She-Hulk # 3/100 Review

Archive

Reviewer: Kevin S. Mahoney

Title: Time Of Her Life

Written by: Dan Slott
Penciled by: Juan Bobillo
Inked by: Marcelo Sosa
Colored by: Avalon’s Dave Kemp
Lettered by: Dave Sharpe
Guest Artists: Paul Pelletier & Rick Magyar (page 5), Scott Kolins (pages 7-9), Mike Vosburg (pages 10-12), Amanda Conner & Jimmy Palmiotti (pages 13-15), Ron Frenz + Joe Sinnott & Sal Buscema (pages 16-18), Mike Mayhew (pages 19, 20), Don Simpson (pages 21, 22), Lee Weeks (pages 23, 24), Eric Powell (pages 27-29), Tom Grummett & Gary Erskine (page 100)

Editor: Tom Brevoort
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Title: The She-Hulk Lives

Written by: Stan Lee
Illustrated by: John Buscema and Chic Stone
Editor: ???
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Title: Second Chance

Written by: John Byrne
Penciled by: John Byrne
Inked by: Bob Wiacek
Colored by: Glynis Oliver
Lettered by: John Workman
Editor: Bobbie Chase
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Gadzooks. If there is anyone still reading this… be proud that you are still conscious after all that dreck. Even most annuals don’t have that many creators behind them. This, She-Hulk’s sort of anniversary issue, has everyone and the kitschy sink thrown in. Mostly, it’s just guest artists for the segments of Shulkie’s time trial, alongside reprints of the first issues of her two prior series (from 1979 and 1989 respectively). That makes this three issues (plus an interlude) for roughly the price of 1.33 comics; a normal Marvel book runs about $2.99 for 32 pages. This installment of She-Hulk was only one dollar more.

Was the story worth all the extra pages, artists, time and trouble? Yes and no. The plot stays fairly on course. She-Hulk is on trial for violation of the code of conduct of the Time Variance Authority. Jen acted inappropriately during a time travel entwined trial over the last two issues of her new series. In trying to preemptively save the life of everyone’s favorite dead Avenger (Hawkeye) she got the TVA really upset. Their sentence for injudiciousness? She was scheduled to be erased from the timeline. It’s It’s a Wonderful Life for the emerald set, only without the angel or the happy ending, unless the greatest lawyer to ever work for Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzman, and Holliway can find a way out of the mess. It would have been great fun as an annual six or seven issues down the line… the real problem with the main story is that readers just finished with a time travel trial last month! There are many repeated elements here, despite the multiple in-jokes and artistic riffs. And readers of this series have come to expect more from this creative team.

That’s not to say the plot is totally prefabricated, as there are a few developments and swerves. Readers find out how a certain pubescent temper-tantrum prone female will mature. The next big Marvel crisis is hinted at. There are many, many insider references concerning current and former Marvel employees. There is some sort of Avengers related cliffhanger waiting in the wings for the fourth issue. And the Pug/She-Hulk tension is cranked up another bittersweet notch. When that particular dam breaks, there will be a national disaster level flood of emo.

The two first issues included in the package are good enough for what they are, slices of comics history. The seventies S-H #1 certainly has enough decade specific claptrap to firmly place it in context. Everything from inept exposition-spewing crooks to overwrought dialogue and a transistor radio wielding background figure mark the time. The late eighties premiere issue is much closer to the current run. The humor is placed in the forefront and Jen is much more the can-do heroine. The art also looks and feels much more modern, for all its surrealism. As entertainment, it beats the pants off the origin story written ten years previously.

The art in the main story is literally all over the place. Over a dozen people/teams contributed. To quote the incredibly smart (and oftentimes annoying) Hermione Granger, “Are… You… Insane?”. To the credit of the artists’ army, the plot flows along as smoothly as it can given complete somersaults every few pages. To their discredit, a mistake that pops up once… just keeps repeating itself. Over and over. And it is such a simple thing, that any editor who didn’t have like 15 different packages of art to check for this one issue would have caught it. SOUTHPAW (n.) a left-handed person, usually a baseball pitcher. The future version of Southpaw has a RIGHT HAND depicted on her costume something like 85% of the time. It was irksome.