Reminder: She-Hulk Was The Original Deadpool

Bad news, True Believers: after 29 movies, 20 TV shows, and $27.4 billion dollars, Marvel Studios is officially finished because of She-Hulk's butt. More specifically, the fact that she shook her butt too hard and too low. Or at least that's what the internet currently assures us, based on all the negative memes and viral posts about the short scene in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law's third episode in which Shulkie is seen twerking with three-time Grammy Award winner Megan Thee Stallion -- and when has a crowd of anonymous people online ever led anyone astray? 

But the internet, in its schizophrenic wisdom, has also pointed out that if there existed official footage of Deadpool twerking, no one would give a crap. In fact, there is (courtesy of a promotional video for the Deadpool 2 soundtrack), and no one did.  

You might think that's different because, well, Deadpool is Deadpool, but here's the thing: She-Hulk was Deadpool before Deadpool was. Remember that Deadpool was introduced in 1991 as a generic mercenary character and only started breaking the fourth wall eight years later, at first simply by referring to previous events as happening in specific issues of his comic and stuff like that. It took a few more years for that running gag to develop into Deadpool talking directly to the reader and straight up acknowledging he's a comic book character. 

Meanwhile, She-Hulk was doing all that right from the cover of the very first issue of the 1989 Sensational She-Hulk series, in which she promises to destroy your X-Men collection if you don't buy her comic: 

When writer-artist John Byrne took over the reins to She-Hulk's life in that issue, he recognized the inherent absurdity of doing a comic about a big, green, super-strong lawyer and used it as a vehicle for satirizing every aspect of the comic book industry, from the narrative conventions ... 

... to the commercial aspects (taking shortcuts through the ad pages, shamelessly hyping up pointless cameo appearances). Several issues lampooned the oversexualization of female characters in the '90s, like the one where the plot is constantly interrupted by non-sequitur pinups of She-Hulk in sensual poses or the one that devotes several pages to making her skip rope in the nude as she comments on how degrading this is. 

As for the claim that Stan Lee would be "rolling in his grave" if he saw She-Hulk twerking ... yeah, we're sure the creator of Stripperella, a superpowered stripper who can make her boobs grow giant on demand, would be devastated about that. He might care if it was, say, Aunt May doing the twerks, but definitely not She-Hulk, a character he created purely to secure a trademark and only wrote for exactly one issue.

Given She-Hulk: Attorney at Law's running gag about guest stars and the fact that Marvel Studios now has the right to Deadpool, it's curious that the show has yet to mention the character, even as a throwaway joke. Here's hoping he's played by Evan Peters in the final episode post-credits cameo. 

Follow Maxwell Yezpitelok's heroic effort to read and comment on every '90s Superman comic at Superman86to99.tumblr.com. 

Thumbnail: Marvel Studios, 20th Century Studios