She-Hulk vol. 2: Disorderly Conduct

Now this is more like it.  I threw around a lot of comparisons to Dan Slott’s “She-Hulk” run in my previous review, but the work of Charles Soule and Javier Pulido does more to set itself apart in this volume.  Things kick off with a fun superhero team-up as She-Hulk and Hellcat work together with Hank Pym to rescue a competitor in the size-changing science field.  They wind up using both of the scientist’s skillsets (shrinking stuff and controlling ants) to show that there really is plenty of adventure in anyone’s backyard.  Then you’ve got the meatiest story in the series to date, “The Good Old Days,” which has Shulkie facing off against Matt Murdock in a claim that pits a dying man’s claim of manslaughter against that of Steve Rogers.  It’s clear that Soule’s experience as a lawyer is informing this particular storyline as things are played more straight than you’d expect from a claim involving superheroes in the Marvel Universe.  Yet the writer’s use of legalese works in service of the drama which is mostly drawn from the (once again) former Captain America’s desire to win this case fair and square.  It’s a story that’s more twisty than you’d expect and is filled with fun details like one of Jamie Madrox’s dupes serving as your typical aggressively superficial Hollywood lawyer.

Things wrap up with a two-part story that resolves the title’s main ongoing plot thread:  The Blue File.  It starts with a showdown between Shulkie and Titania (she is the title character’s one real recurring foe after all) with Volcana in tow to get the lawyer to call off her investigation.  The supervillain does this by knocking our hero into Jersey, in a two-page spread skillfully rendered by Pulido.  We get to see the artist show his action skills in this issue, giving the fighting a clean precision while also showing us that the fighters really don’t like each other just by the looks they give.  The actual resolution to the Blue File is handled in a satisfying manner, involving a magical in-continuity retcon of a villain-turned-hero.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a character’s past retconned in quite this way, so Soule gets kudos for finding a clever twist on the device here.

It all ends with an afterword from the writer explaining that these twelve issues were all he wanted to do.  That may have been true, even if sales were likely going to dictate its end at that point anyway.  Regardless of whether or not that’s true the Soule/Pulido run ends on a note that, while complete and satisfying, left me wishing we could’ve seen more stories about Shulkie from this team.