Simply smashing
With she-hulk currently living it up with her new live-action series on disney+ Hotstar, here are a few things you should know about the sensational Jade giantess.
SHE-HULK: Attorney At Law premiered last week on Disney+ Hotstar, so this week seems like a good time to revisit the recent history of the Jade Giantess. As it turns out, the TV show, which stars Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer Walters, a.k.a She-hulk, has plenty of similarities with the comic books. Let’s dive right in.
She was created by two legends
Like her cousin, The Hulk, Shehulk was also created by Stan Lee, though instead of Jack Kirby, she was co-created by Steve Buscema, another legend of the comics industry.
She only came to being because of the success of the Lou Ferrigno-starring TV show, The Incredible Hulk, which ran from 1977 to 1982. At the time, Marvel Comics were worried that the show’s producers might introduce a female version of the Hulk before they did, so they got Lee to create one first.
Not quite savage
She-hulk eventually made her debut in 1980’s The Savage She-hulk, in which Jennifer Walters, a criminal defence lawyer who also happens to be the cousin of Bruce Banner, a.k.a. The Incredible Hulk, is shot in the back by goons working for a criminal boss named Nick Trask.
In order to save her, Bruce gives her a blood transfusion using his own gamma-irradiated blood, but in the process, inadvertently transferred his gift/curse over to her. As a result, whenever Jennifer gets angry, she turns into the mighty She-hulk!
Lee and Buscema only worked on the first issue of the series, before handing it off to writer David Anthony Kraft and artist Mike Vosburg and inker Frank Springer.
Solo sensation
The Savage She-hulk only lasted 25 issues from 1980 to 1982, but her next shot at solo stardom was the best one yet. In 1989, legendary creator John Byrne took charge of The Sensational She-hulk, writing and drawing most of the series’ best stories.
It was here that She-hulk started breaking the fourth wall by addressing the readers directly. Yes, Deadpool may have made it mainstream, but She-hulk was the first character to break the fourth wall, and even displayed a very meta self-awareness that she was a actually a comics character. At one point, she even calls out Byrne himself when she was not happy with a story!
Byrne’s satirical and fun tone and willingness to push the boundaries of the comic book format set Shehulk apart from other books, and cemented her position as one of Marvel’s best female heroes.
The Sensational She-hulk ran for 60 issues, was the longest-running solo title starring a female Marvel hero at the time when it ended in 1994.
She power
There are few female heroes as strong as She-hulk in the Marvel universe. Besides her super strength she also has superhuman speed, stamina, and reflexes.
Unlike Bruce, however, Jennifer remains totally in control of her mental faculties even in She-hulk mode. This aspect of her is carried over to the TV show, where in the first episode, she puts it down to being ‘angry all the time’ because of the harassment and discrimination she has to endure all the time as a woman.
Green justice
No, she doesn’t try only cases about the environment. The ‘green’ part comes from the fact that Jennifer tries her legal cases in her She-hulk form most of the time.
The lawyer side of Jennifer is arguably her most interesting part, as she frequently represents superheroes in their court cases. Happily, the TV show also plays up this aspect of the character, meaning she is yelling ‘Objection!” more than she is yelling ‘Smash!’ most of the time.
In fact, you could also say that her lawyer skills is her most powerful ‘power’ – at one point, Tony Stark actually de-powered her against her will, and she threatens him by saying he may have eliminated Shehulk, but Jennifer Walters can still ‘destroy’ him!
Fantastic links
Obviously, being one of the most prominent female superheroes in the Marvel universe, She-hulk has been part of many a superteam in the past. She firstjoined the Avengers in 1982’s Avengers #221, and has also been part of other teams, such as Heroes for Hire, the Defenders, Fantastic Force, A-force, and S.H.I.E.L.D.
The team she is most intricately linked with, however, is the Fantastic Four. In fact, she has been part of the Four on two occasions before. The first time was after the 1985 event Secret Wars, when she was recruited to replace the Thing, who had decided to stay behind on Battleworld so he can remain in his human Ben Grimm form.
In the 2012 FF series by Matt Fraction and Mike Allred, She-hulk was part of a replacement FF team alongside Ant-man (Scott Lang), the Inhuman queen Medusa and Darla Deering (Johnny Storm’s then un-powered girlfriend, who dons a ‘Thing’ costume and fights as ‘Ms Thing’). They were only supposed to replace the original Fantastic Four for a few seconds while Marvel’s First Family went on a journey through space and time for a while, but ended up being the ‘replacement Fantastic Four’ for a lot longer than that.
With a new Fantastic Four movie coming up, here’s hoping that Jennifer will have at least some connection with them, or even make a cool cameo in the movie!
Death becomes her
She-hulk has apparently died a total of three times over her 42 years of existence. In the 2020 one-shot The Immortal She-hulk, her three deaths are explained in details.
The first one was from her origin story – while it seemed as though she was just badly injured by the bullet, it was revealed that she had actually died and was brought back to life by Bruce’s blood.
The second death was in Civil War II, when a hastily-assembled mission to confront Thanos saw several heroes killed, including She-hulk and War Machine.
Her third and most recent death was during the Empyre event in 2020, which saw Jennifer killed while fighting the plant-like Cotati alien race. After killing her, the Cotati took possesion of her corpse and used it to infiltrate the Avengers.
Jennifer is able to come back to life each time because of a ‘Green Door’ that was established in Al Ewing and Joe Bennet’s The Immortal Hulk, which is a Green Door is a barrier that stands between Earth and a dark dimension called the Below-place, ruled by an entity called the One-below-all.
The Gamma Bomb that created the Hulk had opened the Green Door for the first time, and since then, it has ‘created’ multiple Hulk-like characters called ‘Gamma Mutates’. Every time one of them dies, they pass through the Green Door and into the Below-place, before being revived again.
Clash of Titania
Titania is widely known as one of She-hulk’s main adversaries. She has the strength to rival Jennifer’s, and their rivalry goes back to 1985’s Secret Wars event, when a group of heroes and villains were transported to a place called Battleworld by the Beyonder and forced to do battle.
She didn’t always have powers though. In fact, Mary Macpherran was a girl from Denver who was shorter in stature than everyone, and was bullied and mocked as a result. She and her best friend Marsha Rosenberg were teleported, along with the entire suburb they lived in, to Battleworld by the Beyonder, and while trying to escape, they were captured by Doctor Doom, who was looking for recruits for his supervillain faction.
After agreeing to join him, Doom gave Mary and Marsha superpowers using alien tech – Marsha became the villain Volcana, while Mary was turned into Titania. During the hero versus villain fight, Titania faced off against She-hulk, henceforth marking them as a direct adversaries.
In the TV show, Titania (played by Jameela Jamil) has been written as an ‘influencer’ with super strength, whom Jennifer has a run-in with during a court case.