Red She-Hulk #61 — Nick Peron

Mar 16

Mar 16 Red She-Hulk #61

Hell Hath No Fury, Part 4

The Red She-Hulk and Machine Man have infiltrated a Project Echelon facility in Puerto Rico, resulting in a battle against the super-soldiers that have been created there. During the fight, the Red She-Hulk was so overwhelmed by the sheer number of soldiers that she suddenly transformed into a savage form. She then begins plowing through her foes until she is attacked by Reginald Fortean in his Redeemer armor. She lashes into him, playing into his hand. Although X-51 tries to reason with her not to fall for his obvious trick, he fails and she is soon contained in an anti-gravity device. X-51 quickly slips in before Fortean can raise a force field and incapacitates him. When Reginald questions who side the robot is on, X-51 admits that he is still trying to figure that out, but until then he is freeing the General's prisoner. He then overloads the anti-gravity containment device so that it ejects the Red She-Hulk out of the facility. X-51 follows after her just as the soldiers of Project Echelon manage to breach the force field.

X-51 then begins tracking the Red She-Hulk as she leaps back to the continental United States. Eventually, she stops in a forest in Colorado to get a drink of water from a pond. There, she sees her reflection in the water and is so enraged by the sight of her savage form she begins lashing out at the trees until she eventually reverts back to human form. As she composes herself, she is approached by X-51 and she demands to know why he is following her. He explains that he is trying to figure out why she is trying to stop Project Echelon. He points out that she probably doesn't entirely understand her mission because she is scared. He points out how she didn't mean to kill the convict earlier and how when she damaged the bridge she stayed long enough to see the Avengers get it under control. He points out that this isn't something a mindless killer would do. She admits that she is afraid that she will give in to the rage. After so many years following Bruce Banner around and seeing him turn into the Hulk, she has come to fear that she might become like him as well and his tormented existence would become hers as well. She goes on to explain that when she is the Red She-Hulk all her inhibitions are gone, but she is still herself. However, this time when she went savage she couldn't reason, she only sought survival in the most primitive of ways. X-51 tells her that after some food and some rest she can tell him about what will happen with Project Echelon that makes her want to destroy it. When she refuses to share what she knows, X-51 reveals that he had met Eleanor as well.

This convinces Betty to reveal what she knows after the pair steals a car from the parking lot of a national park. She tells X-51 about how she had been spending time doing some adventuring across the world. This eventually brought her to the so-called Forbidden Forest in New Guinea. The forest was strange and filled with massive carnivorous plants which she enjoyed slicing up with her sword. After battling massive crocodiles in a river and camping for the night she came upon a strange pyramid in the middle of the forest. On it was a strange emblem that resembles the one used by the anti-espionage agency known as SHIELD. Realizing the symbol marked a doorway, she found now a way of triggering it to open so she pushed her way inside instead. Inside, she found part of what she eventually learned was the Terranometer. She explored the ancient facility until she came across a holographic projection of Earth which identified certain locations across the globe. Wondering what to do next, she suddenly noticed that her sword had begun to glow. She pointed it at the globe, activating the Terranometer's computers. It pulled up a hologram of Nikola Tesla, which gave information regarding Eleanor Bennett before the globe swallowed her sword. Wanting it back she attempted to destroy the secret facility for a whole day, but couldn't damage it. She then decided to track down this Eleanor Bennett so she could learn what happened to her sword.

She eventually managed to track down Eleanor to her home in Annapolis and convinced the little girl's caretaker to allow her to meet with her. She explains that when she touched the girl's arm she was first shown the visions of the apocalyptic future that was to come: How Project Echelon will wipe out every superhuman on the planet, but when it came time for these super-soldiers to be decommissioned they lashed out on their creators starting a war which humanity would ultimately lose.

Recurring Characters

Red She-Hulk, Machine Man, Eleanor Bennett, General Fortean, Project Enchelon

Continuity Notes

Betty makes mention of the fact that she was resurrected by some "madmen". She is referring to how she died of radiation poisoning (Incredible Hulk #466) only for her body to be recovered by the Intelligencia (Fall of the Hulks: Alpha #1) and turned into the Red She-Hulk (Incredible Hulk #610).

Betty states that she has been adventuring for a "year", however, this should be considered a topical reference because this is measuring the period of time between publications from the end of the Fear Itself event and this issue. Per the time compression rules of the Sliding Timescale of Earth-616, the length of time in the modern age between this period of time all happen in the same "year". As such, modern readers should interpret the passage of time as a few months at most as opposed to an entire year.