Insert Laughs Here — Reviewing ‘Imperial War: Planet She-Hulk’ #1

Marvel’s cosmic event Imperial hasn’t quite ended yet, but it’s covered potentially a lot of ground in its three issues, including how and why three of Earth’s Hulks have found their way back to the stars.

While the prime Hulk and Amadeus Cho ran off to the war consuming the galaxy, She-Hulk stayed behind to guard the violently in-flux planet of Sakaar. That job isn’t anywhere near easy as Imperial War: Planet She-Hulk #1 throws the powerful lawyer into the middle of a murder mystery. It’s a tale from the minds of Stephanie Phillips, Jonathan Hickman, Emilio Laiso, Matt Milla, and Joe Caramagna.

Whew, yeah this was something, for sure.

I’ll be honest here. Before these issues came out, there were announcements about what books would be launching out of this cosmic event story. Even though only a few of them had any real substance revealed at this moment, it was the Planet She-Hulk book that was at the very bottom of the list for me.

This one-shot didn’t change that opinion one bit.

Look, I like Phillips as a writer, but I have to say a lot of her work for Marvel so far has just left me cold or indifferent. I was there trying to cover the Spider-Gwen book she’s writing (and recently relaunched with a wordy title) but I fell off rather quickly. There is just an abundance of missing some of the draw of the characters as well as distilling them to a sort of boring version of themselves going on. Now, that could be some editorial or corporate handedness coming into play, but I have to judge these things on how they stand before me.

Any comic can be someone’s first, but having a whole spread of She-Hulk caption narrating her entire history sure feels unnecessary. Especially for a story that is missing a lot of context already since it’s a one-shot from the middle of an ongoing event story.

There’s also some “humor” about acne and bathroom issues that elicited a groan.

It’s overall fine as a story. It adds very little to what is happening overall with the event, but it’s not alone in that because the Black Panther event was very similar in that respect. These one-shots so far feel very “treading of water” while the wait is on for the event to end and ongoing books to start coming out.

She-Hulk feels like a character stuck in a bubble with most unable to find a way out of that bubble. Marvel is trying to recapture the 80s version that was built around breaking the fourth wall and throwing out jokes. Now it just kind of leaves her behind when it comes to what her cousin and others get to have in development.

Laiso is probably a good choice for what this book is trying to accomplish, presenting as something with very serious subject matter that is lighter and ready to try and have fun. Every bit of the art has a good sense of weight and proportion, as the movement feels solid and authentic. Emotional energy is spot on as the body language and facial expressions are communicative about the character’s thoughts and feelings.

Things are a little squishy at some points but nothing major.

I’ll say that the action sequences feel very tight and well crafted, giving off some good energy and motion along the way, and breaking up some of the monotony of this murder mystery that doesn’t have too many stakes.

Also heavy are the colors from Milla. Saturated and heftier much like many of the figures and subjects featured, there are elements that are more vibrant and flash on the page while much of it stands more in the middle. It gives things a purposefully sort of washed out, in a unique way, appearance. This isn’t a fully superhero book so the vibrancy is held back a bit, speaking to the harsher world that Jennifer now finds herself forced to exist upon.

I’ll say that I’m not a huge fan of captions that need to keep using ellipses and move across panels and pages. They’re a fine tool at times but sometimes they can be over used, causing a pause in how things are flowing. This book uses a lot of them.

Beyond that though, Caramagna does the usual solid job at presenting the voices of the characters across the pages. A propensity of captions plays into the stuck in the past sort of vibe of this book and the character as a whole. They’re also fine and fit into things pretty easily. There aren’t a lot of unique voices that feel that way but the emotional element of dialogues is mostly present through the lettering work.

Imperial War: Planet She-Hulk #1 is now available from Marvel Comics.