I'm just saying, I've never seen it spelled "Shulky" anywhere ever and it really kind of bothers me. Just my perspective as being raised by a Grammar Nazi, and I wanted to get that off my chest before I unpack the rest of this.
And oh, boy is there a lot to unpack here.
I'll go ahead and start myself off by saying that I'm not a huge fan of She-Hulk or even the Hulk family in general. Unless it's been Avengers-related (as I'll reference from my own experience when appropriate), I don't really go near the Hulk family all that much. So if that is a deal-breaker for you taking my opinion with a dose of salt, please feel free to do so.
But let's have a look at Shulkie's history and maybe we can determine why so many people are not so happy with the direction Marvel has taken her. She was originally created for the most pure and good of all reasons to create a character - MONEY! Specifically, the 1970s Incredible Hulk TV series was picking up steam and Marvel was scared that the creators of the show might end up introducing a female counterpart to the Hulk, one that they wouldn't own the rights to.
So, Stan Lee (may he rest in peace) and John Byrne crafted for Marvel a distaff counterpart to the future World-Breaker. A "She-Hulk", if you will. Bruce Banner's demure, mild-mannered cousin named Jennifer Walters. Shot up by hoodlums, she would have died were it not for Bruce giving her a much-needed blood transfusion. Thanks to his gamma radiated blood, however, Jennifer suffered a startling transformation upon becoming angry or upset...turning her into the She-Hulk.
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| Savage She-Hulk #1 (1980) |
And thus, a legend was born...that went on to be in twenty-five issues of her own series before it was cancelled and she got shipped into the Avengers books and had a bad history of car troubles (instead of the usual jokes about women being bad drivers - how progressive!). But let's take a look at Shulkie herself as depicted on the cover, towering over her human form of Jennifer Walters. Unlike Bruce, who becomes a mindless, roided out rage monster when he becomes the Hulk, Shulkie is clearly of a different breed altogether. Still, pardon the term, hulking and powerful but still very distinctly feminine.
Now, you could make an argument that this is cheesecake and a flimsy excuse to use sex appeal (and I'm not saying you're entirely wrong), but it also brings up a very distinct difference between Shulkie and the Hulk. Something that made her unique rather than just being a female Hulk. This also translated to her mental state as well. Unlike Bruce when he became the Hulk, Jennifer retained her mental faculties and her personality. She was still her, just a largely more outgoing and confident version of herself in addition to being able to bench press a tank.
Basically put, she (comedic gags aside) was both beautiful and confident, showing that strength and aesthetic beauty aren't mutually exclusive concepts.
Alas, solo series for anyone who wasn't one of the big names at Marvel was a problem even back then. So, as previously mentioned, Shulkie had her series canceled in 1982 and ended up in the Avengers and later the Fantastic Four, fighting in both the Contest of Champions and in the first ever Secret Wars. It wouldn't be until 1989 when she got a solo series back, spearheaded by John Bryne...who basically made her Deadpool before Deadpool was around.
That's right, She-Hulk was breaking the fourth wall before Wade Wilson ever squeezed his ass into red and black spandex. Under Bryne, Shulkie took on a more comedic tone as she was aware of her existence as a comic book character and her stories would satirize comic books and pop culture in general. This is the version of her that most people know now, the one that is firmly cemented into our minds when we think of She-Hulk now.
So, that is She-Hulk then. What about She-Hulk now?
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| ...why are Daredevil's eyes glowing, though? |
Well...apparently, she's got a new look and it's so wonderful and if you don't like it, then you're just upset that you can't jerk off to her anymore. Or something.
I guess?
This where where the mispelled "#MakeShulkyHotAgain" hashtag comes in. People are complaining because She-Hulk now looks like...well...that. Now, the degrees of which she looks like this depend heavily upon the artist drawing her but...they pretty much are all varying degrees of this from what I've seen. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
To give a bit of background for it, I had attempted to pick up the Hulk series from 2016. During that time, Bruce Banner had died (he's better now) and Jen had effectively become the Hulk because not even in-universe does anyone take Amadeus Cho seriously. She had some understandable trauma going on following the then-death of Bruce, which had caused her Gray Hulk persona to manifest and that is a story that I'll just save time and say that there are multiple versions of Hulk personas and getting any further into that will give both you and I a headache.
Now, again, I'm not a big reader of She-Hulk, so I can't say whether or not that was a thing before that point, but it'd just be splitting hairs either way. Her trauma was the reason for her transformation into the Gray Hulk and I suppose that worked well enough for that.
I usually have a three comics rule when I pick up a series to see whether or not I want to keep going with it. Hulk was the first series where I ended up breaking that rule. I dropped it after one issue, because it became clear that this was not a character I was interested in reading about. I realize now that I was being more than a little silly, expecting the Bryne Hulk when she had just been through an incredibly traumatic experience. Maybe I'll revisit it again at some point in the future.
As for her appearance now? Well, I've read up through Issue #10 of the current Avengers run (at the time of this writing) and there is apparently something going on with Jennifer's transformations. She's becoming more Hulk like and losing her mental facilities as well along with it. She's been consulting with both Doctor Strange and the Black Panther on it, working on different methods of dealing with the problem and the like. So there's at least some in-universe reason for it and it has even been acknowledged in a bit of leaning on the fourth wall by Namor in Issue #10.
But out of universe, it's a trend among the creative teams at Marvel that female characters seem to be being made deliberately less attractive at least a few examples such as Shulkie here and Carol Danvers elsewhere (yet, ironically in Issue #10, Carol looks much less androgynous than she has in some time) come to mind. Now, I'm not here to debate the reasons for such a change in designs - be they political or otherwise. I'm just looking at it and asking a simple question of people who are proponents of this change. People who say, after being rebuffed for insisting people are only upset that they can't masturbate to it (which is nonsense anyway in a world where porn is readily available and for free, no less), that "you don't like it because they changed it".
Why is change an inherently good thing?
More to the point, why is this change an inherently good thing?
To rip-off a bit more of a monologue from Linkara of Atop the Fourth Wall: if you're changing something, you're doing it with the intention of making it better. Changing She-Hulk to be a hulking brute who doesn't English goodly and only wants to smash things...doesn't do that. At all.
Take the panel right here with Shulkie about to attack Namor. Take out Namor's dialogue and just look at her own words. They're not Shulkie, they're the words of the Hulk forced into Shulkie's mouth. They are literally what the Hulk would be saying and doing in this situation. By making She-Hulk like this, they have completely inverted the character and made her nothing more than a distaff counterpart.
Until 2018, Jennifer Walters was not just a female Hulk. Now, though? Given her design and her attitudes and behaviors? She might as well be. Marvel has stripped her of any uniqueness she possessed in favor of making her that, and it is not a good change. It doesn't add anything to her, and it strips her of the things that make her the She-Hulk.
Now, does that mean that she has to be a curvy Amazonian beauty? Yes and no. Yes, because...that's honestly what the character was about to begin with. She was doing just fine as that for literally decades before someone at Marvel decided "no, no, that's not right". Say what you will about sexism and the like and how women are portrayed in comics. Say what you will about artists using comic books as a flimsy excuse to draw porn. By making She-Hulk as she is now, she's actually been reverted into being a pathetic excuse for a distaff counterpart, the exact opposite of her core character concept.
And also, no. No, She-Hulk doesn't have to be the voluptuous jade goddess we've come to know and love. I fully believe that artists and writers should have creative room to play around with characters, it's how the characters at Marvel have manage to survive over the decades of the company's existence. It's how they've grown and developed, and the reason why we still follow their stories even now. But if you're going to make a change like this, something that goes against the core of the character and will only serve to alienate long-time fans of said character, then it would be a damn good idea to have a good reason to do it.
See also: every single thing that Dan Slott ever wrote for Spider-Man.
And who knows? Maybe Marvel does have a good reason for it and She-Hulk will be back to being the both gorgeous and confident woman that we've known for years and who needed no real change before this point. As I said before, Carol Danvers had started to appear not horrifying in appearance again, maybe Jennifer Walters will get the same treatment. As far as this personally goes, I have enough trust in Jason Aaron's writing (he's about fifty-fifty with me after Unworthy Thor, which I'll most likely review at some point) to give this a bit of a wait and see approach as far as in-universe goes.
Out of universe, though? Yeah, #MakeShulkieHotAgain.
For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.
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