At one point there was a Marvel Event based on a bunch of super-science villains teaming up to try and take over the, either the U.S. or the entire world, I don't know which. They targeted the various gamma-powered characters for. . .reasons I am unclear on. Look, Jeph Loeb was heavily involved with the Hulk books at this time and I wasn't going near his stuff with a 10-foot-pole and a hazmat suit.
Anyway, the "Intellegencia" lost, but escaped, and this book (which was originally an ongoing, but apparently pre-orders were so bad it got turned into a 4-issue mini-series by the time issue 2 shipped) was about two She-Hulks trying to track them down and probably illegally detain them (I know The Trapster asks for his lawyer, but we never see him get one.)
Betty Ross was Red She-Hulk by this point but, possibly to have the mentor/apprentice dynamic, Wilcox went with Jennifer Walters and Lyra, the teenaged She-Hulk from Thundra's timeline, that is a combination of Thundra and the Hulk's DNA. Wikipedia says Thundra was captured by scientists and impregnated by cells they swiped from the Hulk, but the Official Handbook-esque entry for Lyra in the back of the above issue says Thundra traveled back in time specifically to get the Hulk's DNA, which fits the vague recollection I have of the comic.
I am pretty sure the version of the Hulk Thundra encountered was not aware enough to consent to giving up any DNA, which is almost as much a yikes as the Handbook entry saying Lyra was sent to the present day to get pregnant from Norman Osborn. Didn't Marvel learn their lesson from Sins Past? Nobody wants to think about Norman Osborn procreating. Red flags all over the damn place.
Anyway, Wilcox uses Lyra growing up in a militaristic society as an excuse to send her to high school to learn to be human and interact with people. There's the clique of mean girls that target the naive newcomer, especially once she strikes up a friendship with a popular guy. There's some fish out of water stuff, where Lyra can't understand social norms, or she dismisses two jocks hitting on her by telling them they'll have to fight to the death to decide which one takes her to a party. Oh, and the winner needs to bring the loser's ears as proof.
Lyra mostly hates school and would rather be out punching villains. Mostly she just hates being in her human form. It makes a certain amount of sense, coming from a place where her power as a Hulk was probably praised and a real asset, although that Handbook entry says the green skin helped mark her as an outsider (because she had a father, or genetic donor at least, while all the other women didn't). So you'd think she might be glad to ditch the evidence of that heritage.
Either way, it's an interesting choice by Wilcox to have Jennifer Walters, who has mostly preferred being green to not, be the one trying to show Lyra the benefits of not being a Hulk all the time. But as Bruce Banner notes, Jennifer has been much more successful living among people as a Hulk than he has, so she's certainly a better option than him, and there aren't many others. Red Hulk? Fuck no. Doc Samson? Eh, kind of sketchy. Skaar? He's not even housebroken.
That the book was reduced to 4 issues meant Wilcox had to speed-run a
friendship between Lyra and Amelia, the leader of the clique. And there's at least one super-villain fight every issue, which also cuts down the time to develop any of those subplots, but Wilcox and Stegman presumably knew what people wanted to see. Stegman's very good with fight scenes, kind of a slimmed down Ed McGuinness look to the art, and solid enough when the book requires a more humorous touch (mostly in the school scenes.) The book ends on a requisite super-villain disaster at prom, and I'm not sure Lyra's been in anything since. Maybe she popped up in Avengers Academy after I dropped that book. Another teen character that failed to carve out a niche.
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