She-Hulk’s Jameela Jamil plays the hero’s rival and most toxic fan

According to them, every superhero should have the arch-nemesis that they merit: One who shines a light on their darkest motives and forces them into a discussion about what makes them heroic. Batman has his Joker; Mister Fantastic his Doctor Doom. And She-Hulk, star of Marvel’s new Disney Plus series, She-Hulk: Attorney At Law? A 7-foot former check clerk, with large muscles and some great shoulder spikes, is her prize.

Yes, we’re talking about Jameela Jamil’s Titania, who slugged it out in a courtroom with Tatiana Maslany’s titular hero in the show’s premiere. As she’s all but guaranteed to return before the end of the season, let’s examine how Mary “Skeeter” MacPherran rose from the ranks of the Marvel Comics many to gain immortal fame… as She-Hulk’s most reliable thorn-in-her-side.

“I don’t want to change — ever! I’m at least a foot-and-a-half taller — and strong!” Titania exclaims, her loose, blue garment showing off her newly muscled arms. “So this is what it is to be strong! All my life I’ve dreamed of this! Where are the new clothes I designed? I can’t wait to put them on!” in Secret Wars #3 (1984). — Doctor Doom turns Titania into a powerful beefcake by turning her from a mousy string bean to a super-powered steakcake *Secret Wars*.

First things first, for fans of Neil Gaiman’s Sandmanand/or William Shakespeare’s finest works. Titania, in particular is It is notThe Faerie Queen is a comedy from Elizabethan fame A Midsummer Night’s DreamBoth characters share a romantic history with an actual ass. Rather, this Titania has her origins back in the slightly less discerning pages of Marvel’s second-ever crossover event, 1984’s Secret Wars

In that series, written by Jim Shooter and designed by artist Mike Zeck, we first meet Mary “Skeeter” MacPherran, an unremarkable Denver woman whisked away to the strange planet of Battleworld (it’s a long story) who volunteers to allow Doctor Doom to transform her into a superpowered bruiser codenamed Titania, simply for the purpose of tussling with the assembled Marvel heroes.

In this initial appearance, Titania’s background was given only a brief, efficient sketch: We know that she once had a reputation as a shrimpy, unremarkable nobody; we know that she has something of an inferiority complex; and we know that these two things give her a chip on her shoulder big enough to start fights with anyone she meets. No sooner does Titania gain her powers than she roughs up Thor villain Crusher Creel, the Absorbing Man, because he looks “like the toughest man here” (more on Crusher later).

It wasn’t until 2004’s She-Hulk series by writer Dan Slott and artists Juan Bobillo and Paul Pelletier that we learned the deeper background of MacPherran’s punchy personality. Titania, a scrawny and working-class child, was bullied by her classmates at school. After high school she found herself being forced to work a variety of boring jobs. Her escape was to lose herself in stories of larger-than-life superheroes and villains, whom she idolized beyond reasonable limits — even to the point of pretending to be Spider-Woman to impress her friends.

“She charged recklessly into a world she had only fantasized about,” reads narration boxes describing Titania’s history. Panels show her flexing her enormous muscles, hurling Wolverine across a battlefield, and making out with Crusher Creel, the Absorbing Man. “A place where she was victorious. Where she towered over others... where she was desired, and perhaps, even loved...” in She-Hulk #10 (2004).

That makes Titania something of a mirror image to Kamala “Ms. Marvel” Khan, another Marvel character who grew up fannishly obsessed with (and determined to emulate) the feats of caped celebrities. Titania was a self-loathing, put-upon woman who never differentiated between good and bad celebrities. Her esteem was based on her ability to be powerful enough that you could get fame and attention.

That’s the dynamic that sets up the key love-hate relationship of Titania’s career: her persistent, obsessive need to prove herself against She-Hulk, her muscled counterpart among the superhero set. They had their first fight in Secret Wars #7 ended inconclusively, but it wasn’t enough. Titania would be back time and again to pick pointless fights with an increasingly exasperated Jen Walters, who took a dim interest in having been selected as MacPherson’s nemesis of choice.

It’s an odd, dysfunctional bond. Titania was never quite able to shake off her childhood sense of mediocrity, and she needs to impress She-Hulk by proving she’s up to her standards. And the only way to do that is by proving that she’s strong enough to pound her into cement. This is her superheroic exaggeration on the most harmful elements of comic-book fandom. It’s a needy desire to get onto the radar as a celebrity. She makes this happen through an acrimonious request to fight. By the time of 1989’s Solo Avengers #14, a chastened Titania was forced to solemnly promise She-Hulk (on pain of thrashing) to go back to jail and leave her alone — a vow which, alas, MacPherran couldn’t quite keep.

Titania was able to locate the elusive sandstone by then. OthersA constant love in her life has changed things for her. Even though it was equally odd and dysfunctional, she is now happier. MacPherran met Crusher Creel on Battleworld and they fell in love. They returned to Earth together as a criminal-committing duo over the following years. This romantic partnership has remained strong over the years, each of them looking out for their partner during reform attempts. In one memorable and oddly moving instance from Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz’s Mighty ThorCreel meets up with Thor at a diner to get him scared of Titania, so that he can stop her abandoning the law-abiding way of life to go back to prison.

Jen Walters finds Titania interesting because of this. While She-Hulk has never made any excuses for her consistent, unashamed sexuality — keeping two steady boyfriends in each of her identities during her original 1970s series, hopping into bed with her Avengers teammate Starfox in the ’80s, and moving through boyfriends faster than Elaine from Seinfeld in the 2000s — she has rarely had a happy long-term relationship to call her own.

Indeed, it’s the steadying effect of that relationship that has led MacPherran to her latest twist in comic continuity, making a full-on face-turn alongside Creel as a member of the heroic Gamma Flight team. So while Titania would probably be the last to recognize it, she’s already managed to overcome her bad fandom by quietly finding a cure to her deep-seated self-loathing: a happy, weirdly functional love life.

“The truth is,” She-Hulk explains to Titania, “I like fighting you too [...] there aren’t many people I can hit with a telephone pole without feeling guilty about it.” She suggests they meet up in a vacant lot to spar with each other, whenever Titania needs to “blow off some steam.” “You’d do that for me?” asks Titania. “It’s for me, too,” She-Hulk replies, in She-Hulk #1 (2022). — She-Hulk and Titania call a truce — and start a casual fight club — in Marvel’s current *She-Hulk* miniseries.

Based on Episode 1 of She-Hulk: Attorney At LawOnly time will tell if the television version of Titania will be as toxically obsessed and comical. Jamil’s version of the character appears to be a social influencer by trade, called in to court for a traffic violation, and the actress has described her as someone who could “just annoy you to death” before she even throws a punch. That’s a clever wink, both at the media persona of Jamil herself (and thus potential fodder for She-Hulk’s famous fourth-wall-breaking habits), and at a modernized version of the way fans and celebrities interact in person and on their platforms.

She was a bit disappointed that the shoulder spikes were not brought.

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