Mortlake on the Schuylkill

(Major spoilers to She Hulk #11 follow.)

Dan Slott's She-Hulk is one of the titles that lured me back into comics, and though there have been some bumps in the road (specifically the Starfox flashback), I've really been enjoying his take on the character.

Civil War is tearing up the Marvel Universe and cracking the Internets in half, right? In She Hulk #10, Slott has the She-Hulk (who is pro-Registration) work to convince an unregistered fellow heroine to see the issue from her point of view. She succeeds, even though she has dropped in on the heroine in the midst of a chase.

(And now that I think of it, that crafty Slott depicted the entire Marvel Universe engaging not in a civil war, but in a fun-filled poker tournament in The Thing #8.)

The latest helping of Shulkie-based goodness was served up in issue #11: on the comic's final page Man-Wolf offers Jennifer a choice that gets to the heart of who she is.

Here's the crucial exchange:


Let's be clear: Man-Wolf is exerting emotional coercion in an attempt to force Jennifer to do what he's wanted all along. At every turn he's been pushing her to reject the She-Hulk part of her being, because he'd prefer that she embody the Jennifer Walters portion of her self 24/7. Jameson has always made it obvious that he loves Jennifer, but is less-than-fond of the She-Hulk.

But isn't Jennifer the She-Hulk? Isn't Jameson's discomfort with, and rejection of, the She Hulk also a rejection of Jennifer?

I've always assumed that the She-Hulk + Jennifer formed a single complex identity, and as I've been reading the Jennifer/Jameson story arc, I haven't been certain that Slott would push the character to face the interesting existential ambiguity that's at the heart of her personality.

But he has. And I'm not ashamed to say that I am exhilarated that he's done so.