Reviews

She-Hulk, Volume 4: Laws of Attraction by Dan Slott

tsana's review against another edition

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3.0

One of the problems with these two volumes is the existence of comic events. Civil War happens in the middle of Vol 4 and completely throws out the most interesting arc in this run. In fact, the epilogue of said arc, which I'll talk more about shortly, gets pushed into #14 and Vol 5. As well as the Civil War — which does at least fit in with the concept of She-Hulk being a lawyer fairly well — there seem to be Hulk/She-Hulk on a rampage stories which are told in other books, I think? I don't exactly mind missing out on these, but it's a bit weird when no apparent time has passed in the story line and yet She-Hulk has found time to go on a rampage or something. I know it's kind of the nature of comics, but it really disrupted the flow for me.

Especially the Star Fox arc, which was potentially the most interesting. I say potentially because it didn't quite live up to it's potential, although it wasn't as dire in the end as I feared. The background is Star Fox's powers include the ability to make people fall in love temporarily. Or, as someone put it, he's a walking roofie. He's brought up on sexual assault charges and Jen is forced to represent him because her firm's been getting into some questionable stuff. (Side note: I would kind of like to know how that back story pans out, but not enough to keep reading, unfortunately.) Just as the trial gets interesting... the Civil War starts and it gets ignored for several issues. I actually didn't think we were going to come back to it at all which was kind of infuriating because it left Jen to run off and marry her boyfriend that she was about to break up with before Star Fox zapped her! And then when she finds out what was happening it's kind of completely glossed over. Like one minute she's realising she doesn't love him and the next... it just was not handled well. The one good thing is that Star Fox did eventually get justice... but there was this weird bit with Thanos (supervillain) which had me excited for a few pages before they doubled back. To summarise, the idea of Star Fox being put on trial was good, but the execution was lacking (I will admit, it could have been worse, though).

Then there was all the objectification of She-Hulk. Mainly this was in the artwork — the covers above are by a different artist, but that should give you an idea. Gratuitous side boob and almost-nudity are just icky and unnecessary. And there was one point where a troll ran under She-Hulk's skirt and commented on her "going commando", in a context where she didn't even get to dress herself, no less! Ugh.


It took me a lot longer to get through these two volumes than it did the first run. The spark that made the first run memorable got old and I just lost interest. Most of the internal art was OK, but there were not-sufficiently-occasional objectifying shots of She-Hulk which were very off-putting. As was some of the plot. I wouldn't say don't read it, but don't get your hopes up if you loved the first run.


3.5 / 5 stars

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