She-Hulk #7 // Review
An awesome android, a cyborg, and a robot walk into a legal office. This isn’t the setup to a joke. (Not really.) It’s the setup to the latest adventure of Jen Walters. Normally, it would be a little bit of a headache for her to have to handle this sort of thing, but since Jen’s also in a pretty good mood, she will handle the headache in She-Hulk #7. Writer Rainbow Rowell continues an exceedingly fun extended relationship with Jen in an issue featuring artwork by Luca Maresca and colors by Rico Renzi.
The good mood is courtesy of a night spent with Jonathan Hart. He’s lost his powers, but he still looks like he’s got them. He’s just had coffee. (He’s planning on getting addicted to it.) He likes Jen. (He’s thinking about a relationship with her.) Andy calls Jen into the office. He’s ushered in a Doombot as a potential client. The Doombot seems to think it’s Doctor Doom. It is accompanied by a cyborg who is trying to help it out. It will be a hell of a challenge, but things seem to be turning around for Jen, so she’s probably in a good space to take on a new client. That’s not all that she’s got to deal with in her seventh issue. She’s got a...thing in Brooklyn.
Rowell finds a clever bit of comedy that actually ends up being profoundly provocative on an intellectual level. Jen being asked to defend a Doombot in a court of law is actually a really fun idea that plays around the edges of the Marvel Universe. It feels almost more inspired than much of what John Byrne had come up with decades ago in his celebrated run on The Sensational She-Hulk, which helped establish who Jen has been ever since. Once again, the balance of Jen’s life is evenly distributed between home, work, and superheroing in another thoroughly enjoyable chapter.
Maresca and Renzi keep things steady throughout. There’s a straight-ahead approach to the art that fully embraces the absurdity of the situation without attempting to cartoonishly amplify it. Jen’s personality shows some range, but for the most part, she’s in a good mood, so there isn’t a huge amount of emotional fireworks going on in the story. There are moments where incredible, over-the-top dramatics might have amplified the comedy. A Doombot’s overwhelming sense of drama could have chewed up the scenery in a way that would have made more of a comic impact, but for the most part, it was fun.
Rowell’s rhythm feels nice, but the slow and gradual progression of events DOES feel a bit restless. Very little time has passed in the course of seven issues with Jen. The world off the comics page has been shooting by very, very quickly, and things have been extremely slow and nuanced in the life of Jen Walters. This is fine where it IS nuanced, but the crazy has yet to totally pick up in She-Hulk’s life, and THAT is something that needs to be amplified for the series to continue to feel well-rounded.
