File Under: Comics I'm Not Reading Anymore

Under the able hand of Dan Slott, She-Hulk was easily one of my favorite current comic books.

There are so many reasons I shouldn't have liked it: it was a Marvel book, for starters, and a superhero one at that, and it was totally cheesecake (though always in a fun way, never a gross one).

But She-Hulk used to be so cool. It was weird and goofy and funny and meta. A good deal of this had to do with its focus not only on the brash, hard-partying She-Hulk, but on her meek, brainy, human alter ego, Jen Walters. She-Hulk fights in the streets, but Jen Walters, practices superhuman law, which is much cooler.

Except now, she doesn't. After Peter David took over the book last year, Jen Walters all but disappeared, as did the terrific setting at Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg & Holliway, her superhuman law firm, and along with it, most of the best characters there.

And now She-Hulk is a stupid bounty hunter, and the book is no longer weird, goofy, fun, or meta. It's just another stupid Marvel superhero book.

And by stupid Marvel superhero book, I mean something very specific. I've long been annoyed by Marvel's insistence in forcing its readers to engage not with a single superhero and their storyline, but with the entire Marvel universe in a very sustained and geeky way.

The old She-Hulk, at its best, would often bring in other Marvel characters (often on trial for something), but it would do so in a way that someone who only read She-Hulk would enjoy.

Not no more.*

So, can I get on some kind of mailing list to be notified when Jen Walters comes back, and she and She-Hulk go back to practicing law? Because, until that happens, I just don't even care.**
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* Okay, Dan Slott was responsible for some of that, and really, the book never quite recovered from the "Civil War" crossover stuff a summer or two ago. But if I haven't completely soured you on the book, the first two trades, Single Green Female and Superhuman Law, are just about the funniest, most entertaining superhero comic books you can lay hands on, and I recommend them without reservation.
** I just re-read this post, and realize that I sound like a raving, loser nerdlinger, but I am just too broken up about how much She-Hulk sucks these days to care.