Issue(s): She-Hulk #7, She-Hulk #8
Cover Date: Aug-Sep 80
Title: "Richard Rory... Winner" / "Among the ogres!"
Credits:
David Anthony Kraft - Writer
Mike Vosburg - Penciler
Chic Stone - Inker

Review/plot:
Richard Rory wins big at a Vegas casino.

He then crosses paths with Jen Walters, who is fleeing the police.

They get pretty close pretty quickly.

He somehow talks her into coming back with him to Citrusville, Florida, where he buys the radio station he used to work at. Rory is actually searching for F.A. Schist, who we know died back in the original Man-Thing series. Rory does find Hargood (now Todd) Wickham, aka Professor Slaughter, Schist's old not-quite-mad scientist.

Jen then stumbles into a weird scene in the swamps, where two weird monsters maintain the fountain of youth.

This is where Schist died (and Slaughter, we now learn, was crippled).

Many people have found the Fountain, and once they bathe in the water they never leave or change. Jen convinces everyone that living a real life is better than an immortality where nothing ever changes. They destroy the Fountain. Removing that Fountain from the Marvel universe may have been one of the goals of this story; it was a pretty powerful but cliched artifact to be laying around.

Of course an encounter with the Man-Thing was inevitable, so on her way home, she runs into him, turns into the She-Hulk and gets into a pointless fight.

Another goal of this story seems to have been to preserve the Man-Thing's swamp. With his remaining fortune, Richard Rory buys up the swampland, formerly owned by F.A. Schist, so that the Man-Thing will forever have a preserve to live in.

Richard Rory's complete chronology is given in the lettercol in issue #7. Kraft is apparently a very big fan of the character. He definitely did have potential as a more cynical version of a Rick Jones-ish type character, but Kraft doesn't really develop him here.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• Richard Rory was last seen in Defenders #78.
  
• Part of Jen's pitch to the fountain of youth people involves her trying to save her friend from dying in She-Hulk #2.
  
• This fountain of youth was previously seen in Man-Thing #7-8.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Given that this series wasn't very good and that it got a lot of pushback for being so derivative, it's ironic that it lasted longer than the original Hulk series.

What was fun for me reading this issue recently was that I had just learned about "terror management theory" which basically posits that the prime driver in human actions is our fear of our own death. Jennifer convinces the people using the fountain to destroy it because they no longer do anything since they no longer fear death.