By: Harrison Wilcox (writer), Ryan Stegman (pencils), Michael Babinski (inks), Guru eFX (colors), Ed Dukeshire (letters) & Mark Paniccia (editor)
The Story: She-Hulks Jen and Lyra continue taking down The Intelligencia while dealing with other important matters… like shopping.
What’s Good: This miniseries has capital F-U-N all over it. I love it. The story is quick and funny, it isn’t all bogged down in any of the other Marvel Universe continuity and the art is just greatly awesome.
This story is very new-reader-friendly and doesn’t take itself too seriously. It also strikes me as something that Marvel could sell the hell out of to girls or sell digitally. Jen and Lyra have a great chemistry together. It’s a kinda spunky-yet-misunderstood teenage girl with her “cool” aunt vibe. It is enjoyable watching Jen teach Lyra the superhero basics of busting criminals, maintaining your secret identity and also finding to time go shopping with Bruce Banner’s credit card (leading to one funny scene where a holographic Hulk on the communicator is craning his neck trying to see all the shopping bags). Love it.
Here’s a name for you comic fans to keep an eye on: Ryan Stegman. The art in this issue is just incredible. The only thing that worries me is that Stegman draws attractive women SOOOOO well that he’s going to get “stuck” on books like She-Hulk or his upcoming story arc on X-23. If you follow the guy on twitter, you see his sketches and he can draw just about anything. Stegman doesn’t just draw the pretty ladies either, you’ve got good story telling, great panel layouts, backgrounds, some creative panel design, etc. It’s just a very complete effort and I really didn’t mind that Stegman didn’t ink his own work here. I think he’s a good inker and this IS a different look, but it still works just fine for me. And kudos also to those nameless colorists at Guru eFX. You can’t have a She-Hulk comic without doing a good job on green skin and they nail it.
What’s Not So Good: The biggest negative for me is that this miniseries is wrapping up after the next issue. I guess there is a “leave them wanting more” vibe at work here and we know that Jen and Lyra are not leaving the Marvel U. But, what makes me sad is that when we do get that next She-Hulk series, it probably won’t be with Wilcox and Stegman because they’ll be embroiled with other projects. And even if the next creative team is really good, it’s just a shame to see a team that really “got it” move onto other projects. That kinda leads into my next comment….
This series might not be for you if you insist on every comic “mattering”. There is no fate of the Marvel Universe at play here. No Norman Osborn. No hints of “FEAR ITSELF.” No moaning about the broken glory that was Asgard. No plight of the mutants. None of that. It’s just a good, solid and fun She-Hulk comic and the market is speaking very loudly that it doesn’t have a lot of time (or $$$) for those. It makes me sad in this case, but Marvel has kinda exhausted their customers by pumping out sooooo many X, Avengers, Spider-Man, etc. titles that customers just don’t have the resources to devote to fun little series like this.
Conclusion: A greatly fun series that is new reader friendly and girl-friendly but is still a favorite of this late 30’s white dude. You get fun, snappy story along with really tremendous artwork.
Grade: A-
-Dean Stell
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