I really want to say something nice about She-Hulk #27, so how's this: the opening two-and-a-half pages are really good. Also, the jail scene in the middle of the book is cute.
Otherwise, it's just sort of lame. It's not just She-Hulk that's lame, either. The quality level of several of this week's Marvel books was just not what it ought to be. As an example, the Ultimate line has turned to garbage, with the exception of Ultimate Spider-Man and partial exception of Ultimate X-Men. I've been buying the whole line for years (though I cut off Ultimates 3 after the first craptacular issue), but I decided today, after another moronic Ultimate Fantastic Four, Ultimate Iron Man and Ultimate Human that I'm just done. I'll keep buying USM from now on but that's it.
She-Hulk #27From the "standard" Marvel universe, I bought the two Avengers titles out today, and they were good. Ms. Marvel #25 was OK. Brubaker's Daredevil, though, has been sliding downhill for six months and I've lost interest. (Apparently the "Matt Murdock has issues" story line is returning for the 15th time.)
So I saved She-Hulk #27 for last. My expectations were a little higher because of previews I had seen of the first few pages, but it was mediocre. I read it twice, to be sure and to be fair, but I was disappointed. Issue after issue, the story fails to grab me. And I am prepared to be grabbed. I am ready for it. I am eager for it. Grab me, already!
Also in this issue, the artwork was frequently out of continuity. She-Hulk is not Mary Marvel: her Jennifer clothes do not magically transform into a uniform, and then change back when she becomes Jennifer again. Presumably there are production and editorial staff who are supposed to be watching out for these sorts of errors, and when I look at the splash page I do indeed see people identified as "Editor", "Assistant Editor" and "Production".
My theory is that the editorial and production staff was so bored by the story that they fell asleep before they could notice the errors.
Do I get a "No-Prize"?
She-Hulk #27 was an excellent issue
Hi.
I know your dissatisfaction with the current direction of the book, but, seriously, Lingster, I've been a She-Hulk fan for 21 years, more or less, and this one was one of the nicest She-Hulk's stories I've ever read.
I loved everything about this book, from Jazinda telling her secret to She-Hulk to Jen's dialogue with Mallory, and, ESPECIALLY, She-Hulk's feelings about Iron Man.
What a great read...!
I don't know...
That's a lot of positivity. Not sure how I feel about that.
OK, seriously: I think the reconciliation with Tony Stark is a good idea, but the idea that he'd fly to Allentown, PA on his own, in his armor, tramples my suspension of disbelief. He is very busy as director of SHIELD, and has minions for the in-person stuff. Obviously a telephone call is not as gripping visually as a face-to-face meeting, but the idea that the guy would fly 2500 miles in a suit of armor to pass a note is just too much for me to buy. I mean, it would have LOOKED great if Galactus showed up to help clear one human of a bogus murder charge, but that would have been silly, too.
In my universe, when you need to apologize to someone far away you call or send an email. In my parents' and grandparents', you sent a note or a card through the mail. In the last 10 or 15 years, superhero comics have grown in moral complexity and realism, and in many ways have come to resemble the realities of real life.
How much more hackneyed could it have been to write in two guys robbing a convenience store just when Jennifer happens to be there? Jen and Jaz couldn't have just gotten back in their RV and turned back to Allentown? There needed to be some ridiculous, obvious, trite, threadbare, cliched conflict to make that happen? I groaned - literally groaned - when I read that panel.
I have to wonder if PAD has simply fallen behind the trend curve. It happens to all of us in various things - for example, I have fallen behind contemporary popular music. I don't know what "the kids" are listening to these days. Another example: John Byrne fell behind the comics trend curve about 15 years ago. He is still able to market his comics writing to a subset of the comics population as high-quality nostalgia, but he is not able to draw those enormous audiences anymore. So what I'm wondering is if PAD's comics style - specifically his superhero style - is now dated. I like X-Factor well enough, but that isn't really a superhero book. X-Factor is a mystery book, or a detective noir book, that happens to involve characters who often appear in superhero books. She-Hulk is a superhero book and I am not confident that PAD knows how to write those anymore, at least not in a way that is palatable to the contemporary comics audience.
Overall, there are things I liked about She-Hulk #27 but they were outweighed by the things I did not like. As I said, the first few pages were good and then the middle was cute. PAD is trying to tell a story about a character's moral conflict, but he is dumbing it down in a way that successful comic book writers haven't done for a decade or more. An over-simplified morality tale could have worked in a comic 20 years ago, but today it reads like the callout on a Roy Lichtenstein painting.
If PAD wants to write nostalgia comics like Byrne, then he's doing great. If he wants to write comics that sell well and generate buzz, then he's got a lot of thinking to do.