The Sensational She-Hulk 38: Nothing Says Valentine's Day Like A Dumb Superhero Fight

For the February issue (yes, it says April on the cover, but comics are weird that way), creator John Byrne has She-Hulk celebrate Valentine's Day by fighting a sexist pig, in what apparently was Byrne's parody of the really dumb comics popular in 1992 where two musclebound idiots beat the crap out of each other and it's called a story.  Here are some random thoughts on this issue:

*The silly villain is Mahkizmo, yet another Fantastic Four baddie.  Despite such classic antagonists as Galactus and Doctor Doom, the FF seem to have a sizeable number of really bad menaces, which Byrne delights in ridiculing.

*She-Hulk requests duo-shade paper for her art just like Byrne used in his Namor series, and the result is a heavier-inked style of art with plenty of shading (She-Hulk reports that it "feels a little bit like corduroy").

*She-Hulk and Mahkizmo hit one another with a sewer pipe, a bulldozer, and a car, before Mahkizmo falls in love with her (don't ask, it's a really dumb plot device . . . ok, it's Cupid's arrow).  She-Hulk doesn't complain how hackneyed a device this is, but she does complain about all the villains hitting on her and the amount of footnotes in text boxes in her book.

*Wyatt Wingfoot takes his shirt off to provide the straight female (and gay male) readers with some beefcake to match the usual serving of green cheesecake for straight male (or lesbian) readers.

*Someone makes a masturbation joke in the letters page, and She-Hulk pretends not to get it.  That's probably for the best, since Valentine's Day isn't the biggest celebration of self-love.  That's Onan's Day.