What’s harder than having a messy superhero career, a frustrating villain who keeps getting away, a radioactive boyfriend you can’t get too close to without risking death, and more super-powered clients than you can bench-press even with gamma-enhanced muscles? It’s staying faithful to that aforementioned boyfriend when the surprisingly charming aforementioned villain offers something a little more … tangible. Unbidden, something sparks in She-Hulk #13, written by Rainbow Rowell, drawn by Andrés Genolet and Joe Quinones, colored by Dee Cunniffe and Bryan Valenza, and lettered by Joe Caramagna.
Armaan Babu: You got your fancy dress ready, Stephanie? ’Cause I’ve got the cake, and it’s Eat Cake and Review She-Hulk In Fancy Dresses Wednesday already. Always comes around sooner than you think, doesn’t it?
Stephanie Burt: Too soon. Always too soon.
Of Course He’s Called the Scoundrel
Armaan: Jennifer Walters may have a lot on her plate, but she’s clearing it to make space for the important things: cake, fancy dresses and lunch with one of her closest friends, Patsy Walker. Not even that, however, is enough to really cheer Jen up.
Something I’ve been noticing over the past few issues that’s especially prevalent in this one is how … hm. I’m having trouble finding the word for it. Jen isn’t … upset, exactly. She’s not tired, she’s not hurting in any way that shows. What the art is capturing here is that precise feeling you get when you’ve worked really, really hard to turn your life around. To fill it with things that are important to you, that define you, and finding yourself having to deal with all their downsides in as mature a way as possible. When you’re struggling through things not turning out the way you want them to, but realizing there’s no fix here, that these are just problems you have to deal with as a responsible adult as a consequence of your choices.
It’s not apathy, but it’s on the road to it. It’s not unhappiness, though it reeks of it. It’s smiling … wearily, eking out whatever little moments you can from the stress of having to deal with everything else. It’s the burden of not allowing yourself to be unhappy, because this is everything you’ve fought for — isn’t it?
It’s in the impatience in her face. How easily her eyes settle into an impatient scowl, or tired disdain. There are, however, moments of something more — of confusion, because despite trying to settle into a practical, steady life, there’s someone stirring up emotions of a decidedly less stable nature. Someone trying to lure her steadied heartbeat into a dance.
He calls himself the Scoundrel. Of course he does.
Stephanie: You’re persuading me to like these opening beats much, much more than I did on first reading! Because you’re right about how Jen feels, and about how it feels to be Jen. The vibe is “I have, more or less, the adulthood I wanted. I have a good, stable job. I have a partner who loves me and glows in the dark. I have a fight club! So what’s wrong? Why am I … meh?” I’ve 110% been there. Maybe our readers have, too.
I wish these pages could do more to capture that feeling, especially in the first sequence, where Jen meets Patsy for tea in fancy dresses. I usually like Genolet, who absolutely rocks Jen’s and Patsy’s worried and changeable facial expressions. He’s got a talent for superhero costumes, too, even fiddly, hard-to-draw ones, like the Scoundrel’s — or Jack of Hearts’. But these dresses take me out of the story. They look … cheap, like children have gone through the dress-up bin. I don’t believe in Jen and Patsy wearing them. I do love their marbled teapot, though.
Armaan: Heh, so you’re saying sometimes it’s helpful to have no clue what’s good fashion and what’s bad? It finally comes in handy, because I didn’t notice!
So up until now the Scoundrel — or Nicolãs, now that he’s got his mask off — has been a little tired of the dance. He’s made it no secret that he sees the whole hero-villain thing as a bit of light flirting, but now he’s looking for something a little more earnest. And he is very earnest. Matching Jen’s fancy fit with a blue suit of his own, all nervous smiles, proffered arms and naked honesty, he lets Jen know that he’s ready to take their courtship to the next level — and were this any other time in She-Hulk’s life, I think she might have gone for it.
Right now, however, she’s already seeing someone — and she has no time for games. Nicolãs’ playful earnestness is met with either scowls or confusion, and a romantic walk through the park (the art team draws a beautiful sunny day) has no effect on her. He’s trying so hard to woo a woman Jen perhaps no longer is, and you can see him withering as none of his efforts seem to bear fruit. He is disheartened, and disappointed, and not even a swashbuckling kinda exit can seem to put a spring back in his step.
Stephanie: He also comes off as a jerk. Like someone who’s read too many comic books about Nightcrawler and didn’t get the point. Wait, no: like someone who wants to be Gambit. Imagine wanting to be Gambit. I do love to see how this art team draws a genuinely enticing Central Park.
Armaan: Now, I’m no fan of a persistent man in a one-sided romance. Frankly, he’s an annoyance — but the kind that fits perfectly into this part of the story. He is adventure, he is romance, he is vigor, smiles and the exact kind of bad idea you smile back fondly on … and though Jen doesn’t truly seem to be interested in him, there’s a sense of loss on the page as he swoops away. Jen has no trouble at all turning down the man, but it feels like turning down all that he represents is something that’s a little harder on her.
I think the line that really hits home is that he’s offering her something “tangible” — right when she’s in a relationship with someone she can’t ever truly touch.
Stephanie: I did mention Gambit. And so does Patsy, who has been watching Jack as well as Jen the way a best friend should: “He’s still all charged up and moping and giving you the Rogue/Gambit treatment, right?”
The longer this series goes on, the more I feel like Rainbow Rowell has been leaning into romance tropes. Not real-life tropes of real-life courtship so much as tropes of romance fiction, where our heroine must choose between the devoted domestic type and the unpredictable, sexy bad boy. He thinks he’s flirting. Jen thinks she’s playing along with him to get information: She’s obviously not into him (again, props to Genolet for the facial expressions), until he makes a sudden aerial exit, still smiling, still wearing his three shades of blue three-piece suit. And then Jen’s surprised by her own romantic regret.
Armaan: I’m really liking where this comic is right now.
Stephanie: You know, I am, too.
An Overbooked Client Schedule
Armaan: From sunny greens to office grays, and more clients than Jen has time for. Mallory Book has really come around on the whole superhuman clients thing and is overloading Jen’s schedule with them, much to Jennifer’s frustration.
Stephanie: She can’t win! And she feels, increasingly, like a lawyer with a small office and an in-demand practice. Rowell has remembered that Jen can break the fourth wall, or at least that her captions can: She namechecks the Charles Soule run on her very first page, and I can feel that first-rate series percolating back through Rowell’s sense of the book she’s writing now.
Armaan: Mallory talks about how hard it is to be a lawyer for superhumans; how she and Jennifer have kind of been pigeonholed into that niche branch of the law. It may be profitable (Jen gets a raise, yay!), but ultimately Mallory’s not any happier than Jennifer that it’s the only option she seems to have.
While this is interesting to me, it really doesn’t feel like it’s what the book wants to be about. It has little to no bearing on the plot, other than to serve as another point of stress for Jen. The law office sections of the book really feel like they’ve been added in to tick off a box — they’re not quite an afterthought, but they do almost feel like a tangential backup story. Nothing about these sections feels like they’re important, and the handful of intriguing concepts brought up by them are rarely given the exploration they deserve. Do you feel the same?
Stephanie: Nope, because I always want to read a funny lawyer book (as well as a romance book). It’s one of the things that only She-Hulk can do. Every time Genolet draws a waiting room, I see one or two characters I have to look up and I’m glad I did, and they’re usually ridiculous: This time out it’s Eight-Ball, a onetime member of the Sinister Six, who seems to have earned his badges fighting an early 1990s hero called Sleepwalker, who exists on Earth only when Sleepwalker’s host is asleep. Comic books! Why do you think Eight-Ball needs legal assistance? Is Jessica Drew, whom we’ve seen in this room before, also hoping to hire the Book Law Firm? Or does she just want to see her overworked friend?
Armaan: I imagine Jessica Drew could just call Jennifer if it was a non-work thing — or at least I’d hope so!
I will say, I admire an art team that can draw a naturally sexy woman changing on-panel in her office without making the scene feel gratuitous. She-Hulk’s scowl at her added workload is what dominates the scene — the changing takes a backseat to an argument between professionals.
I’m hoping that Mallory and Jennifer find some more common ground at some point in the future, because there’s some overlap in their positions right now. Both of them are women dealing with starting over, trying to make the best of the cards life has dealt them, both frustrated at the ridiculousness of it all. A more profit-oriented, career-driven point of view, and Jennifer Walters the Attorney might not be much different from Mallory.
It’s strange to say it, but it’s like the superhero community is what’s keeping Jen grounded — which is why it’s heartening to see her refusing to compromise on the time she spends with any of them.
Stephanie: LIke some of my real-life friends, she’s maybe tired of private legal practice, even though she’s climbed the ladder and validated herself and paid the rent (Though she doesn’t have to pay rent any more: Janet Van Dyne has given her that sweet apartment). She’d love to just do fight club and fight supervillains and go on dates with Jack of Hearts. Except then she might get frustrated because she can’t touch him, and also she’s got this legal mind she wouldn’t get to use. … Happiness, contentment, professional fulfillment: Why are they always just one issue away?
A Nudge in the Right Direction
Armaan: After a long, tiring day, Jennifer returns home to Jack, whose life seems to be veering away from whatever humanity he discovered when his powers were gone. He’s dropping his poetry classes, he’s forgetting to cook. She finds him floating in the air, surrounded by radioactivity, but Jack himself looks almost happy.
There are some relationships where one side is thrilled about how safe it is. There is no intimacy in this relationship, any adventure in it is long past, and they’ve settled into something that’s less romantic than it is companionable. Jack seems happy there — and Jen does too, to an extent. There’s affection between the two, definitely. It’s only in his presence that we see her really smile again — tired, at first, but more comfortable the more time they spend together.
There are playful (but safe!) little nudges. Talks about their day. Banter. And they are really, really cute together. Jen is tired, but here, in this scene, she’s at home with him. I’m really rooting for them.
Stephanie: Me too. Callback to page one, where Jen tells Patsy, “Jack? He’s fine.” Is he fine? Is anyone fine in the superhero business? In this crazy mixed-up world where the aftereffects of nuclear bombs still linger, and it takes Jack to clean them up? “We should be fine. We’re fine,” Jack says, and Jen repeats: “We’re fine.” With a genuine smile!
I’m really coming to like Jack’s character, now that he’s less a mystery or a MacGuffin and more a question about how a seriously tormented adult can try to restart his life. If you can’t do normal stuff or find normal venues to usefulness and self-fulfillment, do what you can do, which in Jack’s case appears to be soaking up radiation. Just don’t wear yourself down to a hatpin doing it. Am I describing my own struggles? Maybe I am. And Jen … oh, Jen: You’re worried about your partner — it’s not like him to forget to cook! what’s wrong? — but you’re also just into spending time with him. These panels (where nobody has to worry about high fashion) look like some of Genolet’s best work yet. And, also, Quinones and Cunniffe and Valenza’s. Jack’s costume looks almost uniquely tough to color. Jack’s two-part face might prove uniquely tough for comic book color. This art team nails it.
Armaan: So what do you think Nicolãs’ role is in all this? Is he a genuine temptation? Is he a reminder that Jen wants a little more from her life, and thus a catalyst for change? Or is he some other, third, entirely separate thing I’m missing out on because I’m historically a little worse at spotting this book’s patterns than you are?
Stephanie: I’ll take “a reminder” for $200, if only to show that if she doesn’t try to catch this thief, her superhero reputation’s in jeopardy. (Note to our younger readers: The previous sentence refers to the still-extant, long-running television show “Jeopardy!,” a game show whose answers must be phrased as questions.) Will we soon see a connection between the Book Law Firm plot and the Scoundrel? Will the Scoundrel do or say anything to put readers on his side, or will we keep seeing him as a self-conscious, stereotypical Bad Boy who thinks that being the Bad Boy is How You Get the Girl? (Note to our older readers: That’s a Taylor Swift reference.) Will Jen and Jack go on that date?
Last Minute Legal Notes
- Wong and Jessica Drew have been waiting on that couch for 10 issues now. You would think they would have an easier time getting a meeting with Jen!
- The expository captions were enjoyable this issue. Jack’s especially — “Wears his heart on his sleeve.”
- Can’t say it too often: Genolet’s panel designs and angles and layouts fit this book brilliantly. Especially when no one’s throwing a punch.
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.
