1989: Jade Jaunting Part VI: Saying Sayonara by way of Star Truck 'n Santa

By Jef Willemsen (clarmindcontrol.blogspot.com)

In the final part of Jade Jaunting, the 80s come to a close and so does John Byrne's stint as chronicler of She-Hulk's ground & fourth wall breaking series. But not before Shulkie went to outerspace to check in on that equally sensational character find of 1983: US Archer.

She-Hulk in outerspace? Sure, why not...

Issue #6 opened with Jennifer Walters as a special guest at NASA during the launch of the first space shuttle built with a faster than light (FTL) drive, allowing it to travel across the stars. Cheekily admitting her reason for being there was a bit of a stretch, she proceeded to fill the readers in on what was going down. And speaking of stretches...

"Reed! It's been forever!"

Having two superheroes on hand was fortunate, because the giant rig Big Pig II came out of nowhere to cause trouble. While Mr. Fantastic got the civilians to safety, Shulkie tried to stop whoever was behind the wheel only to discover it was being piloted by remote control. Before she could properly process this twist, the FTL shuttle launched and it became clear the Big Pig had been little more than a diversion.

Using Reed's elastic body as a giant trampoline, She-Hulk jumped after the shuttle and managed to grab hold of the tailend of the booster rocket, barely managing to resist the harsh conditions as she climbed up towards the shuttle itself. Eventually, she found an airlock but Jennifer's time and oxygen were running low...

"Looks like my book turns out to be a mini-series after all"

After coming to, she found who her rescuers and the shuttle hijackers were: the trucker turned superhero Razorback and Taryn O'Connell, a lady trucker with an interesting past. Taryn had been the love interest of Ulysses Archer. Better known as US Archer, he was a trucker who, after getting hurt in an accident, received a metal plate in his head that allowed him to pick up C.B (Citizen's Band) radio transmissions...

That, plus a souped up, semi-sentient truck, was all he needed to become a superhero of sorts. His 1983 soloseries lasted twelve issues and ended with aliens taking US and most of his supporting cast into space because what the cosmos needed most was good ol' American truckers hauling freight.

Taryn elected to stay behind, but as time went on, she found she missed her lover and wanted to join him in space. She figured Razorback would be the perfect hero to help her, not only because he was a fellow trucker, his newly discovered mutant ability to drive anything would allow him to pilot the shuttle.

Having Razorback be a mutant with the most mundane power imaginable was a decidedly tongue in cheek wink at Marvel's late 80s attempt to capitalize on the X-men's popularity by revealing lots of established characters as children of the atom. Having already activated the FTL engines, Razorback and Taryn pretty much forced She-Hulk to come along for the ride... and before long they hit up on the truckstop US used as his base of operations that had been taken into space as well. Run by Poppa Wheelie and rebranded the Star Stop, the place had become a popular pitstop. populated by a variety of interesting aliens...

"... and you're sure that's the... off-ramp we need?"

The Star Stop's Marvunapp entry contains a detailed list of the 'easter eggs' Byrne put into this scene. It's just a lot of goofy fun, even when Taryn realises U.S. had moved on, marrying her old rival Mary McGill who also happened to be having his baby. Speaking of US, people were getting a little worried because he was late returning from a delivery with Mary mere days from giving birth In the closing pages of #6, US and his space rig returned to the Star Stop, along with a most unwanted hitchhiker...

"I have no mouth and I am mean!*
(*with sincerest apologies to Harlan Ellison)

Continuing the tradition of pitting Shulkie against the lamest of the lame, Xemnu the Titan had come to kidnap US' unborn baby. Byrne played up Xemnu's original scheme: he was out to kidnap children to repopulate his own planet. But even infants proved too resistent to his indoctrination, that's why he decided to start his recruitment drive while they were still in the womb. 

It goes without saying Shulkie wasn't that big a fan of Xemnu's prenatal promo talk.

"We haven't had any good, senseless violence since I took on the Stilt-Man...
And that was three issues ago!"

However, She-Hulk fell prey to Xemnu's powerful hypnotic mind. Unconscious, she woke up to find that Xemnu's plan to turn the child in utero had failed. Instead, he had already moved on to plan B: if you can't steal a baby, why not go and make your own? Guess who was the lucky gal:

"Now YOU will become the bride of Xemnu!'

Poor She-Hulk... defeated not once but twice by a big teddybear who also tried to turn her into his equally furry bride. And to add to her woes: in the end she didn't even get to defeat the Titan herself. Shulkie was saved by a whole armada, all customers of the Star Stop who agreed to come to her aid. With a little help from Al the Alien and his wife, the She-Hulk received one heck of a Brazilian wax. Once rid of her excess fur, Al made sure she got home safely inher new flying car. 

In between issues # 7 and #8, the 1989 crossover Acts Of Vengeance kicked off. During this company wide event, a cabal of supervillains decided the best way to finally defeat their enemies would be to simply switch opponents. She-Hulk participated too, showing up in the second issue of the Damage Control limited series.

"C'mon guys! Hurry up! We're on page seven and we haven't even had a fight scene yet!"

When John Byrne started Sensational She-Hulk he expressly requested she only broke the fourth wall in her own book. Byrne reasoned that this would give the title a unique hook and the added exclusivity helped keep the gimmick fresh. Contrary to Byrne's request, the late great Dwayne McDuffie had her talk to the audience anyway... and with great success, after all Damage Control had always been a title that lent itself to inside jokes.

She-Hulk's presence in D.C. felt natural and she was more than happy to be there after learning what the crossover was about. After all, with the villains playing musical chairs, she just finally might get to fight some bad guys worthy of the name. Hey, it could happen... right?

Wrong.

"DeFalco!"

Hoping for Doctor Doom, Magneto or Hobgoblin she instead got stuck with disgruntled DC-employee Eugene and his partner Washington who couldn't decide what to call themselves. Switching fromSimon & Garfunkel, Hammer & Sickle, Cloak & Dagger or New & Improved, often changing their minds per panel, they actually managed to throw Shulkie for a bit of a loop.

In the end, She-Hulk begged Marvel editor in chief Tom DeFalco to treat her with a bit more respect, leading to a great one liner by Damage Control's cigar chompin' foreman Lenny.

"I wonder why She-Hulk keeps talking about DeFalco cigars?"

Still, She-Hulk's pleas to get her old writer back would prove prophetic, because issue 

8 of her solo book proved to be John Byrne's last. Released in December 1989, Shulkie closed out the decade by teaming up with the world's greatest detective. Greatest detective? You mean? No, not the Batman: *this* guy...

"You're kidding, right?"

Yeah, the She-Hulk got help from a womanizing, naughty, butt pinching Santa Clause to prove a crazed criminal was responsible for an unresolved murder. Shoving She-Hulk through chimneys, claiming he knew who was naughty and who was nice, Nick St. Christopher was utterly ridiculous and fun... But he got things done, charming the pants off Jennifer. That is, until his wife showed up to slap some sense into him. 

In an interview for Modern Masters, Byrne revealed his love for having Santa show up. He even got a kick out of the fact the fans got mad when he wrote him in, saying it only served as further incentive to include Clause as often as possible.

But his editor, Bobbie Chase, also wasn't a fan. Not just of Santa, but of Byrne on the book in general. After several months of growing frustrations, John Byrne simply decided to leave. And even though #9 was still promoted as 'just a fill in issue', people who could read between the lines already saw what was coming down the line. Also: people who read the obvious word pun in the following promo blurb:

And with that, She-Hulk's 80s adventures came to an end. Starting in 1990, Steve Gerber took over as regular writer, with a young Bryan Hitch on art. While certainly not the worst of Marvel's early 90s comics, Sensational She-Hulk lost its trademark fourth wall breaking charm and good natured ribbing of the genre. Gerber wrote 16 wacky, but hardly world shattering issues. When he bowed out in September of 1991, his replacement was... John Byrne? 

Yup, a few months before that, Renée Witterstaetter had succeeded Bobbie Chase as editor. After realising she had a better working relationship with Byrne, she managed to bring him back to the book he had started. The cover to #31 showed just how eager Byrne was to continue where he'd left off.

Maybe a bit too eager...

For the next 19 issues, Byrne continued his meta-joking shtick, exploring the boundaries of the genre while having embarassing baddies like Spragg the Living Hill, the Living Eraser and the Carbon Copy Men show up. Not to mention a band of zombified minor X-men characters called the X-Humed.

Another continued trend: having She-Hulk's enemies fall for her left and right. Xemnu was the first, but the Mole Man and Mahkizmo were also ready to make an honest woman out of the emerald giantess.

"What a revoling development this is!"

One could hardly blame the villains, after all Byrne made sure the stories were rife with blatant cheesecake shots of She-Hulk running around in the skimpiest of outfits... In one issue he even forced her to jump rope naked on the cover. All in a shameless attempt to both mock and cash in on the early 90s panting fanboy craze that warranted the publication of several high selling Marvel swimsuit specials...

Byrne left with #50, feeling he had told all the stories he had in him. The book continued under a new creative team who went for a slightly more serious tone. Sensational She-Hulk was cancelled within ten months after Byrne's departure. However, the legacy of this fourth wall breaking series was that the character would forever more be considered fun. Without Byrne's influence, the book would never have spawned Shulkie's critically acclaimed 2004 soloseries by Dan Slott...

And as for She-Hulk's new series launching in February 2014, it's pretty much a given it will be fun. But let's hope she gets to fight some decent baddies this time, eh?

1986 - Howard the Duck bubble gum cigar

Interview with J.M. DeMatteis

You might have already seen Jef's posts on the 1981 Defenders. We thought it would be fun to post up Jef's full interview with J.M. DeMatteis.

Jef: How and when were you approached and persuaded to take over the Defenders?  What was the team’s appeal for you at the time?

JMD: I’d always been a big fan of the series—especially the Steve Gerber era—because of it’s barrier-crashing, “anything goes” sensibility.  That said, I certainly didn’t lobby for the gig—Ed Hannigan was writing the book at the time and doing a fine job of it—so I was very surprised when I walked into Jim Shooter’s office one day and he told me I was taking over Defenders:  “Because,” he said, “I know you like Doctor Strange.”  Which is true:  I love Doctor Strange!

Jef: A propos your writing style at the time: was the Six Fingered Hand arc all planned out in advance or did the editor allow a certain amount of improvisation as you went along?

JMD: Even when you’ve got plans and plans and more plans, there’s always improvisation involved; and, back then, being a newbie still finding his way in the business, there was plenty of improvisation going on.  I had a general sense of the story and where I wanted it to go, but it was no carefully planned out epic.  I still love to write that way:  You have your destination in mind, your general themes and character arcs, but you remain open to happy accidents and spontaneous creativity.  The best stories write themselves and, in order for that to happen, you’ve got to get yourself—and your carefully-laid plans—out of the way.  My editor, Al Milgrom, was a great guy who allowed me to follow my story yet was always there to backstop me if I was going off the rails,

Jef: Don Perlin was the artist during your entire run. Could you briefly describe your working relationship? Did you provide full scripts or was it the brief plot summary aka ‘classic Marvel style’? And: did he offer any suggestions or input on the stories?

JMD: By the 80’s the Marvel plot-first style wan’t a “brief plot summary”:  plots were, for the most part, lengthy and detailed.  There was still room for the artist to pace and play with the story but the writer was in firm control of the material.

Don Perlin was one of the nicest people, and hardest working artists, I’ve ever worked with.  He was passionate about the book and about my stories and put everything he had into it.  More than that, he was willing to experiment, leave his comfort zone and grow as an artist—which he really did throughout our run.  I loved working with him.

As I recall, we spoke on the phone regularly and discussed the stories; but, for the most part, he left the plotting to me and concentrated on the visual interpretations.  I’m sure he had suggestions along the way (and I think there were a few issues he co-plotted, too) and I was always open to them.

Jef: What were some of your initial feelings about the team (Strange, Hulk, Valkyrie, Nighthawk, Clea and Hellcat) at the time? Who did you feel most comfortable with?

JMD: My motto was:  the more obscure the characters, the better.  That gave me room to really push characterization and make them my own.  That’s one of the reasons you saw characters like Devil Slayer and Son of Satan come into the book.  You didn’t have to worry about anyone else complaining about their evolution; you could do what you wanted.

That said, I liked the group I was handed at the start—especially Doc Strange.  The only one I wasn’t all that comfortable with, as I recall, was the Hulk.  He was phased out along the way.  I liked the character, but he didn’t seem to fit with my Defenders.

Jef: Why paralyzed Nighthawk? It seemed to come out of left field at the time, despite its tying into established early Defenders continuity. And, considering you’d have him sacrifice his life in # 106, is it unfair to say you had it in for poor ol’ Kyle Richmond?

JMD: I think I was playing to his name:  Nighthawk.  Thus he only functioned at night.  During the day he was paralyzed and when the sun went down he came alive.  I thought it was a fun idea.  I still do.  Whether I executed it well is another story!  As for “having it in for him”—no, I thought Kyle Richmond was an interesting character and I was just following where he, and the stories, led me.

Jef: How did you come up with the concept of the Six Fingered Hand, and how did you flesh out the six demons? With names like Avarrish (avarice), Hyppokri (hypocrisy) and Unnthinkk (ignorance), can it be considered an homage to DC’s Captain Marvel and his Seven Deadly Sins?

JMD: No Captain Marvel connection whatsovever.  As for where the concept came from—to be honest, I don’t recall; beyond the idea that I wanted to take the book in a supernatural direction and a six-fingered hand was a creepy concept.

Jef: What prompted Hellcat's reveal as Satan's daughter? It was played up as a big deal during the Six Fingered arc, while a year and a half down the road you have Patsy learn Satan lied about it after all. While that is not uncommon for the lord of lies, from a story perspective it does feel like a bit of a cheat. What's the real story behind this bait 'n switch?

It wasn’t a cheat for me.  It was a way to take Patsy down an intense, character-revealing road; a way to dig deeper into her character, to turn her relationship with Hellstrom on its head, and a perfect piece of manipulation of Satan’s part.  Again, you can fault the execution—I was a young writer, still learning my craft—but I don’t see it as a cheat at all.

Jef: Certainly during the early 80s, the character of Isaac Christiaans the Gargoyle was more than a little unusual. What inspired the notion of an elderly gentleman/ mystic/worrywart locked in the form of an immortal demon?

JMD: It was just one of those ideas that popped into my head.  This horrific, demonic figure that’s really this sweet, gentle old man.  Don P came up with a great design for the character and, as the storyline progressed, Gargoyle became more and more important to the team.  I loved that character; in fact the Gargoyle mini-series I did with Mark Badger remains one of my favorite projects out of all the stories I’ve done for mainstream Marvel.

Jef: In retrospect, isn’t the character of the Gargoyle a prime example of quintessential DeMatteis characterization? Isaac Christiaans starts out as a basically noble, well meaning character that falls prey to his own human fallibilities, in the end becoming, however cruelly that what he loathes the most?  One might see shades of Vermin, Kraven the Hunter and Harry Osborn during the 1990s ‘Child Within’ arc?

JMD: Yes, up to a point.  But Isaac, after giving in to temptation, almost instantly regrets his fall and, from then on, remains the same decent and compassionate man he was before.  The tension between the horrific outer shell and the sweet person beneath it is what I love about the character.  I don’t think he’s as dark as Kraven or Vermin.

Jef: What urged you to bring in the relatively unknown character Devil Slayer? Certainly at the time, a former Vietnam vet turned hired killer/demon vanquisher couldn’t possibly have been Comics Code Approved? Did his inclusion go off without a hitch, or did you have to argue to get him in?

JMD: No arguments at all.  Milgrom, as noted, let me follow my muses where they led.  Devil-Slayer had been used in Defenders before and, being another obscure character with a fascinating back-story (war vet, hit-man, demon-hunter), I thought he was ripe for exploration.  The story in Defenders #110, “Hunger,” is one of my favorites of my run.

Jef: Speaking of the Code… The Six-Fingered Hand empowered  David Kessler to become the healing guru known as 'the messiah'… An obvious Jesus Christ analogy if ever there was one. Back in the 70s, Tony Isabella caught considerable flack when he introduced Ghost Rider to ‘The Friend’ who for all intents and purposes was Christ as well. Did you receive any comments on this new ‘son of God’?

JMD: I didn’t see David Kessler as a Jesus stand-in.  He was a cult leader, a spiritual figure, but he was essentially a flawed human like the rest of us,

Jef: In issue # 100, Hellcat shortly returns to her demonic form from # 94. Was it always your intention to revert Patsy back to normal, or did you consider exploring the notion of having a true ‘hell cat' on the team?

JMD: I don’t remember!  I’m sure I played with every outcome in my mind.

Jef: Defenders #101 feels like a coda, with the Defenders in need of spiritual renewing. Val, Patsy and Isaac’s visiting Dolly in a hospital’s cancer ward was particularly striking. Jim Starlin’s 1982 graphic novel The Death of Captain Marvel  is generally considered to be the first Marvel publication dealing with the disease head on, yet Defenders  # 101 came out a year earlier and was even more graphic in its depiction of the illness. Was there any in house trepidation about featuring a young, bald cancer patient?

JMD: Again, no trepidation at all.  One of the best things about Defenders is that it wasn’t a high-profile book.  We were off in a corner and I could get as weird and personal as I wanted to without worrying about stepping on anyone’s toes.  And, yes, that story was very much intended as a kind of spiritual cleansing after the literal hell the team went through in the Six-Fingered hand story.

Jef: With the Six Fingered Hand arc over 30 years old, how do you look back on it? Were you satisfied with it then and has it stood up to the test of time?

JMD: I have no idea if it’s stood the test of time. I’m the last person who’d know!  Looking back I see my younger self:  a writer, with a lot to learn, who poured his heart and soul, every bit of passion he had, into that series.  Defenders was my training ground, a way to explore telling more personal stories in the commercial context of the Marvel Universe. I didn’t realize it at the time, but writing Defenders got me ready for Moonshadow and the other creator-owned, personal projects I’ve done over the years.

Having come a long way as a writer, when I read these stories I see all the warts, all the stumbles, all the errors DeMatteis the Younger made; but I also see how much I cared about that book.  And what a good time I had working with Don Perlin.  So I look back on my Defenders days with great fondness.

1981 - Dave Sim's Cerebus vs Howard the Duck!