Inverse - 🍿 Reviewing 'She-Hulk'

Good Morning

August 17 2022

Even for die-hard fans, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is starting to feel like a conveyor belt. Marvel churns out new movies and shows faster than most of us can keep up, but She-Hulk feels different.

Premiering on Disney+ this Thursday, the new Marvel series stars Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer Walters (no relation to Inverse science reporter Jenn Walter), a cousin of Bruce Banner who accidentally gets infected with his Hulk blood and becomes… She-Hulk. (The lousy name is a recurring joke.)

She-Hulk is smart, funny, and, most importantly, different. Despite being the 8th Marvel TV show on Disney+, it’s the first one that really gets the small-screen format. WandaVision was a meta sitcom parody, She-Hulk is an actual sit-com — and a good one at that!

Read our review, and more, in this edition of Inverse Daily.

What's New

ROSS	INNOVATION

Russia reveals its next-gen space station

On Monday, Russia’s space agency Roscosmos gave the world its best look yet at its new space digs — the Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS).

RSC Energia, the arm of Roscosmos tasked with building the station’s modules, displayed a pint-sized model of the completed station at an exhibition for Russia’s military industry in Moscow. Adorned with a variety of solar panels, the space station resembles a sci-fi space wheel and is equipped with various modules — including one dedicated to tourism — that flare out in four directions from a central hub.

Review

Television

She-Hulk is the MCU's charming first sitcom

She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, streaming August 18 on Disney+, has plenty to offer. It isn’t the capital-M Marvel show most fans are going to love; it’s light on action, at least in the first four episodes, and its many cameos from the MCU will make most diehards foam at the mouth over how much they “nerfed” this or that character.

But there’s still something appealing, approachable, and enjoyable in its unserious nature, all of which feels invigorating coming from the all-too-important MCU.

She-Hulk is funny in the way most competent comedies are, even if its mixture with the MCU isn’t a match made in heaven. When the jokes land and Tatiana Maslany is firing on all cylinders, it can be almost joyous.

LUMINARIES

Special Issue

Ludwig Ahgren hates the same awful gaming trends that you do

The most popular streamers tend to be either interesting personalities or exceptionally skilled at games. Ludwig Ahgren has managed to have it both ways.

“You can't just be really good. You have to be godlike,” he tells Inverse.

The 27-year-old from Hollis, New Hampshire is a self-described “little dumbass,” chock-full of charisma and formidable skills. But his Tiger Beat good looks belie a snarky wit and vulnerable sincerity.

On stream, Ahgren has discussed his father passing away from complications resulting from alcoholism when he was 10, performing stand-up comedy in college, and how he struggled to keep a job after he moved to Los Angeles. He says it’s not enough to just be good at games — you have to be yourself.

Off-World Living

Space

A new plasma-based technology could be crucial for living on Mars

Scientists are currently working on a proof of concept for a way to make oxygen, fertilizer, and fuel on Mars — a technological leap that could make human habitation viable.

Physicist Vasco Guerra from the University of Lisbon studies plasma, that fascinating substance achieved by exciting gas into a more extreme phase. Guerra tells Inverse that his team has received favorable attention from the European Space Agency (ESA).

Their invention would use artificial plasma to break apart carbon dioxide in Mars’ atmosphere and transform it into oxygen for breathing and nitrous oxide for fertilizing crops. Guerra discusses this integrated system and their preliminary results in a new paper published Wednesday in the Journal of Applied Physics.

Learn more

Good news

Innovation

Engineers found an efficient way to recycle plastic foam — it could make them rich

Our planet is inundated with mountains of plastic — well over 8 billion tons of it — and we create around 385 million more annually. Out of all that plastic, less than 10 percent is actually recycled each year. The rest piles up in landfills, chokes our seas, and even makes its way into our bloodstream in microscopic form.

With all that plastic permeating the environment, it’s now urgent to find cheap, effective ways of recycling it.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences promises to do just that for polystyrene, which commonly goes into the boxes that hold our greasy leftovers and is considered one of the most widely used (and least recycled) forms of plastic on Earth.

Inverse - 🍿 Reviewing 'She-Hulk'

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