Loki: Agent of Asgard 2, Punisher 3, She-Hulk 2

Loki: Agent of Asgard 2
Ewing (w) and Garbett (a) and Woodard (c)

Loki is hot on the trail of Lorelai, Asgardian and younger sister of Amora the Enchantress with whom both Thor (thanks to Loki's magic) and Loki (thanks to Loki) have had romantic trysts. The All-Mother wants all Asgardians returned home and so have tasked Loki with finding Lorelai and bringing her back, but he's not entirely forthright with them (as is his way). He's after Lorelai, sure, but it's for his own purposes. He finds her robbing a casino and manages to scare her off from it in the midst of the heist, from within the vault, but it allows him to track her movements afterwards. She's gone back to ground which means conning people at speed dating so Loki finds himself at speed dating telling this whole story of Lorelai to fellow speed dater and new female lead for the book Verity Willis, a girl who cannot be lied to. Well, she can, but she'll know it was a lie. She won't necessarily know the truth but she'll know that's not it. I couldn't be rolling my eyes ANY HARDER, DEAR READERS.

Lorelai makes her return to the 616 after, coincidentally, an appearance in Marvel's Agents of SHIELD just this very Tuesday. Call it fate, call it karma, but now Lorelai is taking over very small parts of the Marvel Universe. That's not really why I'm here though, is it? No, no it's not. I'm here to talk about Verity Willis, a redheaded girl covered in tattoos who is able to see through Loki's disguise as an older and non-costumed up human when he appears in front of her at speed dating. The problem I have with Verity Willis is OH MY GOD SO MANY. Look, Al Ewing has gained some good faith in my book. I liked his short times on AVENGERS ASSEMBLE and some of the other AGE OF ULTRON tie-in books and I've come around on his MIGHTY AVENGERS and I liked the first issue of this series. I don't even hate this issue. My problem with Verity Willis is that she feels SO VERY FORCED. Ignoring the fact that her given name, apparently, is Verity (and she's had this power seemingly forever so don't tell me she's an Inhuman whose power reflects her inner self because I WILL NOT BELIEVE YOU, THEY DON'T MANIFEST UNTIL ADOLESCENCE AND ALSO INHUMANITY JUST HAPPENED so I ask you how could she even have been EXPOSED to the Terrigen Mists), she is so blatantly the counter to Loki that it is a ridiculous story. I talked a lot about how Nuke was interesting in recent CAPTAIN AMERICA comics or, perhaps even more applicably, how Dr. Mindbubble is an interesting foil because both Nuke and Mindbubble have different aspects of Captain America in their origin or in their actions but both are very clearly fighting for something at odds with Cap. However, both are also DEEPER than their connection to Cap so they can exist elsewhere. Verity Willis, even after just one issue, is so clearly writer's room'd around Loki that it's crazy. It's really hard to get past, you guys.

The issue does a lot of other stuff that I'm not so onboard with, including somewhat distracting layouts and looks that aren't dissimilar to, for example, HAWKEYE 8, which found Cherry sending Hawkeye comics the rang of old romance novels. Here's the thing: this may be unfair, but it was great in HAWKEYE and it doesn't work for me here. Part of it is simply that LOKI's attempt came second and it's never good to come second in something innovative like this. Part of it too is that it doesn't really fit; when HAWKEYE did it, Fraction and Aja and Annie Wu (who drew the various romance-style covers spread throughout the book) put it in several times, making it the tone of the comic and ensuring it became part of the layout. LOKI does it once and does a couple other weird things with captions here and there and it gives the comic a "we're really trying too hard" feel. Sorry about the three paragraphs here guys, noticed that it was running a little long and wanted to break it up a bit more (also I just looked back at some of my old, less uniformed stuff on the blog and some of it is REALLY hard to read with the layout I haphazardly used. Whatever, guys).

Punisher 3
Edmondson (w) and Gerads (a and c)

Punisher is up against Electro on an LA highway and quickly realizes he's outmatched. He hasn't planned for this fight and Electro has, leaving Frank at a distinct disadvantage. He manages to create a diversion by shooting the gas tank of his own previously exited RV and escapes to be picked up by Tuggs, coyote in tow, later. Castle and Tuggs talk about what Electro could be doing with the Dos Soles but can't come to any real conclusions. Frank goes back to the well of one of his intimidated (by which I mean really-beat-up) informants and learns where the Soles are holed up. He prepares to strike at their compound but realizes that he's, perhaps, underestimated his opponents. He still does solid work taking down the Soles' guards, even managing to pretty safely transition from roof to ground, until Electro gets the drop on him and knocks him down, promising to bring him to the boss.

More intense fighting and more hunting down the Soles drives this issue. We're not getting anything particularly earth-shattering in the presentation of this iteration of Punisher but what we are still getting is a solid presentation of a comic book. It's well-written and well-illustrated. The tone is very consistent and exactly the sort of tone we need on a Punisher book. On top of that, the story is compelling and the pacing is perfect, which may save it from becoming boring from people who haven't really been Punisher fans in the past, perhaps because the idea of just shooting through hordes of gang members doesn't really appeal to them (guys, I'm talking about me here, it's not all that veiled). I think it's a testament to Edmondson and Gerads that I'm enjoying this book since I feel like I really shouldn't be. It has a lot of the token pieces that makes Punisher uninteresting to me without really adding anything huge of interest but I am still interested in this series. It's the power of tone and pacing more than anything else (though I'm also pretty into the art style of this one too). Hopefully it continues to be solid as we push forward.

She-Hulk 2
Soule (w) and Pulido (a) and Vicente (c)

She-Hulk has moved into her own law office in a brick building leased out by an ex-mutant who has leased the building exclusively to people with powers, knowing how hard it can be for such people to find office or living space in New York, given the liabilities they are. She-Hulk's first order of business is hiring an assistant, which she does when everyone waiting flees for some mysterious reason and she's left with one applicant, Angie Huang, a strange woman with an impressive resumé and a pet monkey named Hei Hei. The second order of business is finding business. As she has no clients (except the case that her former law firm sent her away with where she and several other super-powered and super-powered associates are defendants), she makes a few calls only to find herself met with resistance from everyone. She calls it a day and goes out at night with Patsy Walker, AKA Hellcat. Hellcat is having problems of her own and ends up having, perhaps, a little too much to drink and insists that She-Hulk come with her to beat up some bad guys. They crash a secret AIM base Hellcat learned about from a SHIELD agent during some date and they're attacked by the two AIM agents stationed there. She-Hulk easily takes down the guy in full robot suit she's fighting with but Hellcat has been captured by the other. She-Hulk threatens him but ultimately says that they can just walk away from this if he lets Hellcat go. He does, the heroes tie them up, and they all go on their way. The next day, She-Hulk gets her first client, Kristoff Vernard, son of Victor Von Doom, wishing to defect from Latveria.

I try to ignore other reviews, no matter how small they may be, when I'm preparing my own review. I prefer to go in with my own opinions, get them out of the way, then realize how wrong I am. In this case, though, I saw some tweets from cartoonist Darryl Ayo that talked about giving away SHE-HULK 1 halfway through it then read all of SHE-HULK 2 because it was a much more confident comic. I see some level of truth to that; I do think that SHE-HULK 2 is already feeling more confident about its place and in its main character than SHE-HULK 1 maybe did. On the flip-side, I do believe that SHE-HULK 1 was a better story. Granted, there's decidedly not a lot happening in this one; Jen is trying to find work so she's not exactly doing a ton in this issue whereas she had a case set up for her in the first issue. However, I thought this one was more about world-building in a lot of ways than the nice start that issue one had. Still a pretty solid issue here. I think Javier Pulido's art is going to draw a lot of love it/hate it response and I'm not really sure where I fall on it. For what it's worth, I think I really like Muntsa Vicente's colors with Pulido's art. I think that the two of them together are creating a very interesting and colorful world for She-Hulk to live in, something that isn't often true about new books. We'll see about this one, guys. We'll just see.