In "World Trust" and "Red Zone," Geoff Johns impressed me with the political elements in the plot and the realistic approach to super-hero crisis situations. Here, he takes a different tack with Marvel's mightiest heroes. This story has emotion at its center. The crisis the heroes face is a personal one, and casts the title team in a familial light, as opposed to the paramilitary peacekeeping force they seemed to be over the past year or so. Johns also brings his trademark flair for paying tribute to the genre's past with a more modern, complex touch, and it's a pleasure to see the writer reunited with his one-time Flash collaborator, Scott Kolins, who does a tremendous job with the art.
Somewhere in America, a lone figure wanders from small town to small town. This lost soul has no money, no friends and is losing hope. Tremendous power lies dormant within this fragile figure. It's not Bruce Banner, though, but his cousin, Jennifer Walters. She needs to find her cousin so he can help her. There was a time when the power of She-Hulk was well within her control, when she preferred to walk about as the green-skinned amazonian heroine. But since being exposed to a toxic gas, that control is lost, and her friends and teammates, the Avengers, are trying to track her down.
Kolins captures the power of the heroes and the She-Hulk incredibly well, and he's aided immensely in the endeavor by the vibrant colors that Sotomayor brings to the book. But where the art really shines, only more subtly, is in the way Kolins establishes an atmosphere of despair. Jennifer's fears and fatigue are easy to see, and again, Sotomayor backs up Kolins's efforts with more muted tones throughout the non-superhuman scenes.
Johns explores the wandering Hulk riff from a different perspective here, and it brings new life to the familiar premise. We're used to seeing Bruce Banner trudging on endlessly, never swaying from his mission to protect the world from himself. Here, we see Jennifer give in to despair, reaching out for some small measure of solace. She wants no part of her life on the run, but she feels she's run out of choices. Johns really captures the overwhelming emotion of such a curse. This isn't about the risk Jennifer poses to those around her. It's about her vulnerability.
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the story is the "there but for the grace of God" riff. The She-Hulk was a picture of power and popularity. Her life was perfect, and it's all lost here. Most of us forget how close we are to losing everything we take for granted. Most of us are one or two missed mortgage or rent payments away from homelessness, one bad decision or twist of fate away from joblessness. It's that fragile quality of our own lives that makes Jennifer's extreme plight so compelling.
