Aliens in New York? It must be Wednesday. Luckily, New York’s got no shortage of superheroes at hand, and it’s time for She-Hulk and the Pugnacious Punch Club to defend their city — with a little last-minute help from everyone’s favorite playing-card themed superhero! It’s all the action you’ve been waiting for in the somewhat season finale that is She-Hulk #15, written by Rainbow Rowell, drawn by Andrés Genolet, colored by Dee Cunniffe and lettered by Joe Caramagna.
Armaan Babu: You may not know this about me, Stephanie, but I don’t do a lot of punching in my day-to-day life. You could even say I do no punching whatsoever, and have no plans to do any of it in the foreseeable future. But nonetheless, I really, really, really want a Punch Club jacket. Alas, the best I can do is punch up my sentences while writing about She-Hulk with you, but hey, maybe that’s enough to get us honorary matching jackets? Marvel, if you’re reading this, what do you say?
Stephanie Burt: I would like you to have a Punch Club jacket. I’ll take a Shulkie T-shirt, cut to fit me. Or maybe a Jack of Hearts vest?
Yacht-a Know Better, She-Hulk!
Armaan: Sometimes, an impossible romance is just that: something that cannot work out. There comes a moment, in those romances, when you’re flying high above the Earth, dancing with an impossible dream, that a single utterance brings everything crashing down and you realize just how demented the whole affair is — or, in this case, the man Jennifer was being enchanted by. All the signs were there, and it’s finally hit home for Jen just how dangerous the Scoundrel is. His disregard for the lives of millions of people is downright sociopathic, and it is extremely satisfying to see it all hit home for Jen.
Stephanie: I guess? Except that we knew he was awful all along. I liked this plotline better in Frozen, where the structure of the story didn’t require the flirting to go on so long. I’ve finally figured out why the Scoundrel has felt so gosh-darn familiar, though. Why he feels not only predictable (the A-plot villains have been the worst part of this mostly delightful series) but like a trace of a trace, a copy of a copy: He’s what happens when people have no clue how to write Gambit. (Which may be deliberate. I wouldn’t mind seeing Rainbow Rowell write Gambit, though I’m not sure how she’d handle Rogue.)
Armaan: I know I should be more annoyed with him, but his utter bewilderment as to why She-Hulk doesn’t just fly away with him to let Manhattan die is just so adorably silly. The art does a magical job of capturing the kind of charm that is just absolutely, stubbornly blind to the reality of a situation. It’s its own special kind of danger, the kind you don’t always get if you’re not reading a romance-leaning comic like this.
Once again, I want to call out how expressive and charismatic Genolet’s character work is — while also calling out how satisfying it was to see the Scoundrel finally getting his butt kicked. He’s been kind of untouchable in every fight scene we’ve had between the two, but with a little knockoff Hulkbuster rope and a little tenderness in juuuust the right moment, Jen plays dirty enough to win the day.
You gotta wonder, though — was Jen’s moment of tenderness in asking about the bomb a complete fake-out, or a last, fond farewell to a terrible man who nonetheless did, for a moment or two, get her to smile?
Stephanie: I’m gonna go with fake-out. I do like how he says he doesn’t get personal with clients (before she ties him up and dumps him). Rowell is asking us, for a hot minute, whether a space thief who regards whole cities as collateral damage, and a firm lawyer with supervillains (or oil companies!) for clients, are really pretty much the same thing, morally. As regards fossil fuel companies, they might be.
Punch Club in the Park
Armaan: I am delighted that the Punch Club keeps coming back. It might be too much to ask for a spinoff series, but if you ever come across any good Punch Club fanfic, you gotta let me know. I could read about this group for ages. They’re all … different levels of grumpy with hearts of gold. Ben being, of course, the man whose heart is most on his sleeve. Worried about Jen, refusing to start the Punch Club session without her, worrying about the secret relationship she’s in … Jen’s got a lot of people in her corner, and it breaks my heart she hasn’t felt comfortable letting Ben Grimm in a little more. But then again, I’ve always had a soft spot for the big rocky.
Stephanie: Well thank you so much for sending me down the rabbit hole of Jennifer Walters/ Ben Grimm. Alas, I have not found any Punch Club fanfic … yet.
Armaan: Also fun: seeing the Punch Club step in to save the day when all of New York’s other heroes were apparently busy. None of them is in costume either — it’s just them as people, villains and heroes both, meeting up for a social thing, stepping up to save the city nonetheless. The social aspects of the superhuman community are usually only briefly seen, but I like moments like this. Seeing comics action with people in their day clothes, masks left aside.
Stephanie: Ben and Titania seem more irked, more discomfited, by Jen’s absence from their regular Punch Club event than they do by the supposedly impending destruction of Manhattan. And you know what? If they know what kind of comic book they inhabit, and what level of threat the Scoundrel poses, they’re right!
Rainbow Rowell thinks like a character-driven novelist, like a romance or at least a romance-adjacent novelist, like a YA novelist who began in realist fiction, and that’s great: It’s what powered her Runaways. It makes her dialogue and her flirtations and especially her friendships shine. It also lets her go pretty far with plots where the heroes endanger each other, or endanger themselves. I found a copy of the 1984 Jack of Hearts miniseries, by Bill Mantlo and George Freeman, at Phoenix FanFusion last month, and I’ve been having feelings ever since, because it was one of my favorite comics when I was maybe 12 or 13, and it’s about self-hatred and self-harm: Jack simply doesn’t want to live, and wishes his powers would just blow him up. That’s the kind of danger Rowell knows how to write: a character turned back on himself, for tragic or (more often) comedic effect.
The Scoundrel ain’t that. He’s a jerk who deserves to get his face punched in, and we all know it. If you can see outside the fourth wall in a Marvel comic, you understand who’s truly likely to destroy a populated area with superheroes in it: Doctor Doom? Maybe. Mister Sinister? Cassandra Nova? Orchis? Alas, yes. This pretty face in a piece of used Klingon gear? Good riddance to that dude. Long live Punch Club.
Armaan: It’s also very funny that no matter how tied up the other heroes are, if there are aliens invading New York, SOMEONE is going to step up to save the day. Granted, Jen’s the only one who knows how serious the situation here is — everyone else in Punch Club seem to be having a fairly relaxed time of things as they punch one alien drone after another. Some things, however, can’t be punched, which is where Jack of Hearts swoops in at the very last minute to save the day!
One Last Card to Play
Armaan: She-Hulk’s face mirrored my own on seeing Jack’s return: I was delighted to see him again. That phone call about what he was working on, last issue? It seemed as ominous as all heck, so seeing him show up here when Jen needed him was a reassuring comfort I did not know I needed.
Stephanie: Comfort but also — he’s sad. His stories are sad. He saves the day by absorbing a ton of power into himself, the kind of power that only he can handle, because it would crush or roast or cauterize anyone else. He’s frankly a metaphor for unbounded, self-destructive self-sacrifice, the kind of person who thinks that everyone else deserves happiness, and down time, and respect, but not me. I’m special that way. It’s a good thing I’ve got powers, which I can use in the service of others, because otherwise I’d be worth nothing at all. I’m not talking about Jack of Hearts anymore, am I? Anyway, let’s see more of him.
Armaan: Jack may have one trick up his fancily adorned sleeve, but as Jen points out, it’s a really good trick. And, bonus? Absorbing the bomb’s energy means he’s energy-saturated enough to, for once, not be a danger to Jennifer — allowing the pair to share a kiss that was a long time coming. It’s sweet. It’s comforting. It’s adorable and everything it needed to be to cap this “season” off.
Stephanie: Agreed, and it’s not the last season! There’s a final text page of the kind we get when a comic’s done and a writer gets 500 words to say goodbye, except that Rowell doesn’t have to say goodbye: There’s a new Shulkie series starting later this year with a new number one. And the team of Rowell and Genolet on it.
Armaan: Genolet’s facial work is a real treat here. Jen’s thrill seeing Jack. The way her face softens now that the danger is over, and the tiredness of their situation sets in — there’s a burden there, one she’s accepted, but one that weighs on her nonetheless, of not being able to touch him. The surprised, renewed thrill when she realizes that, for a stolen, impossible moment, she can.
Stephanie: Yes. And check out the way that Jack looks so different from different angles: the white-people-flesh-toned side of his face disappears once he’s used his powers to sop up the blow-up, and he stays gray and in profile while he’s kissing She-Hulk, because it’s the gray profile half of his personality that lets him reach out and do something good for the world. Extra bonus goodness: She gets to help him do it, and he gets to do it with her. I love this scene.
Armaan: It’s not a resolution, but it is a happy ending. Messily tied up, but satisfying nonetheless. The team really stuck the landing on this ending, I felt, for all the pacing problems this book could have. I may want to reread the whole 15 issues in one go, see how well it works as one long read.
For now, I’m happy, and am excited about what’s to come next.
Last-Minute Legal Notes
- Frazzle-haired Jack is not a bad look for him, he should consider keeping it.
- Luke Cage’s petulance about the Punch Club jacket is very amusing, and I am now invested in getting to see him wear one in a later appearance.
- Seriously, though, you’d think even aliens would know that Manhattan is a terrible place to attack.
- Speaking of the aliens, though, one loose end is Drapurg — the one responsible for the bomb and invading aliens in the first place.
- She-Hulk will return … and so will we!
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.
