Issue(s): She-Hulk #13
Cover Date: Mar 90
Title: "Village of the darned!"
Credits:
Steve Gerber - Writer
Bryan Hitch - Penciler
Jim Sanders III - Inker
Gary Barnum - Assistant Editor
Bobbie Chase - Editor

Review/plot:
Ok, we had Peter David's fill in last issue to give us a chance to recover from the whiplash of going from John Byrne to Steve Gerber on this title, and now we can try to just Gerber's run on its own terms.

And... yeah. I mean, we're very much in Howard the Duck territory here (and Howard will actually appear in the book starting next issue). The entire issue is based on one joke, where She-Hulk visits a "Village of the darned!" where no one curses.

This is all thanks to a priest that causes meteors to land on anyone who swears.

The priest turns out to really be a demon.

The way things were going, i'm actually surprised that the demon wasn't said to be from Heck.

So that's it. A one-joke issue. If this were 1970s Howard the Duck, you could at least count on more biting commentary about the Moral Majority or something, and based on this book's themes so far i would have expected the non-cursing to be tied in to commentary about the Comics Code Authority (there's actually no fourth wall breaking or anything like that). Here it's just... nothing.

If we're at all interested in longer term plotting, of immediate interest is the fact that She-Hulk and Weezie Mason wound up in the village because of a mystery device that landed on a nearby mountain, which caused her flying car (repaired by Lex Loopner) to fail. The anomaly was also the source of the demon. She'll be investigating that device next issue. For the longer term, She-Hulk was on her way to start her own practice, and Weezie has quit her job with DA Tower to help her. But any developments on that front are interrupted by the events of this issue and the next arc.

The biggest shame about this series is that Bryan Hitch is being wasted here.

Sure, he's in Alan Davis clone mode, but hey, Alan Davis is leaving Excalibur around this time! But i would not have minded seeing Hitch virtually anywhere else.

Quality Rating: D+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: She-Hulk shouldn't appear elsewhere between this issue and next, which takes place soon after this.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A