Reviews Of Old Comics: Sensational She-Hulk #31 (updated)

This is the ongoing story of recapturing that feeling by reading unread comics. Perhaps they live in some long-neglected long box in the spare room. Maybe they are discovered at the bottom of that last box unpacked since that last move two years ago, and perhaps they're just waiting in some comic shop's back stock waiting for someone to discover them the next time they're dragged to some mini-convention in a hotel ballroom looking to score some quick cash with cheap back issues. Sometimes they'll be gems, and sometimes the memory is fonder than the reality, but the goal is to share spoiler-ridden Reviews Of Old Comics.

She-Hulk got her own title again in 1989, done by John Byrne, the writer/artist that brought new life to her character in Fantastic Four. Within a year, however, Byrne had left the book in a dispute over his artwork being redrawn. Story quality suffered until he was brought back to continue her adventures in the same vein he used when he started the book. Namely, She-Hulk knew she was in a comic book, faced heroes and villains largely forgotten because "serious" writers thought they were too stupid to be resurrected, and never took any of it too seriously.

Sensational She-Hulk #31

September 1991 - Marvel Comics

Writer/Penciller: John Byrne

Inker: Keith Williams
Color: Glynis Oliver
Letterer: Jim Novak

SYNOPSIS:

She-Hulk wakes up from the bad dream of issues 9-30 and, realizing how late it is by reading the legal text at the bottom of the first page, rushes to get ready, with a convenient white box provided by Byrne to keep the book approved by the Comics Code. She also asks him to give her the "fake McFarlane layouts" he's using in Namor and flies off to pick up Louise Mason in her flying green car for a trip to sunny Florida.

Meanwhile, a jet transporting a disgraced rock star is caught in a bad storm and tries to avoid crashing into a mountain but fails when it seems that the mountain moves to intercept them. She-Hulk and Louise hear the report and detour to investigate the mysterious moving mountain, which has vanished from the crash site. A scientist on the scene named Bob Robertson claims that it was the work of Spragg, the Living Hill.

He relates how he came across Spragg many years ago in Transylvania after he had enslaved a small village to build a machine to increase his mental powers. Spragg was an evil member of a race of alien spores that had become trapped in the forming Earth and developed the psychic abilities they used to create earthquakes. Bob Robertson was immune to Spragg's powers because of the mining helmet he was wearing and turned the machine into a rocket which sent Spragg into space. He discovered that Spragg had vaporized upon reentry into the atmosphere and became a force responsible for unexplained natural disasters.

Using a small device, Bob Robertson triggers the Spragg effect, inadvertently causing a ridge of rock to endanger a nearby town. She-Hulk drops from her flying car onto the front of the moving outcrop and places a device to stop it in its tracks. However, the sudden stop sends her plummeting into a hole in the Earth that opened up where the front of the ridge had been.

REVIEW:

There was a time when comic publishers could put out a tongue-in-cheek book. This is just after Giffen and DeMatteis's Justice League International, which returned humorous comics to the mainstream. John Byrne had fun with the tropes of the comic book medium and the superhero genre in general. In this issue alone, he pokes fun at the all-encompassing aptitude of comic-book scientists, such as an entomologist building robots, the ego of creators, and the ever-looming presence of the Comics Code Authority.

Byrne's art in this issue is probably at his peak, with very few blank backgrounds and a very believable rendering of a pre-Silver Age character like "The Living Hill." His Bob Robertson isn't as consistent as his She-Hulk or Louise Mason. Given the low number of characters with significant roles in this issue, it's not confusing. In his writing, he tends to be very verbose but doesn't fall into the trap of describing things that can be seen.

The story is a refreshing pallet cleanser after the grimmer fare of most modern comics, but a better switch between comedy and serious drama is needed. It actually detracts from a jet full of people being killed. Those distractions are probably more from Byrne's sense of storytelling, which is very fast, benefiting his art style of using large panels.

The colors, as appropriate to the time, are flat, which works very well with John Byrne's style. For an example of how bad modern colors can look on this art, just look at the cover of  Sensational She-Hulk, Vol.1 collection, which collects the issues just before this one. Modern coloring over this would still need to retain the flatness to not take away from the visuals of She-Hulk among normal-sized people. I just don't see how it could improve very much to have heavily rendered colors on this artwork.

FINAL RATING: 8 (out of a possible 10)

NOTES:

This issue was collected in 2019's Sensational She-Hulk by John Byrne Omnibus. In back issue bins, you should be able to find copies at a very reasonable price, perhaps even a bargain. For immediate satisfaction, it's available digitally as part of Marvel Unlimited. The rest of Byrne's run is also there.

Reviews Of Old Comics: John Byrne's Next Men #6 (Updated)

 

John Byrne influenced a generation of comic book artists. In the 1990s, after bouncing between Marvel and DC for over a decade, he turned a proposal for Marvel's 2099 line into 2112, a graphic novel that became the basis for Next Men. This was the issue that tied those two together because after reading 2112 and John Byrne's Next Men #0-5, it was not apparent that they were linked in any way except that both had a character named Sathanas, which could or could not be the same. They certainly didn't look alike. Then this issue was published.

JOHN BYRNE'S NEXT MEN #6

July 1992 - Dark Horse Comics

Story and Art: John Byrne

Colorist: Matt Webb

SYNOPSIS:

In an Antarctic research station, an earthquake rocks four scientists who quickly deduce it came from an explosion 30 miles away. They investigate to discover around a hundred mangled, mutilated, and not-quite-human bodies at the site. One of them is alive, and it quickly attacks the group draining each member's life force to save itself. Recognizing one of the scientists as Fleming Jorgenson, the creature, horribly injured, relishes in that the year is 1955.

Cut to the United States and the home of Congressman Aldus Hilltop, who is hosting Dr. Jorgenson, who returned from an apparent explosion of the research station that killed all other scientists there. Aldus Hilltop places his political career above all else. Jorgenson has had Hilltop help retrieve a case from Antarctica in the most confusing and complicated way possible. Inside the crate is the creature he discovered in Antarctica. Named Sathanas, the being is an energy vampire that awakes and brings Hilltop into his grand plan with the promise of power.

Hilltop starts a program with Jorgensen while providing Sathanas with young women to feed off, including Hilltop's own young wife. They are undetected because their corpses resemble old women after Sathanas feeds off them. Jorgensen and Hilltop's program buys infants from teen mothers to mutate into deadly and powerful soldiers. Jorgensen disagrees with the military direction of the project that he and Hilltop have directed under Sathanas's instructions, using historical knowledge to shepherd the project around the chaos of many historic administrations. When Jorgensen makes a veiled threat to give the secrets to another government, he dies in a car accident, which Hilltop had nothing to do with, to the surprise of those around him.

The subconscious education network the test subjects are hooked to has developed a "feedback" that has the test subjects seemingly talking to each other and living in an imaginary reality while training for a life as soldiers. When asked about it, Sathanas confesses that not only will the project produce soldiers, but that they will be well educated and well rounded. He assures Hilltop that in twenty years, the project will succeed, and Hilltop will be President of the United States, confessing that what Hilltop thinks is the future is all in the past for Sathanas.

REVIEW:

This issue is the only one of this series to stand alone. One of the challenges of this series was that John Byrne was telling a larger story. However, this story gives the reader a complete sense of the level of villains the Next Men will face. Sathanas is a patient schemer, willing to sit behind the scenes for the larger plan to unfold. If there is one fault to the story, it covers so long a period that it seems a bit jumpy. 

Hilltop is so centered on his self-interests that his methods can only be described as Machiavellian. At one point, he exhibits racial prejudice, which is one extra thing that's unnecessary to establish Hilltop's evil nature. He has already fed at least two wives/lovers to Sathanas and manipulated a eugenics program that would make the Nazis envious. Later in the series, Byrne would add other elements to Hilltop's evil nature, but there is enough here to let the reader know that Aldus Hilltop does not have a redeemable bone in his body. 

John Byrne's art is sometimes sketchy and betrayed by the colors from a more primitive computerized coloring process. One cannot fault the craftsmanship in Byrne's ability to repeatedly draw the same character, making them instantly recognizable even though they age by decades. Aldus Hilltop at the end of the book is the same Aldus Hilltop from the beginning, but with all the attributes that come with age. Byrne's layouts are easy to follow. Even using relatively large panels, he manages to tell a lot of information here. The appeal of John Byrne's art style is a personal preference, but one can't find fault in the merits of craftsmanship.

FINAL RATING: 7.5 (out of a possible 10)

NOTES:

This issue has been collected in the trade paperbacks published by Dark Horse, and it should be relatively easy to locate a copy of either the single issue or the trade paperback. IDW also published a Next Men Omnibus that reprinted this story in a larger format. As an individual back issue, the 1990s had print runs on even the most marginal books that were larger than today's average print run of X-Men. Do not be surprised if you can pick up a copy of this in a bargain bin. Digitally, it can be read on Amazon's Kindle reader, but the quality may suffer for the format.