She-Hulk: Law and Disorder, Charles Soule, Javier Pullido, Ron Wemberly

I’ve been meaning to try some She-Hulk comics for a while, so Charles Soule’s Law and Disorder seemed like a good place to start. And it was: it’s not part of some big overarching plot, although Jen remains part of the superhero world, with super clients, a formerly super-landlady, and apparently a super paralegal as well. Several heroes (and villains) make their appearance, including Daredevil, Tigra, Hellcat and Dr Doom.

It’s a fun book, altogether, introducing what is obviously a story arc for Jen in the form of a mysterious file connected to reality-warping magic (can I just briefly hope that Dr Strange can’t help and instead Jen needs to speak to Billy Kaplan?) as well as the self-contained story of trying to get Dr Doom’s son political asylum. There’s plenty of female characters as well as Jen, and she is in doubt about her worth as a person, an attorney and a superhero. It’s pretty great, reading a book with such a confident female character.

I’m not an enormous fan of the art in this book; Pulido’s work is okay, but not really to my taste, and Wemberly’s art just looks dreadful to me. You get used to it, but it’s still a style I really don’t enjoy.

Overall, though, it’s a fun book, and I’ll be picking up more She-Hulk.

Rating: 4/5

Winter Soldier: The Bitter March, Rick Remender, Roland Boschi

I haven’t heard good things about Rick Remender’s work, but I kind of like this run on Winter Soldier. It begins by following Fury and another SHIELD agent during the Cold War, as they begin to go up against the Winter Soldier. But slowly, Bucky’s memories surface in the Winter Soldier, changing the whole course of the story.

Ultimately, it doesn’t change anything about the Marvel universe — Bucky might as well never have resurfaced, really. In a way, that makes this a bit of a cheat: we see a little of Bucky’s struggles against the Soviets who control him, but it doesn’t really mean anything. It doesn’t show us anything about Bucky we didn’t already know. It doesn’t pick up on where we left him in the last Winter Soldier comic, with the love of his life unable to remember who he is. With everything he’s come to care about destroyed.

It’s a fun spy/action story, but nothing more.

Rating: 3/5

Loki: Agent of Asgard, Al Ewing, Lee Garbett

I think I needed more of Journey into Mystery and general Thor comics to really understand what’s going on here, but it’s a fun ride anyway. It continues the kid!Loki storyline — except he’s all grown up now, thanks to Billy Kaplan of the Young Avengers. So we get to see Loki living in Midgard, with a fancy apartment and an unfortunate resemblance to Harry Styles. We get to see a bit more of the “new” Loki interacting with Thor, and the continuing saga of many Lokis that is the whole plot with Loki dying and then kid!Loki but it’s not really kid!Loki and —

Yeah, it’s confusing. But Loki’s capers are fun, and no doubt it’s going somewhere brain-twisty and fun. I like young!Loki a lot, and along with all the Hiddleston fangirls, just want to see that he’s been misunderstood and twisted into his role. And more than that, I hope Loki’s still playing with my head. I don’t really think we ever can or should get some kind of solid answer about where Loki stands on the moral continuum. He’s wildfire, unpredictable; the comics do take that aspect of the trickster Loki from Norse myth and play with it most excellently.

Oh, and the scenes with the Avengers in the tower are perfect.

Rating: 3/5