MCU IN COURT

MARVEL DEPLOYS THE STRONG ARM OF THE LAW IN THE NEW LIVE-ACTION SHE-HULK SERIES

-  TARA BENNETT

OVER THE LAST TWO years, Marvel Studios has been refashioning familiar TV formats and tropes by bending them into something new for its various Disney+ streaming series. Golden age TV, two-handers and coming-of-age stories have all been tackled, and now with She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, the procedural/workplace sitcom gets the Marvel treatment.

Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany plays attorney Jessica Walters, who handles superhuman cases at her law firm, and just happens to be the cousin of Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo). In both the comics and the series, Walters gets a blood transfusion from Bruce and develops a more controllable subset of his Hulk powers which she has to integrate into her everyday existence.

GREEN ROOTS

The character dates back to 1980, when she made her first appearance in The Savage She-Hulk, written by the one and only Stan Lee and drawn by John Buscema. It was that introduction that first grabbed the eye of young Jessica Gao, who would grow up to not only adore the character, but become a TV writer for shows like Robot Chicken and Silicon Valley.

Finding herself at Marvel Studios three different times to pitch for various projects, it became Gao’s habit to close meetings with executive producers such as Brad Winderbaum by saying: “If you ever do a She-Hulk movie, you better call me because if you don’t, I will burn this building to the ground.”