Sensational She-Hulk #15: A Hulk of a Different Color

Sensational She-Hulk #15
“Secret Warts”
Writer: Steve Gerber
Penciler: Bryan Hitch
Inker: Jim Sanders III
Letterer: Jim Novak
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Editor: Bobbie Chase
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco
Cover: Dale Keown and Josef Rubinstein
Released: March 6, 1990

The shock of being de-Hulkified at the end of last issue is replaced for Jennifer Walters by the shock of a horde of demonic critters descending upon her and Howard in the Baloneyverse. Fortunately, they seem more intent on devouring the cold cut landscape itself than the new arrivals … at first.

When their attention shifts, Jen and Howard hop onto another meat platform careening through the void to a nearby meatball (just go with it). More creatures erupt from the surface and attack Jen, who suddenly transforms into a larger, angrier, very gray She-Hulk – predating her post-Civil War II/Marvel NOW! transformation by a good quarter century.

She starts channeling angry Bruce Banner Hulk: referring to herself in the third person, saying how she hates “puny Jennifer,” etc. Just as she's lashing out at Wilcox (the scientist She-Hulk dove into the Baloneyverse to save in the first place) for something he did to Jen in college, the Critic intervenes to return them to Wilcox's office and get them back on track toward saving the universe. It's a mission of which Jen and Wilcox remain unaware and about which Howard was given virtually no details from the Critic, trying to honor his Watchers' vow.

In an interlude, we meet a rest home resident who undergoes a savage transformation into the Golden Age hero known as the Terror. He brutally dispatches the manager of the facility who mismanaged its funds and the investor who took advantage.

Meanwhile, the leadership at the prison where Floyd Mangles is incarcerated discover he was a bona fide super-villain named Dr. Angst. The building begins to shake as a six-story power drill effects Mangles' escape. Once outside, he uses a series of mundane magical artifacts (his specialty) to locate his associates in the Band of the Bland – Tillie the Hun, the Black Hole, Sitting Bullseye and the Spanker – the group that tried to assassinate Howard when he ran for president as the nominee of the All-Night Party*. It's all part of the plan that started with the reversal of the black hole** 10 years prior.

Back at her New York offices, Jen seems to be under the impression she's been cured (I guess she wasn't changing back and forth at this point) but comes to realize she's following the same pattern Bruce initially did – transforming at sundown. She, Wilcox and Howard race the setting sun west in an attempt to locate the underground New Mexico bunker where Banner rode out his early transformations. Once inside, Jen encounters a pair of frightened figures who took shelter there because of their warts... which are secret.

None of this is working out the way the Critic hoped, leaving him to watch as a mass of debris and failed universes in neatly condensed black containers hurtle toward the Earth.

Looking at part 2 of "The Cosmic Squish Principle," it might be easy to pick at the meandering nature of the story – as the Critic himself does – if that wasn't clearly part of Gerber's plan.

I'd totally forgotten about Dr. Angst, but his bargain brand mystical talismans – the Plunger of the Patooti, the Insoul and the Eucha-Ritz for example – are great plays on Dr. Strange's alliterative artifacts. And it helps the absurdity of the plunger gag from last issue make some kind of sense.

Having Gerber write Howard again underscores the complexity of the Duck's character. He's not just a grumpy everyman; when he could be railing at She-Hulk/Jen for dragging him into the Baloneyverse, he recognizes they need to work together. He realizes the struggle Jen is having with the change to her She-Hulk persona and tries to guide Wilcox to help her, even as he delivers great, sarcastic lines. When the enraged gray She-Hulk asks if he's her friend, Howard fumbles and says he “hadn't given the relationship much thought.” When Weezie asks whether the talking duck bites, Howard barks, “Only when provoked.”

I don't know where this is going, but I'm glad Gerber was behind the wheel.

* True story. Well, true comic book story.

** - The natural phenomenon, not the D-list villain.