Jennifer Walters, the Sensational She-Hulk, may be doing her best to start over, but when your history is as complicated as hers is, it may not let you go. Sometimes that means helping Quicksilver get out of a speeding ticket. Sometimes, though, it means you get to see friends you believed were lost forever, and help them figure out their place in the world. She-Hulk #3 is written by Rainbow Rowell, drawn by Rogê Antônio, colored by Rico Renzi and lettered by Joe Caramagna.
Armaan Babu: She-Hulk’s had a rough history, and not just as a character — the title itself has had some runs that many people would much rather forget. This run, so far, has been Rainbow Rowell panning for gold in the much mired streams of continuity and trying to do something new with it all. While she’s been doing a great job of that, I gotta ask: Why is this a Jack of Hearts comic now?
Stephanie Burt: Wait, are you reviewing last issue (which was a Jack of Hearts comic) or this one (which I, um, uh, kinda love)? I mean the She-Hulk parts aren’t the plot parts, but who cares? I could eat these jokes up with a spoon. A big green spoon.
Armaan: I have a friend who will use this as a reminder to eat more vegetables. I rebel against this notion. Let’s talk about She-Hulk instead!
The Past Rears Its Blocky Head
Armaan: Like John Byrne, Dan Slott’s run of She-Hulk has a lot of stuff people would rather forget, but also a lot of really fun ideas, and I am delighted that one of those ideas came back this week. No, no, not the Reckoning War stuff over in Fantastic Four, I’m talking about Andy. I have such a soft spot in my heart for earnest machine folk trying to fit into humanity despite their differences. Data, Red Tornado, the Visions and here, Andy. Former robotic minion turned office drone. He’s the best, and my heart broke when his memory was wiped away.
Stephanie: Don’t forget Machine Man. I had never met Andy, and I love him already, the big (wait for it) blockhead. I also love how your sentence (“Like John Byrne, Dan Slott’s run”) suggests that Mr. Byrne himself, and not merely his run of She-Hulk, has a lot of stuff people would rather forget (which is also true).
Armaan: Once again, Rowell tells you all you need to know with a few simple captions, but I think what speaks volumes is that full-page hug. Jen’s joy at seeing him again mirrors my own, and I’m glad they brought back the gag of the chalkboard that lets him speak to others that we never actually see him draw on. Is the chalkboard actually tech that just displays his thoughts, or are we always skipping out on panels of Andy meticulously drawing out his reply in chalk every time he “talks” with someone? We never know, and we never need to.
Is this your first time encountering Andy, Stephanie?
Stephanie: It is! He’s as charming as you say and absolutely merits the full-page single-panel introductory embrace that Jennifer, and Rainbow Rowell, and the lovely art team, give him. I could just squeeze him back, except that he’d crush me.
Jennifer Walters does not have that problem. Nor, this time out, does she have the problem she had for the first two issues of this series: She’s neither buried in exposition nor trounced by another character’s angst.
Armaan: The only thing she’s trounced by, which I’m sure is a rarity for her, is Andy’s size. Dude’s huge. It’s rare to see Jen dwarfed by another character she’s fond of, but here she is, and Rogê Antônio makes it so heart-warmingly genuine. For once, Jen gets to put her angst aside.
Stephanie: Instead, she’s chasing leads! And tapping her network! And pointing back unobtrusively to, among other gems, one of the only She-Hulk-centered tales (Could it be the only?) Chris Claremont wrote, in which Jen’s arguments before the Supreme Court of the United States of America got interrupted, repeatedly, by an Avengers fight (Solo Avengers #14, from 1989, with Alan Davis on art).
As someone who grew up around too many lawyers, I appreciate the way Jen’s job with Mallory amounts, first and last, to finding clients and gathering billable hours. And I love the way Shulkie’s divided responsibilities here — superheroing, being a loyal friend, gathering billable hours — interfere with one another. It reminds me of parenthood, which seems to be what Rowell wanted. “This is why most of my friends don’t work outside the home,” Jen muses. Does any other current Marvel hero have a better Best Friends Squad?
Armaan: I would argue for Spider-Woman, but not since the Dennis Hopeless run. Or, dang, Patsy Walker in the Kate Leth run.
Stephanie: Whose friends include Jennifer. … I’ve missed lawyer-joke She-Hulk since the end of the Soule run, and she’s back, baby. With paper legal pads. Lockjaw. Lease laws. Pietro … I’ll save his misdemeanor legal trouble as an exercise for the reader. And we never do learn whether Ben Grimm (whom Jen, adorably, calls “Benji”) put him up to it.
Armaan: No lie, if this was just a series of She-Hulk dealing with ridiculously mundane superhero troubles and massaging their continuity, I’d still be all in. This is a delight.
Stephanie: Also, that layout! A nine-panel grid for the phone- and cellphone center gags, and then a vertically divided page so that Jen can walk in the door to awaken a sleeping Jack of Hearts, who sees (as we do) her whole statuesque frame … Rôge Antônio is the real deal. He can draw facial expressions, too: startlement, dejection, amusement, joy. I’m super-happy with this team.
Pizza and Retcons
Armaan: I’ve always enjoyed She-Hulk’s ability to break the fourth wall. Where for Deadpool, it’s just one of his many, many gags, She-Hulk is a more serious character. When she breaks the fourth wall, it’s funny, yes, but she’s usually also expressing her frustrations with the tropes of comic books she’s constantly coming up against.
So after a long day at work, she comes home with a box of pizza and sits down with Jack of Hearts to begin the long and arduous process of retconning his tangled continuity. It’s not quite breaking the fourth wall so much as it is trying to install a doorway to better stories in it. It’s a scene that also includes a hilarious, only-in-comics moment of her saying, “Jack, we don’t know that you died. Only that you exploded.”
It’s a quiet scene, with lunch and a legal pad, it’s not quick or quippy, it actually feels all business. Despite the topic of conversation, it all actually feels pretty mundane — and I really enjoyed every panel of it.
Stephanie: As did I. I think I enjoyed … every panel of this whole gosh-darn comic. The plot, if it is a plot, slows down so much that there’s room for chat as to what kind of pizza Jen prefers, and why that kind of pizza (Sicilian thick crust! In New York!) is so wrong that it’s right. Jen puts her feet up. Literally. And listens.
And looks right at Jack, who looks her in the eye. And they converse! Jen must be a pleasure to draw: expressive, big, lots of options, both strong and curvy, and generally seen in street clothes, with solid colors (as here). You can even bring in your skills at drawing street clothes, a.k.a. fashion illustration, if you have them (Antônio does). Jack, on the other hand, must be an artist’s nightmare: all those overlapping clashing patterns. It’s like he’s wearing the Maryland state flag.
Which means there’s some fourth wall-poking going on at the end of this comic, too, for artists’ benefit: When Jen tells Jack “Let’s throw it all out!” she means both his self-distrust and his overelaborate legacy costume. Instead he shows up in her too-big-for-him T-shirt. White, with a big red heart. It’s a sight gag but also a signal that Rowell intends to stick with this character, and an outfit we’d expect in a romance comic. Stick around in a Rowell comic long enough and you’ll pick up the rudiments of a normal life. Even if you began as a radioactive dead body in space. Or a demon. Or a doombot.
Also, take a look at that body language! Everything here (as opposed to last issue) broadcasts that these two heroes are becoming comfortable friends. (Not lovers; friends.) Look at how they lean in toward each other with that box of pizza between them. Did I mention I’m head over big green heels for this art team? Or that Marvel’s romance comic roots (connected, like She-Hulk herself, to Patsy Walker) finally have a full-on flowering in this issue, in 2022?
Armaan: I’m not gonna lie, Stephanie, friendship as a concept confuses me. I’m doing my best, but sharing a pizza together as a pair figures out one’s complicated personal history? A balm to my troubled soul. I could not be happier there’s a place in comics for a scene like this.
That’s How You Stay Sensational
Stephanie: Jack needs to trust Jen (who’s willing to spend a lot of time and energy and pizza on him), and he needs a new wardrobe, and he needs to learn to live in his human body, which means learning to sleep and drink water (covered last issue), and eat when he’s hungry, and, uh, “use the little super-fellow’s room,” as Jen puts it. Apparently Jack hasn’t had to do that since he became Jack of Hearts: The armor has never come off. Until (deep announcer’s voice) today.
Armaan: I’ll admit, a part of me was hoping for a Secret Wars II style scene where Jen teaches Jack how a bathroom works, but I suppose that Marvel honor is best reserved for Spider-Man and the Beyonder.
Stephanie: Rowell is, I think, doing another continuity bit: Armaan’s brain and mine went to the same place w/r/t the Beyonder and the little super-fellow’s room. Jack at least remembers how to flush.
And if this comic shows Jen pivoting from work to play — with superhero business in between — of course it has to end with Jen talking to Hellcat (Patsy Walker). Who has (as you might expect) amazing hair, straight and orange with golden highlights, and who remembers pre-exploded, pre-zombified Jack as “Hot … in a kind of mopey, misdirected way. Like he needed someone with a firm hand to point all that power in the right direction. Know what I mean?” We know, Patsy. We know.
Again, the art team kicks it. Check out those two full pages of phone conversation: Jen on the left, and Patsy on the right each time, except for the single panel with Jen’s clothes closet where Patsy should be. The art makes the point that Jen relies on Patsy for advice about appearance and demeanor and clothes … I don’t know if that’s Rowell’s script or Antônio’s layout choice, but I applaud.
Armaan: Look, if more people relied on Patsy Walker for romantic advice, I’m not sure if the Marvel Universe would be a more stable place, but it certainly would be a more entertaining one.
Stephanie: No comment. … Anyway, Jen explains to Jack that she trusts herself, despite all the twists and turns of her superhero life: That’s “how you stay sensational.” How you become the green beacon of awesome that many of her fans (Jack apparently among them) expect her to be. Despite everything.
And when Jen gets off the Patsy-phone and back to Jack and dresses him up in her spare street clothes, he says “You’re teasing me.” For the second time in this issue. And she replies, again, accurately, “I do that.”
Armaan: Look, Jack of Hearts could have featured less in this issue, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a lovely comic that featured every reason you should love Jennifer Walters. She has a unique place in the Marvel Universe; she’s the Law in a way Matt Murdock could never really be. She embraces the weird, the improbable, the outright absurd, and though none of it ought to make sense, she finds a way to hold it all together. She cares, she loves and she teases. She’s a lawyer, she’s a superhero, but at the end of the day, why do we love the sensational She-Hulk? You gotta have heart. And she does. Miles and miles.
Last Minute Legal Notes
- Readers, trust the captions. Don’t go around looking for the runs this comic is referring to. Save yourselves. We read them so you don’t have to.
- Jen’s got an actual Rolodex on her desk. Bless her.
- Can Jen please take out her legal pad and spend an afternoon disentangling every (Earth-based (non-mutant)) character whose continuity baggage is too cumbersome to inflict on new readers?
- Armaan is ignorant enough to have to Google that BFF&E means “Best Friends Forever and Ever.” Now that I’ve Googled it though: Awww. Marvel female friendships bring me such heart-healing joy.
Stephanie Burt is Professor of English at Harvard. Her podcast about superhero role playing games is Team-Up Moves, with Fiona Hopkins; her latest book of poems is We Are Mermaids. Her nose still hurts from that thing with the gate.
