She-Hulk 2

she-hulk 2Today, Shelby and Drew are discussing She-Hulk 2, originally released March 5th, 2014. 

slim-bannerShelby: There is something fascinating about the regular lives of celebrities. They can be doing the same, boring stuff I do every day, and I’m still going to be interested in it. In fact; it’s better if they’re doing regular stuff like me; it de-mystifies them, taking them down from the pedestal we’ve put them on. Celebrities are people, too, after all. I have a similar fascination with the regular lives of comic book characters. I love seeing the balance between their super lives and their regular lives. It’s extra intriguing when we’re dealing with a super who can’t look like an ordinary civilian; Scott Lang can blend into a crowd pretty well, but Ben Grimm is going to stand out no matter what he does. It’s really no wonder I like Charles Soule’s take on She-Hulk so much; it’s more about Jennifer Walters trying to live her life around She-Hulk, instead of She-Hulk smashing things. There is still some smashing, though; it wouldn’t be a [fill-in-the-blank] Hulk book without it. 

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She-Hulk 1

she-hulk 1Today, Patrick and Greg are discussing She-Hulk 1, originally released February 12th, 2014. 

slim-bannerThere’s figures on this. 70% of what people react to is the look; 20% is how you sound; and only 10% is what you say.

Eddie Izzard, Dressed to Kill

Patrick: Drew recently brought a Mutilversity article on comic book criticism to my attention. Interestingly, they posted another article that same day on the diminishing role of artists in comics — effectively arguing that we know series by their writers and not by their artists, and isn’t that fucked up? I think there’s room to argue that serialized storytelling in any format is going to be a writer’s medium (just look at how much more writer-driven TV is than the movies, which are much more director-driven). Regardless, the fact remains that there’s a problem in comics — and comic criticism — with focusing too heavily on the words that are written on the page. At one point in this issue, Jennifer Walters — a Hulk that spends very little of her time smashing — asserts that “90% of lawyering is conversation.” That’s an interesting inversion of the pearl of wisdom Eddie Izzard drops in the bit above, but that also might explain why we don’t have the most exciting piece of fiction in our hands. Continue reading