Good post, 87fg! Being a long time comic enthusiast I never thought of the possibilities of artists being schmoes as far back as Marston. As a teen, I always wondered about John Byrne's level of admiration for
She-Hulk since he was strongly associated with the character. He revamped She-Hulk with a whole new image changing her from Stan Lee's "Savage She-Hulk" to his "Sensational She-Hulk". Unlike Stan Lee, John made her feminine in her mannerisms, very muscular in appearance, and gave her an alpha female type personality with a fearless attitude. She would fight anybody and anything without hesitation.
At times she argued with John Byrne, which I thought was interesting and new. Before Deadpool became popularized for communicating outside the comic world with readers, "for a time, starting with the Sensational She-Hulk series by John Byrne in 1989, She-Hulk was portrayed with a form of "cross-dimensional" or metafictional awareness, to break the fourth wall. In some stories, she showed an awareness of being a comic book character, with visuals of her "tearing the page" or "walking through a page of advertisements" to reach an enemy's control centre. She sometimes engaged in arguments with the writer (John Byrne), or appealed to the comic's editor, Renée Witterstaetter. Sensational She-Hulk #50 (Byrne's last issue) involved Renée locking a bound-and-gagged Byrne in a storage closet while she and Jen tried to find the book's new writer. This trend was briefly carried on during her tenure with the Heroes for Hire, when she "spoke" to the book's narrator and "fired" him for losing the plot. Other Marvel characters that have been written to directly "address" the audience include She-Hulk's friend Louise Mason, Uatu the Watcher (who narrates a majority of the issues of What If by speaking directly to the reader) and Deadpool."
John connected with the character through his work. I became a big fan of the series because of him and how he portrayed She-Hulk as both a bona fide intellectual and a physical powerhouse. Moreover, she was funny, sarcastic, and overconfident most times, especially when fighting an enemy and expressing in detail how she would defeat them and/or would mock them after winning a fight.
Sensational #1 was one of my first purchases of a hero in a solo series, which I became dedicated to collecting for a while. Funny, I was also a die-hard X-Men fan too.
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