She-Hulk #12

Now that we’re on the final issue, what’s my take on the series as a whole? Soule started out with a killer idea: focusing on She-Hulk as lawyer, with the extra pizzazz that simultaneously being a superhero could add to the job. But the few cases she took on usually involved only superficial (albeit accurate) legalities, and the one that went whole-hog legal drama was too transparent to be groundbreaking. Soule simply had a hard time integrating Jen’s life as a superhero and as a lawyer together.

He probably would have figured it out had the series run a little longer, but unfortunately, he stuck with the round dozen issues of his original pitch. (That is, if he’s telling the truth and not just saving face; the last issue of She-Hulk came in #134 on the Comichron and the title has never been a bestseller.) Essentially, we got a miniseries, and unless you know what you’re doing from beginning to end, you’re setting up the reader to come out feeling cheated.

Frankly, and I say this with a great deal of respect for the man, Soule didn’t always seem to know what he was doing. That couldn’t be clearer in the limited use of Patsy and the still undefined existence of Angie. The former was brought in as an investigator, but mostly wound up a punching bag for stronger characters. In fact, the one time Patsy got a clear-cut mission, Soule relegated it to background work, then rendered her victory nearly pointless. Here, it’s back to getting knocked around, after a humiliating remark from Nightwatch that he didn’t forget about her; he just didn’t care. Hey, same with us!

As for Angie, I’m not sure whether it’s generous of Soule to leave most of her origins to the next writer or he’s just slacking, but either way, we come away with pretty much nothing on her. Her mysterious powers are revealed to be magic of the unrestricted kind, which means she can do pretty much whatever’s needed to get by: survive a bullet to the head, redirect an energy blast, free Jen from hypnotic control, etc. In response to Jen’s direct question of what she is, Angie provides a vague response that paints her as a modern day Mary Poppins: “…I think perhaps it is time for Hei Hei and I to move on. There are other people who could use our help.”

The one saving grace is that Soule did manage to get a good revelation from the Blue File, one involving a fairly harsh retcon to Nightwatch’s character, but an interesting one that’s actually kind of novel. [Spoiler alert!] All along, the Blue File was the last remaining piece of evidence of an incident where Nightwatch, then the villain Nighteater, changed history to reflect that he was a hero instead. You’d be more sympathetic to his cause if he didn’t sacrifice hundreds of lives to do it and have mostly selfish ambitions. He starts on an compelling note (“[T]here was no future in villainy. Bad guys, as it were, do not go gently into that good night.”),* but ruins it with less than altruistic considerations: “But heroes…they get to be billionaires, worshipped as gods, and receive a lovely funeral attended by Stark, Richards and the rest of the crème de la crème.”

It kind of goes back to #5, when Jen questioned Herman Schultz’s reasons for turning to villainy instead of making more of himself, and actually, Herman shows up to demand why he didn’t get the same heroic treatment. There’s not much to say about that, however; Herman makes no meaningful contribution to the issue and seems to appear for appearance’s sake. Ultimately, Nightwatch doesn’t get much of a resolution, either. Jen’s refusal to kill him is good on her, but aside from capture, there are no further consequences for his crimes that we see.

Pulido is not the most serious of artists, and certainly Vicente’s bright, cheery colors don’t help in that regard, but they do manage to convey some real tension in the issue, mostly where Patsy dodging a possessed Jen is concerned. In the end, while they both did their best for this title and frequently got some rewarding pages as a result, I wonder if this was really the right venue for them. She-Hulk was off-beat, but rarely provided Pulido material to use his retro design aesthetic with.

Some Musings:

* Can I just say that after watching Interstellar, I’m pretty sick of that quote. Dylan Thomas wrote a lot of great poems, people, not just one!