She-Hulk #31 – Review

By Peter David (Writer), Vincenzo Cucca (Penciler), Vincenzo Acunza (Inker), and Barbara Ciardo (Colorist)

After my last review, in which I complained about the art in She-Hulk, Peter David ran off and got himself a better artist. I had no idea I was so influential.

Unfortunately, as the art has gotten better, the quality of the story has taken a distinct dip. In their bounty-hunting travels, She-Hulk and Jazinda have wandered into the dreaded Crossover Zone, a corporate-mandated purgatory that sucks the energy out of any plotline. The strategy behind this particular kind of crossover is to get readers of a good book (in this case, She-Hulk) interested in the characters of a less-good book (in this case, X-Factor). I may be wrong—maybe Peter David had this planned all along—but it sure feels like all the momentum that he’s built into the Jennifer-Walters-loses-her-license-and-becomes-an-outlaw story arc has just crashed into a brick wall.

The set-up this issue is this: whenever the Skrulls want to invade a planet, they always bring along a character called “The Talisman,” a religious figure who will supposedly guarantee success in their endeavor. He doesn’t have to be in the thick of the fight, he just has to be on the same planet, so they protect him by hiding him somewhere innocuous. For the Secret Invasion, do they drop him somewhere in the middle of the Amazon rain forest? No, for some damn reason they have him infiltrate X-Factor, disguised as Longshot.

Jazinda senses the presence of the Talisman on Earth, and tells She-Hulk that if they kill the Talisman the morale of the Skrull invasion will be conveniently destroyed and the invasion will fail. So they race to Detroit and of course immediately get into one of those typical super-hero-on-super-hero fights that could have been avoided if the participants had just paused five seconds to talk to each other.

All in all, it’s a decent issue. David’s writing is good as usual (I especially like Maddrox playing pile-up on She-Hulk), and Cucca sure knows how to draw a tight T-shirt on his women, but the plot is a mass of improbabilities. It’s just silly, and the sooner David gets back to She-Hulk‘s preexisting storyline, the better. (Grade: B-)

– Andrew C. Murphy