She-Hulk Sensational #1

April 2, 2010

She-Hulk Sensational #1 (Marvel Comics)
By Peter David, Jonboy Meyers, Gary Frank, Brian Reed, Ivan Coello & John Byrne

It’s She-Hulk’s 30th anniversary, and although Jennifer Walters is MIA in the Marvel Universe at the moment, that’s not going to stop the celebration. Peter David and Jonboy Meyers tell a magnificent tale of Jennifer struggling with getting older. As she tries to wrestle with the big 3-0, she finds herself facing her past, present, and future. Yep, David takes the ol’ Christmas Carol route and mixes it nicely with the sort of metafiction, self-awareness and fourth wall-breaking that made John Byrne‘s run on this title in the 90s such a classic. David gives us a wonderfully funny story full of winks to the camera and nods to classic continuity. Meyers‘ artwork is great, with just a hint of Manga flavor, but not enough to bring down the story. If the entire special was just this story, it would score an easy 4.5 out of 5. Unfortunately, this isn’t the only story. It’s followed up by “Ladies’ Night,” a terribly by-the-book story of Jen, Spider-Woman and Ms. Marvel teaming up to face off against a bunch of generic villains. She-Hulk isn’t even the focus of this story, it almost feels like she and Spider-Woman are guest-starring in a leftover issue of Ms. Marvel that got shelved after Secret Invasion changed the status quo for the characters. We also get a reprint of John Bryne‘s Sensational She-Hulk #40 from the 90s. After several pages of She-Hulk jumping rope (seriously), she and her galpal Weezi get whisked off to outer space where the trucker superhero US Archer needs their help. I like having a Byrne reprint here — he arguably made the character what she is — but this is a really poor choice. It’s not that it’s a bad issue, but there’s not much of a story here. It’s 100 percent set-up for the storyline that followed and it ends on a cliffhanger, making it terribly incomplete for inclusion in a one-shot. Byrne‘s run was fantastic, but there must have been a one-off story they could have included instead of this one.
Rating: 7/10