The shadowy people who give SHIELD their orders pressure
Nick Fury into taking action against She-Hulk, citing the threats caused by her
cousin, the Hulk. Fury balks, citing Reed Richards’ obvious approval of her to
join the Fantastic Four. The powers wave that away, telling him that this order
comes from the Commander in Chief himself. Fury decides to take a vacation
rather than deal with this….
Jennifer “She-Hulk” Walters is relaxing at home when her
boyfriend, Wyatt Wingfoot, arrives. Jen explains she is distracted, thinking
about her late cousin Bruce Banner as the next day was his birthday (Hulk/Bruce
is wrongly believed to be dead at this time). He comforts her by reminding her
that without the Hulk, she would never have become She-Hulk and they would not
have gotten together. They make plans to go out that evening but first, they
head for the bedroom….
Dum Dum Dugan supervises the surveillance of She-Hulk though
he does not like it any more than Nick Fury did….
They get ready to go out and Jen is dressed in an
abbreviated version of white tie and tails, exposing a lot of green flesh. She
defends it by saying that as people are going to be staring anyway, she might
as well be comfortable. They take a cab to the East Village and Jen explains
she has always preferred being She-Hulk because of the excitement. Near the
theater, three SHIELD Mandroids teleport in and announce that Shulkie is under
arrest. She fights them, with Wyatt and some passers-by trying to help but not
doing much. Jen is shot with a Neuro-Stunner and halts it by hitting the
Mandroid with a car. The lead Mandroid contacts base to request an emergency
pull-out full quadrant teleportation. And so She-Hulk, Wyatt, and several
civilians finds themselves in a SHIELD base with the Mandroids. She clobbers
the Mandroids and tries to lead the civilians to safety, tearing a massive hole
in a wall leading to a maintenance tunnel. The agents spray gas in the tunnel,
taking down the civilians so Jen makes another exit, where she and Wyatt find
an airfield. When they finally get a look outside, they discover they are
aboard the Helicarrier, with nowhere else to go. So they surrender to an armed
party of agents, led by Agent Roger Dooley; Dooley orders Jen to strip, threatening
Wyatt with death when she balks. So Jen removes all of her clothing, denouncing
SHIELD as a bunch of bad guys. Dum Dum Dugan arrives and is shocked; he rebukes
Dooley, reminding him that strip searches are to be carried out in private by
an Agent of the same sex as the prisoner. Dooley is unrepentant. Dugan orders
Dooley away but the agent mutters threats about his friends in high places….
Jen is given a smock and Dugan speaks to her and Wyatt in
his office, apologizing for the incident. Dugan also explains that some
higher-ups think she poses a threat and he is confused about what SHIELD is
turning into. And then he gets a call telling him he is being reassigned to
Washington and Agent Dooley is now in charge at the Helicarrier until Nick Fury
returns. Dooley has Wyatt locked up and escorts Jen to a lab where she is
subjected to a thorough and invasive examination by an apologetic Sidney “Gaffer”
Levine. She is all wrung out when she is put in a cell with Wyatt. When she has
recovered a bit, she asks about the cell. The bars are adamantium and there is
a weight-sensitive alarm system which releases cyanide gas should the weight in
the cage vary even a little. So Jen has Wyatt press the equivalent of her wight
in the floor while she transforms back into normal Jennifer Walters and slips
out between the bars and shuts off the weight alarm. She walks through the
halls trying to find a way out but her lack of footwear is noticed and an alarm
is sounded. Agent Dooley responds but he is seized by an elderly homeless man
who was one of the civilians brought aboard with Jen and Wyatt; he sucks the
life out of Dooley then replaces it with its own consciousness, manipulating
Dooley’s corpse into leading them to the ship’s central control room. Jen has
found her way to Dooley’s office and when he leaves (undead, remember) she
enters as She-Hulk and finds the recording Dooley made of her examination and
destroys the tape. And then the Helicarrier flips on its side, the possessed
Dooley having cut half the rotors though everyone assumes it was She-Hulk who
did it…..
With carrier tilted, two jet aircraft slide off, one
crashing to the ground on top of a donut shop. With the other one, the pilot
manages to land the jet on its tail but it topples over and explodes. Back in
the carrier, Jen discovers the corpse of the homeless man, looking like it has
been dead for a century. An Agent arrives and shoots Jen before another Agent
can explain that it’s Dooley who is the bad guy. Good thing Jen is largely
bulletproof. They go to the control room where Dooley has locked himself
inside. Jen is told by Sidney Levine that the door is booby trapped against
forced entry. So Jen goes outside and walks along the upended side of the ship
and breaks in through a window. She is seized by Dooley which thinks she would
be a much better host for them. Jen slams him against a wall which causes him
to burst open, releasing hundreds of sentient cockroaches. Agents try to
restart the engines and the ship explodes, plummeting to the Earth. The Agents
escape in their pods but Shulkie wants to rescue Wyatt. Levine orders the
lifters on the other side cut, hoping the gyroscopes right the carrier’s
position. They do that and the Helicarrier crash lands on its bottom in the
desert. Jen emerges with a battered Wyatt. Levine explains the bad part: the carrier’s
atomic pile is about to explode in twenty minutes. Only She-Hulk can shut it
down as she is the one with the most likely chance of surviving the extreme
radiation. She makes her way through the ship and she is swarmed by the
roaches, which she does not like…. Minutes later, she emerges, having shut off
the reactor but covered with the detritus of dead bugs….
Epilogue 1: Jen is checked out by Reed Richards who wishes
he had specimens of the sentient cockroaches for study. Then he reveals the bad
news: because of her exposure to the radiation, she can no longer transform
back into Jennifer Walters. She responds, “So what’s the bad news…?”
Epilogue 2: Jen and Wyatt talk and she explains that she
much enjoys being She-Hulk so she won’t miss never becoming normal again. One
thing does worry her: how did the sentient roaches know what SHIELD was
planning?