The writer then got the Thing solo series. Which I also started to read. Ever read a comic by a person who loved the character so much that they sucked at writing them? Er, yeah. After a few issues of Slott fanboying Ben Grimm the series was cancelled. At which point, the tone of She-Hulk started to change.I'm not whether to add or respond to this because to tell the truth, this series has simply lost my attention since the Eros storyline. I've been reading (the store owner orders the books based on our lists), but I've lost so much interest I crossed it off my pull-list last visit. I'm not sure if that has to do with the cited examples or if he just lost me with the Eros plot.
At first, I attributed it to a sort of corny Eros plot- Jen the attorney, drawing hearts and flowers all over her legal pad during a court proceding and needing her male counterpart to basically cover for her... it made me go mrrr? Yet it worked with that plot and I was like okay. That was dumb, but I get it. Few more issues go by and it gets progressively worse.
Now we are to the point where in the last two issues: (Ones which by the way carry the Banner Planet without a Hulk)
•She-Hulk had to call Doc Samson in the middle of a fight because she couldn't figure out how to get into the guys head on her own. Um... She's an attorney and she needs help arguing?
•This month not only did she need Wolverine to tell her how they are going to win the fight against the Wendigo, she was so distracted by his "nice tight little buttcheeks" that it appears she is more interested in laying Logan than actually doing her job. Then she makes a pass at him and when he turns her down because he "doesn't want Juggernaut's sloppy seconds" rather than being insulted at being described in such a way... she whines, "Why does everyone think I slept with him...." Um wait a damn minute.
First of all since when does She-Hulk, who in Avengers Disassembled, damn near kicked Cap's ass need help from a guy to hold her own in a fight- any fight? Second, what a blatant example of the "if a guy sleeps around he is a stud... but a woman with more than partner in her past is an utter slut." Hell, this makes it look like Jen is so sexually degraded she can't even be honest about her behavior. She has to lie about it.
These aren't the only examples of Slott being blatantly obnoxious toward women- Agent Cheesecake still has me gagging.... I suppose what bothers me the most about this book isn't just the fact that it is so blatant it's that I feel like the tone has changed so dramatically. What started out as a pretty cute, tongue in cheek book that I really like now has the tone of something sort of ugly and it's very disappointing.
Either way, I still want to see a movie (I love the character) and I love my Essentials collection, but I don't really want to read Slott's book anymore. Whatever happened to Slott, I miss what I started reading.
I went to trades when Shulkie got engaged. I used to cheerlead for this book, but the things I liked about it, mainly Jen and the law firm, started to go to hell when Southpaw showed up. Oh well, if I was in charge... it would be different. BTW, I liked Slott's Great Lakes Avengers, though many people did not. I thought it was funny, but I think All Star Batman and Robin is funny. I'm funny that way.
ReplyDeleteThe Eros plot lost me as well, but I still skimmed through the book to keep up.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to think that Jen's behavior is actually part of a deeper storyline revealing some serious personal issues - which started to manifest themselves when she decided to remain She-Hulk permanently and discard the Jen Walters identity.
Maybe this will all blatantly hit the fan in time for the Hulk's re-emergence.
The alternative is that Slott is getting a bit stale on the title, so I hope the former is true.
(And for the record, I loved The Thing!)
Most of my problems with the Eros storyline are easily counterbalanced by the fact that Slott used it to retire the character from active superheroing. It'll take a supremely calous writer to have him use his powers again.
ReplyDeleteFlidget, uh.. have you been paying attention to the big-name writers at Marvel lately?
ReplyDelete. . . APPARENTLY NOT.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, is he actually using his powers again? After the She-Hulk storyline?
That's just depressing.
Flidget -- not that I've seen but we are talking about Millar and Bendis here, guided by he hand of Quesada.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't put anything past Marvel right now.
I read the first series in trade & the first trade of the second series; somewhere in the middle of that last trade, Slott totally lost me. Why?
ReplyDeleteMallory Book.
I can think of at least three people by name in my life who are just like Mallory - selfish, cruel-tongued, manipulative, and have no other interests than pressing others' buttons. Not one of them has ever had this behavior backfire in their face like poetic justice demands, and the same goes for Mallory. If the fictional equivalent of Natalie-esque assholes can't get their richly-deserved comeuppance, then it just makes me more depressed.
What's worse is that Jenn actually let Mallory act like an ass. Until that point, I thought Jenn, as herself & She-Hulk, was admirable and confident in separate but equally valid ways. But letting a woman who snidely acts like it's her fault she enjoys defending supervillains keep breathing - let alone acting like a jerk in front of their boss, endangering the office's public safety just to flirt with a gun nut, and nastily taking advantage of the kindness of a mentally challenged coworker - made me lose all respect for her. And if Slott makes me lose all respect for the title character, then I lose all respect for his ability as a writer.
In the first year, Jenn would've cut Mallory off at the neck. In the second year, she just frowned & pouted and let her treat everyone like crap strictly because she's confined to a wheelchair. A creep is a creep, no matter what their physical ability, and it defeats the point of escapist fiction to me if the writer refuses to give them anything even remotely resembling comeuppance.
And frankly, everything I hear about the Eros arc makes me glad I quit.
It started going downhill when they dumped Awesome Andy. No, seriously, I LOVED Andy. I used to look forward to getting this book, but lately, it's been more...eh.
ReplyDeleteAnd the "sloppy seconds" line from Logan was just ridiculous. For God's sake, the man will hump ANYthing!
These are good points and, as much as I hate to, have compelled me to drop the book. I just read the Wolverine issue this Sunday, and--to start out with, let me say that I love the pro-sex, pro-fem She-Hulk--the "sloppy seconds" remark was just repugnant.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, it's out of character (SallyP cracked me up with her comment, but it's right), and it's just hateful. These people are, at the very least, friends, and you can totally blow off somebody that you're friends with much less of an extreme personal attack.
I want to love She-Hulk. Aside from the terrible covers, they're one of the few comics where women are drawn "big" (or at least, She-Hulk is), and I loved the idea that her life as an attorney was going to be a focus. The problem is, the bits with "legal" stuff in them were so poorly researched, so out of wack, that a Law & Order editor would have sent Slott back to the drawing board. It was just a set piece.
So, let's junk all that in ONE ISSUE, and then we get . . . She-Hulk the SHIELD agent! That's easier to write, right? No one's going to critique your rudimentary understanding of the legal system then, right? (Caveat: I wrote two or three really long critiques of Slott's work on this point). And the Eros episode? I can't even begin to go into that.
Meh. Why does the comic we want to love so bad keep kicking sand in our face?
For me, it wasn't the Eros trial that lost me (although, it wasn't my favorite storyline). It's She-Hulk: Agent of SHIELD that has lost me almost entirely. I like to see the adventures of the plucky young lawyer Jennifer Walters who happens to be She-Hulk, not half naked She-Hulk in the middle of winter being a Hulkbuster.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I loved the two trades of the first series, and picked up the first issue of the new book, but it failed to grab me, even though Juan Bobillo was back (I loved his art on the earlier issues). I figured I'd pick up the trades for this series, too, but everything I've heard about the plots just leads me to believe I'm better off going back and re-reading those first two trades again the next time I need a fix.
ReplyDeleteSo, I'm the only person left in the blogosphere loving it and not seeing any hostility towards women.
ReplyDeleteAlone again :sigh:.
My Dan Slott She-Hulk run review: Good continuity porn becomes bad fanboy porn.
ReplyDeleteI always thought Wolverine was kind of particular. With the red heads and all. Maybe if it was Gambit saying the sloppy seconds.
ReplyDeleteI thought the remark wasn't a slut-shaming but was rather more of a poke to the sexual double standard.
And I also think that Agent Cheesecake is a jab at the sexy, kick ass, emotionless stock woman character that is so often seen. I'm interested to see where the Shield storyline goes, I feel that the law firm will always be there for Shulkie to return to.
To be fair, the Juggernaut thing is a hilarious running joke, but yeah. I too think all women should be tenderly strong willed man-hating, baby eating tanks of flaming war.
ReplyDelete... What?