The Original DeZago/Hitch She-Hulk

I was rummaging through some old discs recently and stumbled across some art files I thought I'd lost. I can't find any of the original notes that went with these, but I'll try to pass the story along from memory.

Back in 2000, Todd DeZago and Bryan Hitch were hired by Marvel to do a Thing/She-Hulk one-shot. DeZago had written the script, had it approved and Neary had started work on the pencils. He turned in a dozen or two pages (it was ultimately going to be a 40-page story) and there was some editorial question about a depiction of She-Hulk. Most of it was fine, but there was a scene where she falls down and several construction workers ogle were now-quite-visible panties. I believe the concern was, not only was the artwork appropriate, but was the whole scene appropriate. The book was halted during this internal Marvel debate, and Hitch filled up his schedule with other work. (I believe this part of the story was told by DeZago himself in Occupational Hazards #1.)

DeZago liked the story anyway, and put scans of Neary's pencils on his website. They didn't stay up too long though. They were certainly down two years later when Marvel announced it was going to finish the story with art by Ivan Reis. (Hitch was still pretty tied up.) The one panel of art was changed, but the scene as a whole was left in place. The book eventually made it into readers' hands as Thing/She-Hulk: The Long Night and has been reprinted twice since then.

By the time the book was out, the only part of the original art I could find for comparison was a censored version of the offending panel that I had put on my FF website when I first heard about it. I thought I had saved copies of all the art files DeZago had put online, but I couldn't find them for the life of me. But, buried on a CD of other junk I was sorting through, I stumbled across the cover and first 25 pages of Neary pencils! Here, then, is the first half of Thing/She-Hulk: The Long Night, both the original pencils with the published pages side-by-side for comparison. It's just an odd, little historical curiosity at this point, but I recall the story being rather a big to-do at the time.

(The offending art, by the way, is on page ten, panel four. You can see a little too far up She-Hulk's skirt in the original.)

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