The Story of a She-Hulk fan. Not being a huge hulk fan I picked up Loeb's run really to find out what was going on with she-hulk, who is a favourite of mine. PAD was doing a terrible job on her main book and Loeb's use of her was directly implicated in the reason for its eventual cancellation. I had high hopes for this book with Ed McGuinness doing the art (having loved his She-Hulk variant cover), but jumping on to it when a lot of people had already slated it did not bode well. Anyway, I picked up all of the issues from number 1 until the Defenders/Offenders arc where, convinced as were most readers, that Loeb had no clue what he was doing, I dropped it. Fast forward a couple of months and I'm reading the solicitations for the coming months when I come across a future Incredible Hulk issue (I forget the number) where the back up story is about the new She-Hulk, Lyra, searching for Jen Walters, the original. Now I don't want to get into a rant about Lyra and why she is a monumental waste of trees and an affront to my sensibilities as a She-Hulk fan, but at this point I will take any green females I can get. Plus there seemed to be a genuine possibility of Jen Walters being in a first decent story since Dan Slott stopped writing her years ago. On the strength of this tenuous possibility I looked up Incredible Hulk 600, thought it was a bit pricey, but got it anyway, so I could be in at the ground floor for a new She-Hulk story. I was pleased to see Jen Walters appearing in the main feature and McGuinness's (Spelling?) art doing a good job. I thought the colouring was a little weak and watered down. I think it was intended for a story that had a sort of clandestine feel (which it didn't) but did not work with Ed's (I've given up on the correct grammar of McGuinnesse'se's) bold line work which for me really needs equally bold colouring. The story, as per Loeb's run on the book was full of inconsistencies with itself and the wider universe. Where the hell did Ben Urich get involved? How did he find out about Rulk? Why was She-Hulk, after her appearance in The All New Savage She-Hulk, seemingly working with... Well with who? Not SHEILD, not HAMMER, not AIM, not the Military; and what is happening to Doc Samson? Now I take it on faith that, if not all then most, of these issues will be resolved by the end of the Rulk saga. I trust Jeph enough to do that. However he just has no grasp of how to keep his audience sufficiently informed of the unfurling plot, while maintaining the necessary mystery. If we knew even half of what was going on we would still probably not know how it all was going to end but instead everything is kept back and the book looses its sense of purpose. If all these disparate elements are being held back for so long the only conclusion I can come to is that the finale will be a big disappointment. If Jeph has to keep so much of his story back the ultimate reveal will not be such a shock as a relief. The only bit that maintained my interest was the Red Hulk keeping back Samson and Walters to take the gamma explosion with him. This seems like it will lead directly into the Red She-Hulk and Lyra's search for Jen Walters stories that are to come which I am pleased with. The rest of the book interested me in so far as there was a She-Hulk back up story. I loved the art work in this feature, the character design on the villains was interesting and Lyra looked the part as a super strong warrior. However I have to take issue with Van Lente's story. I have already aluded to my dislike for Lyra's existence and here I will expand. Her conception, in a one shot which seems to have been universally ignored, through to her current status as an agent of "ARMOUR", comes across as a big rush about nothing. Despite the villian's interesting look Van Lente has given them a ridiculous back story that is some kind of weird mix of ancient Irish mythology and high tech nonsense. I understand they are clearly a just a easy start for the character and she easily dispatches them in a hand full of pages, but they are so ridiculous as to weaken the whole story in my eyes. I have no illusions, the She-Hulk property is not that popular, and Marvel trying to inject some life into it I get. The way it has been done is just ridiculous and to me superfluous. Why not just update Jen Walters (not with lazy Peter David but with a hungry new writer) intstead of creating a character from a ridiculous parallel universe that has a tenuous link to the Hulk character? Overall the art in this book was what I look for in a comic book. It was clean and expressive, full of intersting design and action. Unfortunately the story left an awful lot to be desired and I am looking forward to Greg Pak taking over soon. Van Lente I am willing to give the benefit to, if he makes resurrecting Jen Walters as a meaningful character on of his priorities.