She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, starring Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk, will stream on Disney+ on August 17, 2022. The latest female superhero will be compared to some of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Is she stronger than her cousin Bruce Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo)? Is she a better lawyer than Matt Murdock/Daredevil (Charlie Cox)? And how can she break the fourth wall just like Wade Wilson/Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds)?
So here is a guide to everything you need to know about the Sensational She-Hulk before her debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and what makes her better than any male superhero fans might compare her to.
“In She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany)—an attorney specializing in superhuman-oriented legal cases—must navigate the complicated life of a single, 30-something who also happens to be a green 6-foot-7-inch superpowered hulk.”
The series has been panned for the special effects and the smaller size of She-Hulk, who often is depicted as even more muscular in Marvel Comics. And others apparently cannot handle the idea of more female characters in the Marvel Multiverse, dubbing it the M-She-U.
Since Jennifer Walters is another new character for the Marvel Universe, some MCU fans may have questions that need to be answered ahead of the series premiere.
Jennifer Walters first appeared in Marvel Comics in Savage She-Hulk #1 (November 1979) by Stan Lee and John Buscema. A brilliant lawyer and the cousin of Avenger Bruce Banner/Hulk, she became a hero in her own right after being shot by a mobster named Trask, and a gamma-irradiated blood transfusion from Bruce mutated Jennifer into the She-Hulk.
Her origin in the MCU has been confirmed to be changed from the blood transfusion. Instead of being shot by a criminal, a near-fatal car accident will cause the blood of Jennifer Walters and Bruce Banner will mix. This is much simpler than what happened in the original comics, where Jen died and went to the Below-Place, the bottom layer of reality and the bedrock of Hell, and escaped via the Green Door, the portal from death only available to gamma mutants like her and Hulk.
After Janet Van Dyne/Wasp invited Jennifer to join the Avengers, she quit being a lawyer and threw herself into being a hero. During Secret Wars, she first met Tatiana, who would go on to be a thorn in her side for years to come. She also briefly replaced Ben Grimm/The Thing on the Fantastic Four.
As part of her Gamma Mutate Physiology, Jennifer Walter’s powers include Superhuman Strength, able to lift over 100 tons, Superhuman Leaping, able to leap capacity heights of at least 600 feet, and a surface distance of at least 1,000 feet, Superhuman Speed, Superhuman Durability, able to withstand tremendous pressures, temperatures from -190 F to 3,000 F and direct hits by field-artillery cannon shells and a Regenerative Healing Factor: She-Hulk’s body possesses high resistance to injury and pain, and her highly efficient physiology renders her immune to most Earthly diseases. In some circumstances, She-Hulk also has Gamma Radiation/Energy Manipulation and Emission.
Jen isn’t as strong as her cousin, but she maintains her intelligence as She-Hulk, soon learning to control her transformations and even embracing her green form. She even prefers to be She-Hulk and not Jennifer Walters most of the time, even in the courtroom and during intimate relationships. It is one of the biggest differences between She-Hulk and the Hulk.
For the majority of Bruce Banner’s time as the Hulk, he could not control his transformation. Even in the MCU, it took him years to master controlling when he transformed between The Incredible Hulk (2008) and The Avengers (2012). And the Hulk took over between Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) and Thor: Ragnarok (2018). And Bruce was not able to maintain his intelligence as the Hulk until sometime during the Blip between Avengers: Infinity Wat (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019) when Professor Hulk was introduced.
Another major question is if She-Hulk is stronger than the Hulk, who is arguably one of the strongest Avengers. Distractify summed up the comparison by saying:
“She-Hulk is a better trained martial artist which makes her Hulk strength that much more deadly, and Hulk’s been capable of some mind-boggling feats of strength. Long story short: they’re both ridiculously strong but it’s accepted in terms of brute strength that Hulk has an edge.”
After her initial run in the Savage She-Hulk series, Jennifer Walters has been one of the more comedic characters. In her second solo run, Sensational She-Hulk by John Byrne in 1989, she broke the fourth wall right on the cover of her first issue. It was not until a decade later that Wade Wilson/Deadpool, AKA the Merc with a Mouth, would follow in her massive footsteps in Deadpool #28 by Joe Kelly and Pete Woods.
While her meta-humor has not been as prominent as in more current runs, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law will not be shying from her roots. She also brings her own skills as a lawyer to the MCU, which will put her at odds with Marvel’s other big-named attorney Matt Murdock/Daredevil, who will cameo in the show. While the two of them have never gone up against each other, Jennifer Walters has won more cases.
She-Hulk is incredibly confident in her abilities both as one of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and as a lawyer, and the Marvel original series will have nine episodes to prove to all her doubters that she should have been introduced long ago.
Let us know in the comments if you want to know more about She-Hulk and if you like her better than the Incredible Hulk.
You can stream Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and the seven series in Marvel’s Phase Four so far — Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany’s WandaVision, Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, Marvel’s What If…?, Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye, Oscar Isaac’s Moon Knight, Iman Vellani’s Ms. Marvel, and Tatiana Maslany’s She-Hulk — on Disney+ anytime
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Credit: Marvel Studios
