It starts with the cover, which tells you that this will be an unusual comic. It will break the fourth wall. It will be funny. At a time when Marvel was about to hit it’s biggest creative downturn in history, and start focusing on overmuscled characters in overserious stories, John Byrne returns and focuses on a character that nearly every other writer to that point simply couldn’t get right. Byrne understood her in Fantastic Four, and continues to do a pretty good job with her in this books–at least at the beginning. Sadly, it will be a little too joke-y and high concept, and that will be the comic’s downfall.
He begins by pitting her against some of the silliest villains in the Marvel rogues gallery: The Headmen (a Steve Gerber creation) and Ringmaster’s Circus of Crime
It all starts because Shulk is exercising at a local circus…
…when Ringmaster appears and does his signature hypnotism bit.
He puts white flesh makeup on her and turns her into a circus freak for a bit.
And yells at Clown.
Of course, She Hulk eventually breaks free of the trance and trounces the criminals. Largely due to the interference of a mystery man who is revealed at the end of the issue to be Chondu the Mystic, who says that the Headmen have an interest in She-Hulk.
The cover has inspired others…
