are the translucently-veiled sexual or power fantasies of men: She-Hulk. (Hmm, that intro would pack more punch without that banner hanging over it, wouldn’t it?)

She-Hulk as written by Dan Slott, that is. While She-Hulk is not much of a feminist, she is perhaps a super-post-feminist, consumed by conflicting drives to achieve public success as a superhero-lawyer and private (in the form of emotional fulfillment and the achievement of meaningful romantic love) success simply as a lady who, with her hair up, somewhat resembles a very tall stalk of asparagus.

As Slott plots it, her fellow Avengers aren’t able to provide the family circle she needs, nor can the District Attorney’s office keep up with her thirst for legal triumph, and so she is forced into the marginal realm of superhuman law at Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg, & Holliway (get it?) where Holden Holliway initially insists that she work only as her plain-Jane alter-ego Jennifer Walters. Thusly Slott drives a wedge between the physical and sexual prowess of “Shulkie” and the keen legal mind and emotional vulnerability of Walters, clearly delineating the modern plight of women who “want it all.”

Or maybe that’s all hooey.

She-Hulk, after all, has been used for years as a sort of mint-flavored Pamela Anderson (or perhaps a more durable Lois Lane, as she has been called upon to shack up with, among others, the Thing, Luke Cage, and the Man-Wolf), and Juan Bobillo’s pleasingly cartoony pencils (and, later, Paul Pelletier’s more main-stream bombastic drawings) never shy away from depicting her gamma-powered breasts and overall bodaciousness.

In either case, this latest run of She-Hulk (at least the first volume of it) is great fun. The idea of superheroes having to deal with “real life” problems like law suits and libel is not new, but Slott and Bobillo’s light-hearted approach has a buoyancy and pace that elevate not only our heroine, but also the numerous guest-heroes and villains that find themselves entangled in her skewed version of the Marvel Universe. Never before has the usually tiresome Wrecking Crew or the oft-bludgeoned Mad Thinker’s Awesome Android seemed like such a happening good time. Even a character as reliably enjoyable as the Thing blossomed in his brief appearances within the first six issues.

So, is She-Hulk our last great hope for a mainstream non-exploitative superheroine? Yes. Yes, she is. Other than Spider-Woman, she is the most successful and longest- running female Marvel superhero (and unlike Spider-Woman [and, for that matter, Wonder Woman] she regularly goes several months without being tied up [see the cover of the first comic Michael every purchased]). She is also, surprisingly, one of the few superheroines with an advanced degree and a profession. So, as Dave commented on the Sexism in Superhero Comics entry, if you don’t buy the She-Hulk collections, you’re really letting the side down and just opening the door for such smut-crafters as Jeph Loeb’s Supergirl and Alan Moore’s forthcoming All the Girls From My Childhood Library Doing It.