She-Hulk is not selling well.
So we begin with some nude jump-roping.
Five pages of it.
Until the editor comes on panel and tells John Byrne to cut it out.
If you liked her jumping rope, you’ll like this:
John Byrne’s last issue will be the giant-sized #50, so this is his last real She-Hulk story, and the entire arc is about body image.
He has Shulkie teasing another nude scene…
More than once.
More than twice, even.
He references what’s happening to bodies in other comics created by new jack artists. Guys like Rob Liefeld, whose style Byrne deliberately satirizes…
…were turning Marvel comics into a cheesecake factory, and Byrne–who was also known for drawing buxom, beautiful women–had something to say about it all.
Over…
and over…
He also returns to the Fantastic Four…
Who try to “help” when an overweight woman gets stuck in a perfect 10 body.
Across these issues, She-Hulk takes on Spragg the Living Hill, Xemnu…
…skrulls, etc. and meets back up with space trucker US-1. It’s a blast to see Byrne drawing them.
Intertwined with the space epic, John Byrne and his editor keep battling over She-Hulk nudity and body-image stuff. She gets her body switched with a heavier woman and has to manage in her new body.
It’s actually nice to see comics wrestling with this issue. The stories don’t matter–this is all about the 4th wall humor. I could go into more detailed synopses, but ultimately it’s not important.
Nothing really “changes” as a result of these issues.
That’s right- nothing really changed as a result of those issues, and that’s why the series was cancelled. Byrne was trying WAY too hard to make this series “speshal”, and the end-effect was a goofy series nobody could get interested in. Series about super-ladies who are ribs taken from their male counterparts are hard-sells, anyway. ( ‘Spider-Woman’, ‘Ms. Marvel’, and ‘Savage She-Hulk’ ) This is the early-mid Twenty-First Century, Marvel! Get WITH it, man!! The age of “Hashtag-Me Too”, “Hashtag- Time’s Up”, “Hashtag Don’t Grab My Ass”!!! Women don’t need to coast on their menfolk’s coat-tails anymore! That went out with “I Love Lucy” and “The Waltons”! Why can’t the so-called “House of Ideas” just come up with an original super-lady with original superpowers, and an original back-story which is not owed to some already-successful Marvel super-dude-?? Preferably a lady who is NOT a ‘Claremont Chick’ with a wall full of PH.D’s, and who is just SOOOOOOOOOOOO together that she is basically just Claire Huxtable with superpowers-?? It’s possible, House of Ideas!! 1972’s “The Claws of the Cat” was actually a step in the right direction- an independent lady, but not to the point of celibacy/lesbianism, with abilities that were capable, but not a mind-staggering Omega-Level Mutant!! ( too bad poor Greer just didn’t sell! Hey! She was just a little ahead of her time, that’s all! ) Actually, I have always felt that the Scarlet Witch, as she was initially conceived by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, in the first couple of years of ‘X-Men’, was actually an inspired character! This was before she got to the point where she could rewrite reality, and yank down meteors from high orbit! ( No shit!! See ‘Giant-Size Avengers’ #2, from 1974! ) A little bit of originality goes a long, long way, and we can dispense with all of this “Break down the Fourth Wall” bullshit, and just focus on telling great comic-book stories. Have a sensationally She-Hulkie Day!!
Yeah. It started strong, but by the end it just felt lke he was trying too hard.