Enter At The (Apparent) End: Red She-Hulk: Route 616

The Good: Artwork is all right, Plot progresses
The Bad: Dialogue lacks flow, No real character development
The Basics: Red She-Hulk: Route 616 is the conclusion to the Marvel Now! Red She-Hulk story . . . and it feels like they gave up on her before the book ended!


In my study of various super heroes, there were none that I was surprised to find I enjoyed reading as much as She-Hulk. Far from living down to my fear that the book would just be a "Hulk, smash!" series with a female protagonist, I quickly found I enjoyed how some writers played with Jennifer Walters as a protagonist and gave her a quirky, interesting voice and story. So, I felt pretty safe in picking up a Red She-Hulk book, Red She-Hulk: Route 616. That, as it turned out, was a wrong move.

Red She-Hulk: Route 616 might well be my first Marvel Now! trade paperback anthology and it seems that I came in at the end of the story of Betty Ross. Betty Ross is the Marvel Now! (and maybe before, I'm not fluent in Red She-Hulk) Red She-Hulk and given where the story ends and the notes at the end of the volume, it seems like it was the end of the title. In fact, it reads like it is. I cannot recall ever having to read a graphic novel twice just because I was so confused that I was missing something. Obviously, I am missing something; the content of the sixty-two issues of Red She-Hulk that precede the story in Red She-Hulk: Route 616 (which anthologizes issues 63 - 67). But my issue was not with content, it was with flow. Jeff Parker's writing seems very fractured and the book reads like it was assembled from an awkward series of cuts (for example, in the second chapter, Red She-Hulk is looking at a pyramid from a bit of a distance in one panel and the next, she is tearing into it . . . with no sense of how she got from one location to the other, with no sense of discovery or reason in trying to find a way into the pyramid). In short, Red She-Hulk: Route 616 feels like a cancelled show where the writers were given an episode to wrap everything up and the staff didn't actually care to produce the last episode well.

On the story front, Route 616 picks up very much in the middle of a story, though the opening summary and the "panel discussion" from a television show are enough to instantly bring new readers (like me!) up to speed. Betty Ross is the Red She-Hulk, who seems to have three states - Betty Ross, Red She-Hulk (minor) and full hulked-out Red She-Hulk (who barely ever makes an appearance). Betty Ross spends most of her time as a fairly controlled Red She-Hulk and she is accompanied by an X-51 android named Aaron Stack. The story begins with the pair hunting Nikola Tesla (who is an Artificial Intelligence in this iteration), because he has abducted a girl who serves as the processor for a machine that is going to bring about the apocalypse. So, Red She-Hulk and Aaron Stack are on the run from S.H.I.E.L.D.

Exposed to the general populace while at a diner, Betty Ross transforms into the Red She-Hulk, which alerts S.H.I.E.L.D. to her general presence. Aaron Stack steals a car for the pair and they once again flee. The S.H.I.E.L.D. team of Echelon-based supersoldiers does not take very long to track the pair down and while Red She-Hulk defeats the S.H.I.E.L.D. team, she and Stack are literally forced underground. There, they encounter the mole people and their search for Tesla takes them to an underground pyramid that is filled with futuristic technology. But Tesla outwits the pair and when they return to the surface, they discover reality is falling apart around them.

Trapped at Mt. Rushmore in an alternate or near-future, where Dr. Doom, Red Skull, Ultron, and Loki are carved into the side of the mountain, Red She-Hulk and Stack struggle to defeat the reconstructions of the Four Horsemen. They are only successful after all images merge into a superbeing and Stack unwittingly sets the new villain on the world at large! Still, the encounter leaves them with a clear destination: the Florida Everglades. There, they find Man-Thing, who takes them on a trippy journey through hundreds of realities for no clear reason until they manage to get back to their proper universe where everything wraps up surprisingly fast.

Red She-Hulk: Route 616 is not at all high literature and it is a remarkably unsatisfying read. Pursued by S.H.I.E.L.D., Jennifer Walters unwittingly aids the adversaries of Red She-Hulk by helping the supernatural law enforcement agency figure out her frequency. While Red She-Hulk is characterized by others as a master of hiding because she knows the military's playbook for pursuit, that is never actually shown in the book. Red She-Hulk does not evade S.H.I.E.L.D.; she is just hell-bent on her own mission and occasionally, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents burst in on her and Stack!

In a similar fashion, Red She-Hulk: Route 616 includes an entire subplot wherein S.H.I.E.L.D. employs the Thinker to try to track down Red She-Hulk, but he instead figures out how to make the Echelon soldiers work. The Thinker disappears fairly abruptly and the new, improved soldiers, seem only to serve the narrative for one of several jaunts into an alternate universe. The book spends more time developing the characteristics and backstory of the Mole People than it does satisfyingly developing the threat of the Echelon soldiers.

Red She-Hulk: Route 616 is very plot-focused, as opposed to character-centered. Betty Ross is given about equal page time as Aaron Stack and Stack figures out more ways to save the day than Ross does! That is hugely unsatisfying for a book titled Red She-Hulk. That Betty Ross takes up the position of wisecracking sidekick - Stack figures out how to out-logic Ultron, while Ross complains about what various battles are doing to her hair! - in her own book is tremendously disappointing and a horrible example to set for readers (of any gender).

The artwork in Red She-Hulk: Route 616 is fine, but very much like snapshots. There is exceptionally poor transition between panels, so this is a book that does not flow from panel to panel, page to page well. Instead, it's like flipping through photographs with captions; readers are left to infer much of the movement between panels. The coloring is homogeneously good throughout the book.

Ultimately, Red She-Hulk: Route 616 is an end for the Red She-Hulk as a solo work and while I might have come in at the end, I have no problem with declaring it a disappointment. The narration is fractured, the characters mediocre and the resolution forced. It's a poor story that is not enough to make a reader want to pick up any of the prior Red She-Hulk volumes.

For other She-Hulk books, please visit my reviews of:
The Sensational She-Hulk
Single Green Female
The Avengers: The Search For She-Hulk
Superhuman Law
Time Trials
Laws Of Attraction
She-Hulk: Planet Without A Hulk
Fall Of The Hulks: The Savage She-Hulks
Marvel Her-oes

3/10

For other book reviews, please check out my Book Review Index Page for an organized listing.

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Ugh! Talk About Your Incomplete Story . . . Fall Of The Hulks: The Savage She-Hulks Flops!

The Good: Moments of character, Moments of plot development and artwork
The Bad: Radically incomplete story, No character resonation or development, Huge plot gaps, Terrifically inconsistent artwork.
The Basics: Unfortunately lacking in a number of key moments to tell a solid story or make the characters interesting, Fall Of The Hulks: The Savage She-Hulks is just a mess!


When I review a book, I take it as it is. I read the book for what is on the page in front of me and I evaluate it on those terms. It is important for me to mention that up front in my review of Fall Of The Hulks: The Savage She-Hulks because there might be fans of The Hulk and the entire Fall Of The Hulks storyline that are offended by my assertions in this review. The truth, however, is that no matter how good or how interesting Fall Of The Hulks is as a saga, the volume Fall Of The Hulks: The Savage She-Hulks is just an irredeemable mess.

I picked up Fall Of The Hulks: The Savage She-Hulks as part of my She-Hulk Year. This seemed to me to be a major crossover that Jennifer Walters was a part of and one of the next sensible volumes in my reading order. Unfortunately, the book was anything but engaging and the story might be an important tangent in the Fall Of The Hulks Saga, but on its own, Fall Of The Hulks: The Savage She-Hulks is a sliver of a tangent and a fraction of a story. It is, unfortunately, dramatically incomplete in the character and plot events it presents and inconsistently rendered in its artwork. The end result is a book that is entirely unsatisfying and more annoying to try to stick with than it is rewarding.

Fall Of The Hulks: The Savage She-Hulks opens with the story of Lyra. Lyra is a green She-Hulk with flaming red hair who is from the future (of, possibly, an alternate dimension, that’s not entirely clear) of a world where mechanical life evolved before organic life did and it enslaved humanity. The genetically-engineered daughter of Bruce Banner, Lyra is a She-Hulk freedom fighter before (inexplicably in this volume) she ends up in our time, on our Earth, where she works for the Alternate Reality Monitoring And Operational Response Agency (A.R.M.O.R.). Despite the book presenting her origin story, it leaps immediately to her as a part of A.R.M.O.R. and a time after she has met Jennifer Walters (She-Hulk), befriended her, and is now searching for the missing She-Hulk.

Lyra then runs afoul of Norman Osborn’s genetically-created gamma-ray irradiated villains, Axon (who absorbs Gamma radiation), Aberration (who was genetically-altered using Abomination’s DNA and is basically just a She-Hulk), and Morass (a mud-based gamma ray creature). After working to defeat the trio, and save a small town in the process, Lyra gets into a confusing battle with her own mother, Thundra, who appears to be hiding out in the past just to avoid her own daughter.

The story finally gets going when the Intelligencia – a group of super-smart super-villains – is introduced and they, M.O.D.O.K., Leader, and Wizard, make Lyra and offer to join their evil group. After an encounter with the Red She-Hulk and being forced to destroy her A.I. watch, Lyra is inducted into the Frightful Four and assists in capturing Reed Richards for them. She is then taken to the Intelligencia lair – a former S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier – where she almost immediately finds Jennifer Walters, is attacked by Red She-Hulk and ends up in the middle of a battle where an army of Red Hulks and hulked-out versions of recognizable superheroes (The Thing, Silver Surfer, and several others) are in the process of destroying Washington, D.C.

If that last part makes no real sense, welcome to the crux of my problem with Fall Of The Hulks: The Savage She-Hulks. The story does not so much take an abrupt left turn as it falls from one storyline to another in what appears to be a larger saga without any information for the reader to indicate what that story is, who is involved or why the stories overlap. The result is that the book unravels in a truly unfortunate way.

After a point, Fall Of The Hulks: The Savage She-Hulks is just confusing and nonsensical. On one page, Lyra is getting inducted into the Frightful Four, the next she is wearing a red Frightful Four uniform that we’ve never seen on the other three members of the villain group and the other three members are pretty much gone from the narrative. Red She-Hulk comes in and out of the story at random (it was only looking up this storyline and the story that followed it that I learned that the reader is not supposed to know who she is yet, so that bit of withholding – which was just annoying for me – makes some sense, I suppose) and the complicated relationship between Lyra and Thundra seems put in as more of an afterthought than a sense of genuine character development.

Moreover, Lyra’s nature is not made clear. Her opening backstory implies that she is from an alternate reality, not just a time-traveler. Yet, the rest of Fall Of The Hulks: The Savage She-Hulks - especially in her subplot with her mother – seems to assert the exact opposite.

As for the artwork, it is inconsistent at best. While the book opens looking like a nice sword and sorcery level of artwork, it degenerates into pretty standard comic book art and by the time Lyra meet Bentley (the Wizard) some of the panels look like comic strips or Cartoon Network level of animation, which is disappointing.

Ultimately, the artwork is not a serious detraction: the way Fall Of The Hulks: The Savage She-Hulks fails to tell a story is the serious drawback of this book and it is enough to make one not want to invest in Lyra or her story.

For other She-Hulk books, please visit my reviews of:
The Sensational She-Hulk
Single Green Female
The Avengers: The Search For She-Hulk
Superhuman Law
Time Trials
Laws Of Attraction
She-Hulk: Planet Without A Hulk

2/10

For other graphic novel reviews, please visit my Graphic Novel Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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