Now that I’m finished beating up on Batgirl 2022, it’s time to move on to some of the other big news developments on the comics front that broke recently while we were taking care of more important things in life. I know, I know, “What could possibly be more important than comics?” I hear you cry. Well, things like our families, homes, and jobs, you know, stuff like that. But getting back to the point, the next piece of news I need to address is the debut of Disney/Marvel’s “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” which premiered August 18th, to the dismay of many.
“She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” continues Marvel’s deconstruction of its popular characters, altering her origin story and changing her personality. In the comic book, Jennifer Walters, a shy, humble woman living in Los Angeles and working as a lawyer, was shot and nearly killed by a local gangster who had a grudge against her father, an LA County Sheriff. Bruce Banner was with her and was the only doctor close enough to give her a life-saving blood transfusion. Bruce had no choice but to use his own blood to save the life of his cousin, turning her into the She-Hulk. Unlike Bruce, Jennifer retains most of her personality and intelligence when she transforms, so she exercises much more control over her Hulk persona. A grateful Jennifer uses her newfound power to avenge herself on those who tried to kill her and become a super-heroine. She also becomes a more confident and bold person even apart from her She-Hulk persona.
Contrast that with what we got in the series. An egotistical, arrogant, successful Jennifer Walters, who goes through the world with a feminist chip on her shoulder, has to save her cousin Bruce Banner after a car crash. Some of his blood drips onto an open wound she received in the same accident, thus turning her into She-Hulk. That’s it for the circumstances behind her origin. Later on, she is accosted by a few admittedly obnoxious men and transforms into She-Hulk. Only the intervention of Bruce as the Hulk keeps her from killing these men. Apparently, being a jerk is a capital crime in this world. Regardless, Bruce tries to take Jennifer under his wing to train her and help her adjust to life as a Hulk, but there’s no need. She can already do everything he can do, only better. There is no character arc here, no development at all. Nor is there any real sense of peril or suspense. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law doesn’t need any help. There’s nothing that needs to change. She is already everything she needs to be. Heaven forbid that a woman might need help from a man, or that a man might even have anything to offer to a woman. No, she is complete without him. A She-Hulk needs a Hulk like a fish needs a bicycle.
It’s not hard to tell which story line is more interesting. What Marvel used to know and understand is that a good story needs character development and growth. It needs a conflict and an obstacle for the protagonist to overcome. It needs an antagonist, someone or something who is at least as capable, and perhaps more so, than the hero. And it needs a sense of danger, a sense that things might not turn out well for our hero and others. Look at any well crafted story, whether a comedy or tragedy, a drama or something more action oriented, and you will find those same elements. It’s called the hero’s journey, and it’s what makes a story worth reading or watching. It’s also something that She-Hulk is utterly lacking.
One scene stands out as an example of SHAAL’s faults. Jennifer and Bruce are talking in his little hideaway where he is trying to explain the great importance, as a Hulk, of controlling one’s anger. Jennifer, in return, begins fem-splaining why she is so much better at controlling her anger than he is.
“I’m great at controlling my anger, I do it all the time. When I’m cat-called in the street, when incompetent men explain my own area of expertise to me…I do it pretty much every day, ’cause if I don’t I’ll get called emotional, or difficult, or I might just literally get murdered. So I’m an expert at controlling my anger because I do it infinitely more than you.”
“Literally get murdered.” Please. Look, I’m sorry, but you mean that the “male gaze” and “male condescension” constitute the extent of your anguish? It’s not like your father killed your mother and experimented on you as a child, or you’ve been on the run for much of your adult life trying to escape people who want to actually kill you or exploit your massive strength, driving you at one point to attempt suicide, only to fail when your alter-ego spits the bullet out. It’s not even like the one you loved most in the world sacrificed herself to save half of all life in the universe. Or maybe it’s just that those things pale in significance compared to the cat-calling (sorry, Tatiana Maslany…that’s not really happening) and male condescension. Let’s contrast this Jennifer Walters speech with the final speech from Jennifer Walters in issue 1 of “The Savage She-Hulk” as she sits in a hospital bed, having feigned ignorance of recent events for the sake of a kindly nurse.
“The blood transfusion must have caused it! I’ve become a gamma-ray monster, like poor Doc! (Banner). But I’ll learn to live with it! From now on, whatever Jennifer Walters can’t handle, the SHE-HULK WILL DO!”
There is a huge difference between the OG She-Hulk and whatever Disney/Marvel just dumped on us. The original was grateful for her life and sympathetic toward Bruce. She was confident and ready to use her new-found power for good. All the D/M She-Hulk does is whine about personal pet peeves that are pretty petty when compared to what her cousin had to endure.
Somehow, in spite of terrible writing, worse CG, an abysmal story, and the criminal deconstruction of the main characters, SHAAL scored a 78% audience score at Rotten Tomatoes, so someone obviously enjoyed it. Maybe they are starved for entertainment, I don’t know. But if they like this mess, imagine what would happen if they read the comic. Sadly, as long as Kathleen Kennedy and Kevin Feige are running the show, we are unlikely to ever see She-Hulk as she was in the comic books.
Full disclosure: I haven’t watched “She-Hulk”, and I’m not going to. I was a big fan of the original She-Hulk, especially in her John Byrne years. She was breaking the fourth wall long before Deadpool came along and made it cool No, I gave up on Disney a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, when they trampled my childhood by destroying the Star Wars franchise; a sin I have not been able to forgive quite yet. Now that they are trampling the remains of my childhood by destroying comic-book characters that I knew and loved well, I am even less inclined to forgive them.
Before anyone asks “how dare you give your opinion on something you haven’t even watched?”, which is a fair question, let me say that I watched every trailer and clip Marvel released before episode 1 aired, watched multiple YouTube clips, and watched and read plenty of reviews. When studios assemble trailers, they choose clips that they feel are most likely to generate interest in the target audience. Judging from the material assembled for the trailers, I had a pretty good idea what the final product was going to look like. Based on all that I saw and read, I was dead right.