They say every superhero gets the nemesis they deserve: the one who will eclipse their deepest motivations and force them to confront what makes them a hero in the first place. Batman has his Joker, the champion of disorder and chaos; Mister Fantastic has his Doctor Doom, his only true intellectual peer. And She-Hulk, star of Marvel’s new Disney Plus series, She-Hulk: Lawyer
Yes, we’re talking about Jameela Jamil’s Titania, who fought it out in a courtroom with Tatiana Maslany’s titular character in the show’s premiere. With her return almost guaranteed before the end of the season, let’s see how Mary “Skeeter” MacPherran rose from the ranks of the many Marvel comics to find immortal fame… as She-Hulk’s most trusted thorn in her side .
First things first for fans of Neil Gaiman’s sandman and/or the finer works of William Shakespeare: Titania in question Not The Fairy Queen from the hit Elizabethan comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream (As it happens both characters have an unforgettable romantic relationship with a real ass). Rather, this Titania has its origins in the slightly less sophisticated sides of Marvel’s second crossover event in 1984 Secret Wars.
In this series, written by Jim Shooter and designed by artist Mike Zeck, we first meet Mary “Skeeter” MacPherran, a low-key woman from Denver who has been kidnapped (it’s a long story) on the strange planet of Battleworld, who is… Volunteered to allow Doctor Doom to transform her into an overpowered brawler codenamed Titania, only to brawl with the assembled Marvel heroes.
In this first appearance, Titania’s background was given only a brief, efficient sketch: we know that she once had a reputation as Garnethood, less conspicuous than anyone; We know she has an inferiority complex; and we know those two things put a chip on her shoulder big enough to quarrel with anyone she meets. No sooner does Titania gain her powers than she thrashes Thor villain Crusher Creel, the Absorbing Man, for looking “like the toughest man around” (more on Crusher later).
Only in 2004 She Hulk From writer Dan Slott and artists Juan Bobillo and Paul Pelletier, the series tells us that we’ve learned the deeper background of MacPerran’s punchy personality. Growing up a poor, working-class child chosen by her more popular classmates at school, Titania found herself working a series of dead ends. Her escape consisted of getting lost in tales of larger-than-life superheroes and villains, whom she idolized beyond all reasonable limits—even to the point of pretending to be Spider-Woman to impress her friends.
This makes Titania a reflection of Kamala’s “Ms. Marvel” Khan, another Marvel character who grew up with a fanatical obsession (and a determination to emulate them) with the exploits of caped celebrities. The twist is that the cocky, self-loathing Titania has never discriminated against whether these celebrities were good or bad. Just being powerful enough to claim glory and recognition was worth her esteem.
This is the dynamic that underpins the love-hate key relationship in Titania’s career: her persistent, obsessive need to prove herself against She-Hulk, her muscular superhero counterpart. Her first quarrel in Secret Wars #7 ended up being inclusive, but it wasn’t enough. Titania kept coming back to engage in pointless battles with an increasingly angered Jen Walters, who showed a faint interest in having been chosen as MacPherson’s favored nemesis.
It’s a weird, dysfunctional bond. Titania was never able to shake her childhood duty of mediocrity, and she must impress She-Hulk by proving that she lives up to her standards. And the only way to do that is to prove she’s strong enough to smack her in cement. In that sense, she functions as a superheroic exaggeration of the most toxic elements of comics fandom itself, with her needy urge to make it onto a favorite celebrity’s radar, translated into a very specific and obnoxious call to battle. At the time of 1989 Solo Avenger No. 14, a chastised Titania, was forced to solemnly promise She-Hulk (under threat of beatings) to go back to prison and leave her alone – a vow MacPherran sadly couldn’t quite keep.
By then, however, Titania had managed to find that Miscellaneous constant relationship in her life, this one for the better (although just as bizarre and dysfunctional in her own way). After their cute fistfight on Battleworld, MacPherran and Crusher Creel fell madly in love and returned to Earth as a crime duo for the next few years. This romantic pairing has proven surprisingly long-lasting over the decades, with each partner keeping an eye out for the other during their regular attempts at reform. In an unforgettable and strangely moving instance of Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz’s Mighty ThorCreel even sits down at a diner with Thor himself to convince him to scare Titania directly, to keep her from giving up the law-abiding life and going back to prison.
That, too, makes Titania an intriguing foil for Jen Walters. While She-Hulk has never found excuses for her consistent, unashamed sexuality — keeping two boyfriends in each of their identities during her original 1970s series, going to bed with her Avengers teammate Starfox in the ’80s, and moving through friends faster to move than Elaine from His field In the 2000s, she rarely had a happy long-term relationship to call herself.
Indeed, it’s the stabilizing effect of that relationship that has led MacPherran to her latest twist in comics continuity, turning face alongside Creel as a member of the heroic Gamma Flight team. Though Titania would likely be the last to realize it, she’s already managed to overcome her bad fandom by quietly finding a cure for her deep-seated self-loathing: a happy, oddly-functioning love life.
Based on the first episode of She-Hulk: Lawyer Alone, it remains to be seen how much the television version of Titania resembles its toxically obsessed comic book counterpart. Jamil’s version of the character appears to be a social influencer by trade who was tried for a traffic violation, and the actress has described her as someone who “just fret to deathBefore she even throws a punch. That’s a smart tongue-in-cheek, both in terms of Jamil’s media persona himself (and thus potential fodder for She-Hulk’s famous fourth-wall-breaking habits), and in terms of a modernized version of how fans and celebrities interact in person and interact on their platforms.
Just a shame she forgot to bring the shoulder tips.