Marvel Comics’ stands already feel emptier without Rainbow Rowell’s She-Hulk

After 25 issues across both the She-Hulk and The Sensational She-Hulk titles, Rainbow Rowell’s character-defining run on Jennifer Walters (and, with it, the hero’s solo series) has come to an end. Over the course of her run, Rowell breathed new life into Shulkie, crafting an ongoing series that made weekly slice-of-life lawyering and superheroics engaging and funny. Rowell offered a deeply romantic and personal tale unlike anything else on the stands from current Marvel Comics. 

Since its inception in 2022, the strongest aspect of Rowell’s take on She-Hulk wasn’t the splashy fights or flying green fists—in fact, across the series’ first five issues, there are only three all-out fights, and one is the introduction of the beloved Superhero Fight Club Jen founds to blow off some steam—it’s the way the series dives deeply into the inner life of She-Hulk, prioritizing her relationships and attempted work-life balance over brutal action or superheroics. Jennifer is reluctant to go all-in on being a superhero, as her time pre-series with the Avengers left her slightly traumatized, but it’s all to her solo book’s benefit. 

Coming from a novelist background, Rowell shows incredible finesse in character study and development, always placing her comic book heroes in the midst of engaging personal drama. Her tenure on Runaways showcased the same restraint, allowing the complicated lives of that group of runaway teenagers to drive the story rather than letting a central villain or over-complicated plot usher the story forward with no real agency for these fascinating characters. She uses the same method here, allowing audiences to get invested in She-Hulk not as some big, green, fighting machine, but rather as a person with complicated feelings—both toward herself and toward her “back-issue boyfriend,” Jack of Hearts. The way Jen and Jack’s relationship has grown and changed over the course of her two solo titles has been a true delight to read, and it’s often the sole focus of these issues. Rowell allows these two wayward heroes to find solace in one another, basking in their differences from society and creating a home between them. 

But, of course, their sometimes sickeningly sweet relationship isn’t without major challenges, and everything from Jen’s emotional cheating arc to Jack’s seemingly heartless breakup with her for another woman was page-turning in its own right. Through Jen and Jack’s relationship, She-Hulk examines the ways caring for another person fundamentally shifts your worldview, and how having a thorny relationship with your own self-esteem only complicates those dynamics further. As Jen learns to love herself again alongside her journey toward loving Jack, readers are treated to a truly heartfelt and thoughtful examination of this iconic character. 

And while I do prefer my comics more emotional than action-packed, She-Hulk and Sensational She-Hulk are no slouches in the action department, and use flying fists and angry Hulks to elevate the emotional stakes at the heart of this story. In particular, Jen’s Superhero Fight Club and reinstatement as a lawyer allow her to develop deep friendships with her frequent antagonists Titania and Volcana, and make room for incredibly fun cameos from Ben Grimm and many others. She-Hulk is a hero who’s steeped in anger, as per usual with her ilk, but allowing her to both bask in it and suppress it creates impeccable drama and engaging sequences that jump off the page—especially thanks to the work of artist and frequent Rowell collaborator Andrés Genolet, who comes in during Volume 3 and sees the run to the very end. 

In the final issue (#10 of The Sensational She-Hulk, which hit stands on August 14th), the story Rowell has been telling across her entire run comes to a sweet—albeit rushed—end. And even though it’s clear that there was still so much story left to tell in regards to Jen’s evolution as a person, hero, and girlfriend, Rowell and Genolet make every single page and panel count, wrapping up any potential loose threads while remaining true to the spirit of the series. The thing about Rowell’s She-Hulk is that any end to this series was always going to feel something like a beginning. Jen accepts a position on the new Avengers squad, but with the caveat that she keep her job at her and Mallory’s law practice (especially after being rewarded with a swanky new office that she can actually fully stand up in), maintain her date nights with Jack, and never miss out on her lunches (and punches) with friends. Jen’s mission throughout Rowell’s run has been to try to find a way to have it all: the fulfilling job as a lawyer, the status as a beloved hero of NYC (and beyond), the doting boyfriend whom she loves back just as fiercely, the wonderful friends, the incredible apartment. And with this final, bittersweet issue, Jen, somehow, gets everything she’s ever wanted, and it’s the perfect beginning to leave our beloved Shulkie with as this chapter of her storied history comes to a close. 

Just five volumes of Rowell’s She-Hulk doesn’t feel like enough. But, then again, even 15 volumes of her incredible take on this character wouldn’t have felt like enough. Rowell crafted something unique in the superhero comic landscape by offering a deeply personal, romantic, and funny story to define one of Marvel’s most iconic female characters, and She-Hulk’s presence on stands will be sorely missed. In the same way that superhero movies and TV shows have been able to break form and explore other genres and facets of the medium, superhero comics should be allowed to be romantic and funny and deeply personal rather than solely driven by villains and overdrawn fights. Throughout Rowell’s run, there are villains of the week and knock-down, drag-out fights, of course, but the true central villain (and overarching challenge) of the series is Jen’s own insecurities and the ways that they make finding balance within friendship and love and work so difficult—all while trying to be the best She-Hulk she can possibly be.

While it seems like She-Hulk will continue to be a fixture within Marvel Comics as she makes appearances in books like Avengers Assemble and Venom War: Zombiotes, the heartfelt focus on Jennifer’s evolution into a better person, a better lawyer, a better girlfriend, and a better hero likely won’t make its way to those pages like it has throughout Rowell’s run, as other characters and larger, world-ending storylines take precedence. And that’s a damn shame. This is the series that got me back into reading comics, back into believing that Marvel in particular could tell stories that are personal and relatively small in scale, but pack a huge emotional punch; stories that can be swoon-worthy and tear-jerking yet action-packed and dynamic by turns. For it to be lost to the whims of the Marvel editorial overlords is a striking loss, leaving comic stands less bright in its absence.