John Byrne's run on She-Hulk features some fabulous fourth-wall breaks.
In 1989 She-Hulk received her second solo series, The Sensational She-Hulk, courtesy of writer-artist John Byrne. Although Jennifer Walters initially considered her giant green alter ego a curse, Byrne had She-Hulk embrace the joy of being a superhero. She-Hulk didn't just become fun; she became funny. Long before characters like Lobo and Deadpool, the character made it a habit to break the fourth wall with humorous intent.
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Byrne's run started with an original graphic novel, followed by a stint on the regular series from issues 1-8 and 31-50. True to form, even Byrne's abrupt firing and rehiring was a target for jokes. Self-referential gags were everywhere, from the covers to the letters and promos.
Sensational She-Hulk was launched with a cover that has been recreated several times, including in the series' final issue. She-Hulk's original solo series, Savage She-Hulk, was canceled after 25 issues and Marvel was skeptical whether the character was popular enough to warrant a new ongoing.
It's easy to imagine a marketing executive arguing that instead of a risky She-Hulk series, what Marvel needed was more X-Men. John Byrne addressed these concerns head-on with a cover that brashly warned prospective patrons that the story inside had no respect for the fourth wall.
She-Hulk's fourth-wall-breaking gags frequently deconstructed the conventions of comic book storytelling. This sequence from
The Sensational She-Hulk #4 finds Jennifer Walters in the middle of picking an outfit. Since choosing from one's wardrobe can be time-consuming, She-Hulk decides to change between panels instead.
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This page takes a jab at the strange flow of time within a comic book universe, in which characters switch between extravagant outfits within the short period it takes to transition from one panel to the next. It's followed by another brilliant joke in which She-Hulk requests a subplot to help reduce the travel time to the next scene.
Readers who are only familiar with digital comics and trade collections may not appreciate how much ad space they're missing out on. Periodical print issues generally feature several pages of promotional matter in the middle of the story. Also, unlike television, most comic plots aren't paced with ad breaks in mind.
Marvel Comics once had an ad section listing all the publisher's titles so readers could sign up for a subscription. In issue 5, She-Hulk is in such a hurry that she tears through the subscription info pages to get to the other side. It's an appropriately aggressive spatial and thematic loophole against narrative interruption.
By the 80s, the Comics Code Authority (CCA) was loosening its grip on the industry; however, creators weren't free of it just yet. An openly sex-positive comic like She-Hulk frequently flirted with making code violations. But the CCA didn't just object to characters having sex lives; it also targeted the horror genre.
Sensational She-Hulk #34 opens with our hero having a nightmare that nearly climaxes in the appearance of a zombie. She-Hulk suddenly wakes up before she can violate the code, only to find out that zombies have recently been taken off the blacklist. The point is that the code's rules were so arbitrary that even a superhero lawyer would have a hard time keeping track of them.
Jennifer's prophetic claims in issue one had come true within a few years, and She-Hulk was struggling to sustain an audience. This opened the door for John Byrne to return after he'd been abruptly fired. The new sales strategy was for She-Hulk to replicate whatever popular comics would do on their covers and then poke fun at her cynical marketing gimmicks.
In issue 37, She-Hulk lampoons the 90s readership's preoccupation with gritty anti-heroes like Punisher and Wolverine, by advertising them on the cover, despite their non-presence in the interior story. Spider-Man's there too because, apparently, wall-crawling is the only thing more commercial than sex and violence.
In the history of fourth-wall-breaking gags, there is arguably nothing more iconic than the animated short Duck Amuck, which featured Daffy Duck having a surreal showdown with his animator. Byrne performs a playful homage to this Looney Tunes sketch in Sensational She-Hulk #37.
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To delay the resolution of an ongoing story arc, so it can instead occur in the upcoming Valentine's Day issue, Byrne fills the last few pages of issue 37 with a sequence in which She-Hulk calls out this "cheap" strategy. She-Hulk's spat with her writer-artist is represented by her tearing out of the narrative into the white gutter between panels.
The Sensational She-Hulk's new editor, Renee Witterstaetter, often joined the fourth-wall-breaking shenanigans. In an innovative sequence from issue 39, She-Hulk chastises Byrne for his overreliance on plots involving supervillains with romantic intentions. While She-Hulk lists examples, the editor's footnotes point out the issues in which these events took place.
Such footnotes are a standard editorial convention, which arguably distracts from the narrative. At least that's the accusation that Byrne makes via narrative boxes. The creator and editor then get into a verbal argument, causing the sparring text boxes to clutter and push She-Hulk into a corner. It's a clever metaphor for how unnecessary texts can obscure the story.
In the nineties, artists like Todd McFarlane and Erik Larsen popularized a kinetic, expressive art style filled with lines. Even big names like George Perez and John Byrne may have felt pressure to adopt elements of this visual language. Finally, Byrne owned up to doing a McFarlane impression in his contemporary Namor: The Submariner comic.
Readers had come to expect fourth wall breaks by this point in the series, but the creative team kept coming up with surprising variations on the theme. Issue #43 opens with Byrne "borrowing" the art style of another prominent 90s artist, Art Adams. This appears to be the final straw for Renee, who barges into the story and makes Byrne redo the first few pages in his usual style.
Byrne's strategy of exploiting the character's sexual appeal became increasingly blunt towards the end of his run. At this point, calling the comic a series of loosely connected She-Hulk pinups wouldn't have been entirely unwarranted. With issue 45, the creators owned up to this criticism, then doubled down by producing a comic that was a literal series of pinups.
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In the first half of the issue, approximately two panels are dedicated to a standard superhero action story, while the remainder of the page features a She-Hulk pinup in the style of Byrne's contemporaries. It's also possible this sequence was intended as a parody of Marvel's questionable 1991 Swimsuit Special.
A large part of Sensational She-Hulk's appeal was that it cast a wide net with its jokes, and the comic's most popular target was Byrne himself. In his final issue, Byrne offers an in-story explanation for all the fourth wall breaks, revealing that the She-Hulk comic exists within the Marvel Universe and was actually licensed by Jennifer herself.
However, by issue 50, Renee has had enough of Byrne's narcissistic antics and gets rid of him by imprisoning him in a closet. When She-Hulk discovers this, she gives her writer-artist an even more hilarious send-off by chucking him out of the building, presumably to his death. The Marvel Comics version of John Byrne first appeared in the pages of his Fantastic Four run, which also began Byrne's association with She-Hulk. One can hardly think of a more appropriate conclusion to this long-running gag.
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Anish Fonseka is little more than an organic vessel for Superman and Beatles trivia. He is a graduate of New York University and currently resides in Sri Lanka, where he hopelessly fantasizes about disrupting the medium of comics.
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