"i smash fourth walls, bad endings, and sometimes matt murdock."
After every Disney+ MCU show ends, comicbook twitter like to rank their favourites all over again. Sometimes I think of what my ranking would be, but to be honest, unless I count things like specific allegiances (Ms. Marvel as my fave because #KamalaKorps) or criteria (Moon Knight as my fave because of the way it expanded on MCU canon and really used mythology as more than a background/aesthetic thing, or WandaVision for being so refreshing, or Hawkeye for creative ways of fully adapting one of the best comic stories)… I may not have a “favourite”. Or rather, with the exception of Falcon and Winter Soldier, which I enjoyed but had two things against it (being very action-oriented, and failing terribly at their depiction of Madripoor) they’re ALL my favourites in different ways. Some more so than others, depending on when you ask.
And right now? She-Hulk: Attorney At Law may actually be my favouritest.
I’m a She-Hulk fan and have been so for awhile, but the only She-Hulk comic I’ve really read prior to this show was Mariko Tamaki’s run. I’ve read an issue or two of Charles Soule’s phenomenal run, but it wasn’t enough to say I’m partial to that particular version of her character. And I’m aware of John Byrne’s run, of course, but I haven’t read it, save a random panel here and there, and all the glorious fourth-wall breaking cover art.
Mariko Tamaki’s She-Hulk is not regular She-Hulk - it’s dark and depressing and deals with serious things like grief and PTSD. I loved it, but I knew it wasn’t for everyone. The dudebros hated it. So, it wasn’t “regular Jen”, although I am familiar with Jen Walkers a.k.a. She-Hulk, attorney at law, from other comics I read over the years: Brittney Williams & Kate Leth’s Patsy Walker (Jen cameos in it regularly as Patsy’s BFF), and Kelly Thompson’s Captain Marvel (Jen is part of Carol’s regular squad for team-ups or girls nights out) just to name a couple. She’s even appeared in a few of my favourite X-Men comics over the years (very recently she took on all of Krakoa as her client.)
So… yes, I guess I like Jen Walters quite a bit. She’s funny and smart and she’s a great lawyer, even if we don’t get to see much of this last bit in the show. Which is what this newsletter is supposed to be about!
As usual, let’s just do this in point form…
Spoiler warning!
What I Loved:
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For the most part, She-Hulk/Jen Walters is NOT a superhero. Therefore, technically this is NOT a “superhero show”. (It might also technically not be a “law show” but we’ll let that one slide, for Jen.) This means that I get what I wanted from a She-Hulk series - one that is funny and focuses on Jen’s regular life, which, okay, sometimes get interrupted with the need to be big and green.
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Tatiana Maslany. This is the first time someone I fancast was actually cast, and she’s amazing. I didn’t expect for her to make me completely forget that Orphan Black is a thing, but she did. Her chemistry with Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock is great, too, which is a huge plus.
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The fourth-wall breaks. Of course this will need to be addressed, since what is more She-Hulk than going all meta? One of my favourite things that I’ve seen in She-Hulk comic panels is when she literally climbs out of them or tear down pages to get to another page, or to berate the author for a plot point she doesn’t like. For the most part, the fourth-wall breaks in She-Hulk: Attorney At Law were much milder - more Fleabag than Deadpool, let alone She-Hulk. It was still fun, especially when most “regular” people never seem to notice she’s doing it, but Bruce seemed to notice in the first episode, indicating that it might be connected to their powers. The wall-breaks increased bit by bit, and by the last episode they did a TV version of her breaking out of panels and IT. WAS. BRILLIANT.
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The way this show is very meta, not just with the fourth-wall breaks. It really trolls all the dudebros and incels that permeate the MCU/Marvel fandom (and really any “male-centric” fandom) which enrages the irl ones and then they react exactly like the ones in the show do? It’s funny. And scary, and enraging, but as Jen said, fear and anger is the “baseline of any woman just existing.” (I would add, also anyone not cishet. Especially anyone not cishet.)
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How comicky it is. This was a thing with the Hawkeye series, and Marvel really doubled down here with both the meta bits and the sheer ridiculousness of characters like Leapfrog, or someone like Daredevil doing the
walk of shamestrut of pride. -
Going back to the meta-ness of it all, the way this show just calls out their own studio on all the tropes and cliches of previous movies/shows. All the daddy issues, the inevitable “final boss” action sequences (which Jen sidesteps and puts down as soon as it tried to happen in the last ep!), and the tired plotlines like villains trying to get Hulk blood. Do I think Marvel Studios will avoid these things going forward? Not really. I mean, we have Quantumania coming up next year that would probably deal with Hope Van Dyne’s daddy isues, if not Cassie Lang’s… and you can’t bring characters like Namor into Wakanda Forever without giving him a big bad to fight. (I mean you can, but they probably won’t.) But Jen Walters calling the MCU out on these tropes mean that the studio is aware of fan criticism, and they’re also aware that going forwards, they can’t rely on these tropes all the time. So I hope that this means more fresh works like She-Hulk in the future, alongside the standard action fare.
What (other people) didn’t like:
- This isn’t a problem at all for me, but the lack of traditional superhero action fights at the finale made some MCU fans feel cheated. I would specifically say “MCU fan” here rather than “Marvel fan” because I feel like anyone who liked She-Hulk would probably feel pleasantly surprised (or not surprised at all), rather than cheated of an “ending.” Jen finding her voice and taking control of her own narrative IS the ending! Like the title of the final episode said, whose show is it anyway? Not Bruce Banner’s, not Titania’s, and definitely not HulkKing and his Wrecking Crew’s - it’s Jen Walters’, and she isn’t interested in big action sequences or bad endings. And I love that for her!
What I don’t quite like:
- So, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the ending because of one particular plot point that was left dangling - the one regarding Josh. What Josh did to Jen - seducing her with the intent to do harm, recording her during sex without her knowledge, and releasing that recording to the public with the intention to ruin her reputation - that isn’t just a heinous crime, that constitutes as rape in several states in the US. And while Todd got his comeuppance, Josh seems to get away with this? I WANT JUSTICE FOR JEN!
In other nerdy news I started listening to some episodes of Bitches On Comics which is immediately going into my go-to podcast list. One of the 2021 episodes I was listening to (not having time to listen to everything from the start, I just go by the guests I want to listen to the most) had Vita Ayala as the guest. They talked about New Mutants and Children of the Atom, of course, but also Vita’s The Wilds and Where Black Stars Rise (which is a retelling of The King In Yellow and something I really want to read now!) and other things like Xena the Warrior Princess.
There’s just so much awesome stuff to digest in that ep, but one thing in particular that I didn’t realise was how queer New Mutants was. I mean, it’s an X book, ofc it’s queer af, but I mean in the sense that Vita had populated the series’ bg characters with a bunch of alphabet mafia kids that I never paid as much attention to because I’m still waiting on Dani and Ilyana to fucking kiss (hey, shippers gotta ship!). My favourite of these many kids is Cam, grumpy enby jock whose first appearance was before the Krakoan Age, back when the Age of X-Man event was happening. (I completely ignored this event because I knew a reboot was coming, and need to go back to read it!)
I was as excited about Charlie Jane Anders coming on as a New Mutants writer as I was sad about Vita Ayala leaving, and one of the things I was excited about was Charlie Jane’s new character Shela aka Escapade, who is trans and will be among the “main” New Mutants kids. And that got me wondering if Vita Ayala didn’t create any queer characters in her run (which she did, obviously, see the previous paragraph). And Vita’s characters may not be front and center, but the way they wrote Cosmar (who they didn’t create) and No-Girl who may be cis but are very much not in bodies they were comfortable with, very much mirror the trans/enby experience.
I really loved the arc where Cosmar wanted to get in the Crucible (where they fight to the death and get reborn) and was rejected because she wasn’t depowered or considered “in need” of resurrection, and even Dani, whom I love, basically said “I love you as you are, you don’t need to change” which comes from the heart but is also such a problematic thing to say to someone experiencing dysphoria? (And No-Girl! WHY did it never occur to anyone to ask No-Girl if she would like to NOT be just a brain in a jar when she is only that way because of experiments done to her by anti-mutant scientists?) And I guess I loved that this was written, because sure, Dani’s acceptance of Cosmar as she was is valid, but so is Cosmar’s feelings about herself, and I loved the way this arc was resolved in the end - both for Cosmar and No-GirlCerebella.
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The title of this newsletter is from She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
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I wish I can make zines and talk about X-Men all day every day.
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People are dropping like flies here at work, so please remember that the pandemic is not over, and stay safe!