Step Aside Daredevil, there is a new lawyer in town.
As much As I love Hulk, I've never really been compelled to pick up a she Hulk series. Sure, I've seen her in team centered titles as well as in other forms of media, but I've never really felt I was interested in her, I respected and knew her character through the Hulk which I guess is enough on it's own but aside from that nothing. I thought about picking her previous series up but I decided not to in light of Dan Slotts( the writer of the previous she hulk ongoing) current activities. So when I heard this series was announced I was immensely excited mainly because Charles soule can be a really good writer, unfortunately he is usually stuck previously poorly executed titles so he doesn't have much content to expand upon. This however, gives him a chance at a fresh start which means that any direction he takes won't rely on the work of other writers.
Let me just state this right away, there are multiple ways that you can start a She-Hulk series, there are a lot of aspects of the character that can be explored. The Comedic, the daily life, or the simple fun of smashing. The way Soule approaches this title is something I didn't really expect considering that he managed to combine the Lawyer aspect of Jen Walters with her comedic wit. Most of the time the build up introductions or preludes are weak in terms of story telling/construction, fortunately, this is obviously not the case here. This prelude was strictly tied to Jen becoming an independent lawyer, which I assume will be closely tied to her future missions. The Characterization is spot on as well, because for all the moments jen acts like a mousy, immature child, she can be quite reasonable and as tony stark put it, quite brilliant. She could have basically been stubborn and gone through with her case but she decided to be patient and work things out easily. The greatest thing a person can do in such cases is neither grabbing an axe nor charging to battle; quite the contrary, it's resolving the conflict way before it even starts. This was the highlight of the issue for me because it showcased a much more clever, smart and reasonable Jennifer Walters. She has the power of the Hulk yet she chooses to use her brain. And don't think that this sucks out the humor out of the book, in fact, you can really tell that most of Charles's stories will have a fun and energetic atmosphere.
Speaking of which, while I don't share the common thought that the art is completely terrible, it's not the best thing either. I understand why such a choice was made in the first place, but the artist should still bring his A-game when working. It's not the style that bothers me, that much is clear to me that they were aiming at a fun toned visuals, it's wild and bizarre proportions mixed with melted facial expressions that really left a bad taste in my mouth. The art was mostly good but at certain panels I was sure that better work could be done.
Overall, writing wise this gets a 5/5, yes, it believed that the writing was absolutely brilliant, unfortunately i have to judge the whole package and the art really dragged it down. Nevertheless tho, this looks like a very promising series for which I wholeheartedly look forward to. Cheers.
