Mad As Heck!

According to Frank Miller, That is what She-Hulk is in this next recreated page, which continues with the parody of Franks own “Sin City”:-

Which makes pointed references to Aerobic videos (of the 1980's one presumes...) … and Impact Comics

According to “wakipedia”:- “Impact Comics was an imprint of DC Comics that was aimed at younger audiences. It was begun in 1991 and ended by 1993. It’s titles featured the adventures of altered versions of superheroes licensed from Archie Comics including the Fly, the Comet, the Shield, the Jaguar, the Web, and the Black Hood. Changes included making the new Jaguar a woman and making the Web an organization instead of a solo hero. This was a second attempt to revive the old Archie heroes...”

So if nothing else, we can safely say Frank was aiming his shotgun at DC with the line “dead as impact comics”…

And then moves back into hard bitten revenge motives…. with She-hulk tickling whoever crosses her path because she is mad as heck…

No, not Don Heck… but the all-ages acceptable for use variation of another name for Hades… aka the place the Devil likes to live…!

IN TWO WEEKS:- She-Hulk reacts to the Frank Miller pages and another guest artist steps forward…

NEXT WEEK :- Its Super Spidey-Man Issue 7 - The Summer Special…!

Built for love, but ready for war

This is the description given to She-Hulk in this next page, this time quite clearly written and drawn by Frank Miller.

Sin City had already made its debut in Dark Horse Presents but it was still in it’s early stages (first story) when this issue of She-Hulk was produced

And what we have here looks as if it could just be a page straight from Sin City that is with the obvious exception of the hand lettered dialogue that accompanies it:-

Where Frank is clearly having fun at his own expense with parody laden noir movie dialog, firstly attacking his own laziness at drawing backgrounds, then saying comics are not fun

She-Hulk scowls, fronts, mutters and grimaces - none of which she has ever been known to do at all.

And finally there is a reference to the infamous issue of Alpha Flight “Snowblind” and ( much lesser known) more recent of She-hulk itself (featuring the Living Eraser) in the shape of “too many blank pages”…

It shows that Frank Miller does actually have a sense of humour, and is willing to pick himself to peices… If only we had seen a lot more like this and a lot less… Well - I think you know what I mean…

This particular page has to be one of the hardest I have ever had to recreate, I have no idea how big the original art is, but my recreation is on a A4 size piece of paper and it took ages to do! So I don’t think Frank Miller was really being that lazy, do you?

NEXT WEEK:- More Frank Miller Magic featuring She-Hulk

She-‘oo me old china?

Having established last week that the first would be replacement artist for She-hulk would be British is a start...

But even this does not begin to encapsulate the page that follows as written and drawn by Dave Gibbons- Yes the same Dave Gibbons best known as the artist of ‘Watchmen’… (and as featured on this blog before)

There are multitude of references in the art, this is just a few :-

The coat the punk rocker is wearing is the same as Rorschach’s there is the obvious inclusion of a Smiley badge, the shorts also appear to be pin striped just like Rorschach’s trousers. But we have the much more traditional union jack T-shirt and mohawk haircut to offset this

The police-man is a complete miss mash of apparel - wearing a english police helmet, a sheep-skin jacket (as if he is from ‘up north’), a black shirt with FBI written on it, a standard english police truncheon and a badge on his belt very reminiscent of Judge Dredd from 2000AD (a comic that Gibbons worked on extensively), he is also referred to as "Yer Honour" suggesting he could be in fact a Judge...

There are also a number of british items in the street, such as an old red telephone box, a London double decker bus together with the marvel cliche generic buildings with american names just put on them such as new york town hall etc

On top of all of this is the dialogue which is laden with he most over the top mock cockney you could possibly imagine - Its much more like what a Hollywood producers idea of what cockney might sound like… And yes I am thinking of Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins right now…

The page concludes with the appearance of what is most likely to be the former UK British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

Overall one must guess that Mr Gibbons must have heard too many times an rather limited view of response from any would be american comic publisher to which he had submitted his work as a reason for rejection

And this page is a summary of all those negative responses all combined together in one single page?

Renee’s response on the next page seems to suggest this also with a direct statement of failure to capture the American idioms…

Moving on - we again play guess the next artist - Renee says it’s “One of the top talents” - She-Hulk Mentions “Grim and Gritty” and “this Dark Stuff”…

Who could it be?

NEXT WEEK:- She-hulk wonders if her run-on sentence is ever going to end!

Super Spidey-Man! Issue 6

This month we feature the ludicrous misadventures of the Jester... who unfortunately does not have a thing for citrus fruits....

Super-Spidey Man! Will return the 1st week of July!

NEXT WEEK:- WHAAT? It's She -ulk, that's oo!