She-Hulk Smash Fourth Wall (But She Was Far from the First)

She-Hulk Smash Fourth Wall (But She Was Far from the First)

Community

Perhaps this century’s closest comedy cousin to She-Hulk: Attorney-At-Law is Dan Harmon’s Community, another show that not only broke the fourth wall but assumed we knew a helluva lot about how comedy shows were made.

Harmon-proxy Abed was the character with the secret power to float in and out of the narrative, occasionally breaking that fourth wall to comment on story. Worried whether or not Community was going to make it back for that prophesied Season 6? Abed gave us the skinny in the Season 5 finale, “Basic Sandwich,” turning to camera and confiding:

“We’ll definitely be back next year. If not, it’ll be because an asteroid has destroyed all human civilization. And that’s canon.”

Krasnoff Foster Productions

It’s like he can see right through us

Like Jen Walters, Abed occasionally insisted on taking charge of the story itself. In Season 6’s (see, there was a Season 6!) “Basic RV Repair and Palmistry,” Abed, worried that the audience wouldn’t know how the gang got into a crazy situation, insists that the show “cut to three weeks earlier.” Throughout the episode, Abed employs his flashback abilities, a character taking the narrative into his own hands.

She-Hulk (the comic book)

 

You might think this talking-to-the-camera business was initiated in Superhero Land by fellow Marvel icon Deadpool–but you’d be wrong. The truest precursor to She-Hulk: Attorney-At-Law was She-Hulk herself.

Marvel

Don’t apologize if you don’t get the Alpha Flight reference

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