Avengers by Jason Aaron vol. 9: World War She-Hulk

Remember how, in the last volume, superheroes and supervillains were fighting all over the world to decide who would become the next host for the Phoenix Force?  Remember how She-Hulk and Namor’s fight in Moscow leveled a good portion of the city?  Russia sure does and they’ve figured out a way to get revenge on both of these characters.  Starting with She-Hulk as the Winter Guard infiltrates Avengers Mountain and kidnaps her with the help of the traitorous Gorilla-Man.  However, Russia doesn’t want to make this Avenger answer for her crimes in a court of law (though they do put on a kangaroo court for formality’s sake), they have something much more sinister in mind.  They’re going to put She-Hulk into the Red Room and make her their own brainwashed agent.  Their very own… Winter Hulk!

The story of Jennifer Walter’s struggle against her current situation is pretty straightforward and your enjoyment of this arc will likely hinge on one of two things:  How much you believe in the character’s strength of will, and how much you want to see the reset button smacked on her current incarnation.  I’ve got a lot more invested in the latter than the former so, this arc worked out well in the end for me.  Better still was the fact that even though the Winter Guard strikes first, it’s eventually revealed that someone was one step ahead of them the whole time.  Then you’ve got the fact that Aaron was able to wring a surprising amount of sympathy from Gorilla Man’s subplot as he’s forced to confront the choices he’s made and decide what he wants to do with himself from here.  I wasn’t expecting to feel much empathy for the character after his actions in previous volumes, but I was actually rooting for him by the end.

While the “World War She-Hulk” storyline takes up the bulk of this volume, the final issue is also #50 of the current run (and issue #750 of “Avengers” overall) and super-sized with hints of storylines to come.  I’ve said before that even though the individual stories of Aaron’s run haven’t always been successful, the overall scope of it has continued to impress.  That remains true here as we get a lot of teasers for future storylines, some outright craziness (such as Galactus’ new herald), and even some answers – such as finding out what Howard Stark has been up to.  It’s not just enough to keep me invested in this current run, but I think it’s also enough to get me to read the upcoming “Avengers Forever” series from Aaron as it’s clear that it’s going to be integral to this storyline as well.