Publisher: Marvel Comics

When I first heard Peter David was taking over the writing chores on She Hulk, I wondered whether he was going to take this book, whose first two or three volumes were brilliant, and drag it back, kicking and screaming into the light. He had done it before with X-Factor. But I was worried that like X-Factor, David would fix this book, put it back on the right track and then when it became popular again, Marvel would derail it into another company-wide crossover that breaks the flow for another quick grab at money. Before that could happen however, David would have to work his magic on this book.

When the new She Hulk started I was immediately enthused at the premise alone. It truly had a great fresh take on an otherwise stale character. Writer Dan Slott had given her, her own unique corner of the Marvel Universe to play in. The Avengers had been disassembled and Shulkie was back to being a lawyer at a prestigious firm. But not just any law firm, one that practiced superhuman law. This essentially meant that Slott could ask all the fan-boy questions that dissected the world of superheroes with a nod and a wink. Wouldn’t it be great for Spidey to sue the Daily Bugle for slander? Wouldn’t there be some kind of rights for super villains the way real scumbags have rights in the real world? As the series went on, it lost momentum. Whether or not Slott had trouble keeping his work as quick and fresh as it had been at the beginning or whether big crossover events like World War Hulk and Civil War disrupted the books’ direction doesn’t really matter. The title needed help.

Now, Peter David was going to take the reigns and turn Jennifer Walters (aka She Hulk) from a lawyer into a bounty hunter. Would "She Hulk meets Boston Legal" transition smoothly into "She Hulk meets Dog The Bounty Hunter"? Well, the answer is…I guess so. With what this title has proven it can do (breaking the fourth wall with creative plot ideas and so on), David’s run has so far been uninteresting. It’s not as though this volume doesn’t tell a nice story and set up the new direction the book is taking, but it does it in a really flat, old school Marvel superhero kind of way. I suppose I could be simply disappointed that I’m not reading Slott, and that Peter David has written a Peter David book, but that’s not what I was looking for. This is not a bad book in any way, but if you want more of the brilliance of the first few volumes where Dan Slott had the Marvel Universe on the stand, pleading for a mistrial on grounds of insanity, you won’t get it here.