An article on Jennifer Walter's She-Hulk and Carol Danvers' Captain Marvel, and the recent developments in comics that have changed them both for the better. With a website called “Sensational She-Geek”, it may surprise you to learn I haven’t always been so keen on Jennifer Walters. Not to say I had anything against her, I suppose I just wasn’t familiar enough to have a real appreciation of the character. I started reading her around the time of Secret Wars, at the end of Charles Soule’s 12-issue run on her. She was cool; this smooth-talking big green lawyer. The comic focused a lot on her life as an attorney, which was excellent because it highlighted her intelligence, as opposed to her sensuality or her exotic nature.
Then Civil War II happened, and everything changed for her. She front lined a preemptive attack on Thanos with a small team of Avengers, hand-picked by her dear friend Carol Danvers. The plan failed, with the tragic casualty of James Rhodes. Jenn barely faired any better and was left in a coma for months afterwards. By the time she woke up, the first thing she learned was that her cousin Bruce Banner was dead. Even worse, he’d been shot in the head by Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye, one of her and Bruce’s closest friends and fellow Avengers. She never got to say goodbye to him—Bruce, who saved her with his blood when she was dying; Bruce who shared with her the burden of the Hulk; Bruce who was always there with a word of Hulk advice when she needed one. Bruce and Rhodey were dead, and she’d been powerless to stop any of it. Understandably, this is a hard hit to one of the hardest hitting of them all. The psychological fallout from the events of Civil War II weigh heavy on her strong shoulders, which brings us to Hulk, by Mariko Tamaki. Hulk, as the series was initially titled before transitioning back to She-Hulk for Marvel Legacy, addressed Jennifer’s PTSD and related issues following her traumas. It starts by her being unable—or unwilling—to change into her Hulk form. It’s important to remember that just prior to the incident with Thanos, Jenn had been living almost entirely in her “sensational” She-Hulk form: tall and strong, green and gorgeous. Suddenly Jenn finds her transformation back into that form a horrendous experience that induces and is induced by massive anxiety. She can no longer control her Hulk form. When she does transform at this point, it is into a burly grey-green monster reminiscent of her cousin’s Hulk. Before long, Jennifer finds herself forced to face her inner monster, literally, and come to terms with her relationship with Bruce. She realizes her entire experience as being She-Hulk, she was comparing herself to the original Hulk. Always trying to separate them as much as she could, even if she didn’t realize. She made herself push back the nature of what being a Hulk really was, the nature of the rage and power that it comes with. She pushed it back for years, all for the acceptance and adoration of people who didn’t care to know her own struggles or hardships. At the time, their acceptance was what was important to her. It’s through this introspection that Jennifer is able to once again take control of her physical form and find a balance within that fits her new status quo. That balance comes out physically as a much bigger, bolder version of She-Hulk than Jennifer has ever taken. Gone are the long dancer legs and itty-bitty waistline; this Hulk is big, broad, green, and mean. And, she’s back to being an active Avenger! Jason Aaron’s current run of Avengers contains some of the best-written She-Hulk moments of the last decade, at least. He writes her as Tamaki left off on her—no longer willing to shut herself into the box the world wants for her. Put simply, she isn’t “sensational” anymore, she’s just She-Hulk. No more expectations of her than there would be for Bruce. Aaron has some fantastic writing in issue 20 where Jenn admits she loved being the more popular version of Hulk, but that it wasn’t always jokes and charm. Aaron writes Jenn’s inner dialogue beautifully: “Cousin Bruce said something a few years back about how he was envious of me. How easy he figured I had it. When he Hulked out, he became a giant, deformed monster who couldn’t even wear normal clothes. While I was looking like a bodybuilder who’d just been spray-painted green. I could wear suits, walk down the street without people running and screaming. Teenage boys hung posters of me on their walls. Must be nice, Bruce said, to be that kinda Hulk. I’d never wanted to punch my cousin so bad, and that’s saying something. I told him about the parts of being me that he was oblivious to. About all the times I’d been hit on during team-ups. The bad guy’s who’d cop a feel when we were fighting. The sleaze-ball who published photos of me topless when I was in the Fantastic freaking Four…no paparazzi ever followed Bruce around taking photos of his butt while he was fighting the Leader. I told him…looking like a big scary monster didn’t sound so bad to me sometimes.” It’s understandable why Jenn is in no rush to dull herself down to her former glory. Additionally, some of the power-level changes Jenn goes through soon after are due to Celestial intervention at the beginning of Aaron’s Avengers title. The Celestials have plans for her, big plans, and she has to be ready. The physical and psychological changes that Jennifer Walters has gone through in the past three years of comics have elevated her character far beyond what she was before. She has found further potential in her Hulk form and discovered a way that she could be free of society’s expectations of her. The whole point of Hulk’s is they get angry and become gigantic rage monsters. For years, Jenn thought she had found her middle ground by becoming what she believed was the physical ideal of a superpowered woman. That balance worked for a while, but it came with too many compromises for a strong woman to be able to live with long-term. Seeing as it was a balance made of false reasons to stay that way, it could never have lasted. Jenn has found new a middle ground, one that is truly empowering and freeing. Carol Danvers, the recent Captain Marvel, also had a recent change that out her fate back into her own hands. Carol famously grew up with a father who could only afford one child going to college, so he sent her kid brother because “girls don’t need to go to college”. In an act of defiance, Carol enlisted in the US Army, getting her education through her military training. Danvers was originally granted her powers when she got caught between Kree alien hero Mar-Vell and a machine called the Psyche Magnitron, which granted the user with their wildest dreams. Back in the day, it was said Carol became infused with Mar-Vell’s Kree DNA, making her equally mighty. Her wish, they said, was to be the ultimate woman, so there she became. It’s an alright origin story, especially when you take into account that encounter with the Psyche Magnitron took place in the 70’s. Mar-Vell has long since passed, in a tragic story of cancer and heroism. Through the years, Carol took on several other monikers before settling at last on Captain Marvel, the title of the man who supposedly gave her his powers. In a recent run by Kelly Thomson, however, Danvers’ origin story was twisted and remolded in best way possible. It turns out that Carol’s mother is a Kree warrior, who long since abandoned her post for love on Earth. On the surface, this change doesn’t mean too much. But if Carol was half Kree this whole time, why did her powers only surface after the accident with Mar-Vell? The explanation is as beautiful as it is well written. The Kree people are a people born and bred in war. Their entire existence, for thousands of years, has been to be the ultimate warrior race. Their children are trained from childhood, and their skills are honed their entire lives. These practices have been going on for their people so long that their warrior strength is actually in their DNA: they are biologically the ultimate warriors. Carol’s mother explains to her, since she was half human, this strength lay dormant in her blood, until it was triggered by an incredible life-or-death type of emergency—the accident with the Psyche Magnitron. That machine—and Mar-Vell—didn’t grant Carol with her powers that day, they simply awakened them. This move was absolutely genius. It takes Carol Danvers’ entire history, takes it from the men who took credit for her existence, and gives it back to her. No longer does she have to look to anyone else to thank for her incredible powers, they came from inside of her. It also legitimizes her powers just a bit, as they are truly hers and not some fluke happenstance. Of course, this development has also caused issues for Captain Marvel. We live in a world of fearmongering and hatred of differences. It’s not the way this country should be, but it is our current reality. This reality is displayed by Thompson as the world finds out Carol isn’t entirely human. When they find out, they turn to skepticism, which turns to fear, which turns to hatred. Carol’s home planet assumed she had been hiding the truth of her DNA on purpose, and therefore has some kind of agenda beyond the survival of the human race. This isn’t the case, of course, but fear spreads faster than wildfire, and before she knew it, Carol’s own country turned against her, and discharged her from the Military. She’d been working for years as both superhero and soldier, but the truth of her genetics was all it took to take away ages of trust. This is a massive blow for Carol. As I said at the beginning, joining the army was an act of defiance against her father’s misogyny. An act that she never regretted, never looked back from, and became the greatest single decision of her life. Now taken away, replaced by shameful stares and dishonor. As sad as this is, the issue it occurs in is my favorite issue of Captain Marvel in a good while, because some friends of hers swing by to cheer her up. I love it when my favorite female characters cross into one another’s comics! There’s so much opportunity when women work together. This issue had Jessica Drew, Monica Rambeau, Jessica Jones, Maya Lopez, and Jennifer Takeda. That’d be Spider-Woman, Spectrum, uh—Jessica Jones, Echo, and Hazmat. Jennifer Walters smashes in as She-Hulk to take Carol’s mind off her recent bad luck as well. If I could write my own team, it’d be pretty close to this lineup of girlfriends. It's been a few years of hard choices and trial-through-fire style learning, capped off with this loss of her official military post. Carol still has a lot of figuring things out to do, as her health is once again degrading, but I definitely believe she’s taken some steps in the right direction. At least now she knows what she ISN’T—she isn’t the type to roll over and play dead because she got kicked in the gut. She’s going to keep standing up for herself. She’s going to do her title, and her mother, proud. She isn’t tied to Earth anymore, and after a recent space-based mystery in her comic, I’m hoping we’ll see her back in the skies soon. As I get older, I start to see in myself some of the characteristics Jennifer Walters sought to rid herself of by becoming this new version of She-Hulk in the comics. In a world run by men, where women are supposed to fit certain roles, being anything other than what everyone else wants you to be can make you feel like less of a woman. Not pretty enough, not fit enough, not smart enough, too smart, too loud, too quiet, too happy, too angry. Personally, I don’t fear the judgement of others, I fear the actions they take based upon those judgments. Always feeling the need to explain your actions and motivations, like the world is expecting you to be trying to get away with something, instead of just living your life. No one would dare expect these things of Jennifer Walters’ She-Hulk now.
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