The She-Hulk Diaries, and Rogue Touch

SHE-HULK … SLASH?

Well, okay, it’s not “slash fiction”, exactly, but it does read very much like fanfic. Superior fanfic, but even so.

Marvel’s ongoing quest to expand their franchise has inspired them to issue prose novels starring two of their most popular heroines, in an attempt to crack the chick-lit market. I don’t know how successful they’ll be in broadening their readership, but given the generally disastrous attempts to translate superheroes to prose form, these are creditable and above-average transpositions of the characters.

She-Hulk Diaries was tough to get into at first for a hardened comics veteran; it’s Bridget Jones, if she occasionally turned green and seven feet tall, mostly revolving around the romantic and professional anxieties of She-Hulk’s alter-ego, lawyer Jennifer Walters. This is an ‘Earth-2’ version; Acosta’s obviously been well briefed on the Marvel Universe, judging by the snippets she drops in, but has decided to ignore one of the pivotal aspects of the She-Hulk we know and love – specifically, that Jennifer is She-Hulk almost all the time, by choice, and loves her plus-sized, emerald-hued lifestyle.

Here instead we have more of a Jekyll and Hyde situation; Jen and Shulky are separate personas using the same body, and Jen is usually inconvenienced, and frequently appalled, by She-Hulk’s party-hearty antics when she’s done world-saving. It’s a theme we haven’t seen in the comics since the old Savage She-Hulk days, and feels like a retrograde step. The inner nerd keeps muttering, in a nasal whiny tone, “that’s not right; that’s not right”, and it seriously impedes entry into the novel.

However, persistence pays off; Acosta is a skilful enough writer to make Jennifer and her well-delineated supporting cast into sympathetic characters in their own right. The legal machinations are skilfully and intriguingly presented, the romantic complications – the main thrust of the novel – have enough humour and mystery to keep interest up, and the superheroics are presented without the self-conscious awkwardness that often impedes prose interpretations of the genre.

IGYFW, though; FYI, there are enough OMG’s and other cutesy-pie acronyms throughout to make you want to B*A*R*F!!  It’s a tragic verbal tic that brings Acosta’s writing down, and she has long outgrown the need for it.

The identity of Jen/Shulk’s nemesis, when ultimately revealed, is a surprise, though not in a good way – but, given that Shulk’s Rogue’s Gallery features such luminaries as the Man-Elephant and Nosferata the She-Bat, you can understand Acosta going for somebody with more “marquee value”, however forced and inappropriate it seems.

Nevertheless, a pleasant, clever, slick narrative with an upbeat Sex and the City vibe.

If She-Hulk Diaries is SATC  (there’s those acronyms again…), then Rogue Touch, by Christine Woodward, is probably closer to Trueblood – or at least the Charlaine Harris original novels – and other entries in the popular “doomed supernatural romance” genre which has mushroomed over the last ten-twelve years.

Knowing, and caring, a great deal less about Rogue than I do about She-Hulk, I came to this with low expectations, but was pleasingly surprised.

Unlike She-Hulk Diaries, Rogue Touch could slip very well into Rogue’s established backstory as an ‘untold tale’, as we used to say in the Sixties. Troubled teenager Anna-Marie on the run in a series of dead-end jobs after her power’s manifestation leaves her boyfriend in a coma, is approached one night by a mysterious stranger in a long leather coat, and chaos ensues.

No, it’s not Gambit, and let’s hear a resounding “Thank Christ for that!” One thing that bugged me every time I attempted to read a Rogue solo comic in the past was the inevitability with which the clichéd Cajun would shove his smug, plonker face into every panel of a series that was supposed to be her spotlight.

This mystery man uses the name James – at first – but, after the more unusual aspects of his origin are revealed, he tells her his true name, which, translated into English, is Touch. No, it refers to skills he has. No, not that… well, yes, that, but other stuff too. It is he who calls her Rogue, as Anna-Marie’s old life is over, and she takes a new name to symbolise her new identity. They do this while still on the run, not only from the police still seeking Anna-Marie, but also Touch’s super-scientific civilization, representatives of which still pop-up, Terminator-style with crackly lightning effects, to keep the plot, and our protagonists, moving.

The pursuit theme gets a bit repetitive – Rogue and Touch find a safe haven, think they might be able to relax for a second, oh bugger there’s the lightning, lather, rinse, repeat – this goes on for several chapters with only minor geographical variations. However, Woodward gets into the head of Anna-Marie/Rogue with sufficient conviction that our heroine’s internal narrative keeps us interested even when the external one gets a bit threadbare and repetitious. And, in fairness, a huge amount of the page-count is devoted to the romance stuff, which, yeah, I mainly skipped over as Not For Me. But if you like that sort of thing, it’s perfectly well done, giving previously-untold origins for Rogue’s costume and codename which bring her neatly up to a point where she can be suborned by the brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

Much to my surprise, both She-Hulk Diaries and Rogue Touch work; both as stand-alone narratives and as entries in the “supernatural romance” sub-genre. I’d be very happy to see further explorations of the Marvel Universe through the vanity mirror. (Diary of an Invisible Housewife? Honey, I Shrunk … You?)