Not content with dominating the worlds of comic books, movies and ABC television spin-offs of uber-successful motion pictures, Marvel Entertainment entered the realm of original prose romance this week with two books from its corporate sibling Hyperion: *The She-Hulk Diaries, *a diary-format tale of the super-strong, super-green heroine by Marta Acosta, and *Rogue Touch, *about an 18-year-old version of the X-Men superheroine Rogue by Christine Woodward. So is the latest expansion of the Marvel media empire accessible for new readers—or for existing comic book aficionados? With twice the material, we sent twice the reviewers to find out.
Graeme: So, I'll admit it: When Hyperion first announced that they were doing novels based on Marvel Comics' female superheroes, I was the stereotypical comic book fan, sneering at the very idea as ridiculous and doomed to failure. The attempt to mash up superheroes with chick-lit felt entirely forced, I complained, and the idea of forcing She-Hulk or Rogue into a Twilight-lite romance book was more desperate than inspired when it came to new-reader outreach. What a waste of time!
Except, of course, it wasn't. After reading both The She-Hulk Diaries and Rogue Touch, the two launch books of the line, I'm eating crow and admitting that I was wrong. Both books are fast reads, and fun to varying degrees, depending on your taste for melodrama. Both arguably show more attention and affection to the characters than they've seen in their comic book incarnations in some years. I'm still unsure about who's going to buy the books: comic fans wanting to branch out? Young adult and chick-lit readers who've seen the Avengers and X-Men movies and are curious? An all-new third audience altogether? But as someone who went in entirely cynical, I was genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed both.
Rachel: I'm a comic book reader who's also staunchly unromantic and kind of a jerk, so I was pretty surprised by how much I enjoyed these as well, especially She-Hulk Diaries. She-Hulk is a perfect choice for a romance-novel protagonist—there's a lot of tongue-in-cheek romance-comic homage in her comics, and the kind of wryly self-aware pulp sensibility that translates gorgeously here—and the result is a romance novel that feels very, very true to the character and feel I'm used to from the comics. The one thing that struck me as weird in She-Hulk Diaries was how carefully it compartmentalized Jennifer Walters and her superhero identity of She-Hulk, which seems like a major break from the comics, where the two identities are usually played as slight variations on the same person. The title's misleading too, since we only really ever get Jennifer's point of view, but it's still delightful. It's also ridiculous, but I think I'd have been disappointed if it weren't.
Graeme: I actually really appreciated the way in which Marta Acosta presented the Jennifer/Shulkie divide; there's a sense that She-Hulk really is Jennifer Walter but with the social anxiety removed, which not only ties in with the classic comic book take on the Hulk, but also some of She-Hulk's earlier appearances. (The Savage She-Hulk series has some great "I AM SAVAGE WOMAN, HEAR ME RAWR" moments that I'm fond of in a car-crash camp kind of a way.) Unlike Bruce/Hulk, Jennifer has no genuine regret over her alter ego's rampages, just embarrassment—and the fact that people seem to prefer She-Hulk to Jennifer makes her feel like a bit of an underdog as well. Admittedly, it is a ridiculous book, but in the best way. It's very affectionate towards the more outre elements of the superhero genre, but it's also unafraid to just play with them in a tongue-in-cheek way, as well. She-Hulk Diaries was initially the book that I felt the most dismissive about—that title felt a little too on the nose with regards to "The Carrie Diaries" etc.—but, holy moley, I was entirely won over by this. It's glorious, trashy fun. I want to see Acosta take on more Marvel heroes now, as well as do multiple follow-ups to this book. Hell, I want to see Acosta get to make this into a monthly comic.
And then there's *Rogue Touch, *a book best described as... weird. Tonally, it's a million miles away from She-Hulk Diaries, and takes itself far more seriously. It's actually a lot closer to hard sci-fi than Twilight, and less about a romance as Rogue's journey towards independence. I felt like it was very competent and professional, but also very generic. As much as I've made fun of the comic version of Rogue for her various speech affectations ("Sugah, ah don't know what you'ah talkin' about!" etc.), I wish something of the comic incarnation had appeared in this book.
Rachel: Rogue Touch is something of a cipher, yeah. As you mentioned, Rogue Touch reads less as a romance novel than as a science fiction novel which the author was gently reminded, near the end, needed to be classified as romance; if there's a book it reminds me of, it's Stephen J. Gould's Jumper. This version of Rogue is utterly divorced from any previous iteration of the character, aside from her powers and the fact that she's vaguely southern. Like you said, it's not a bad book—in fact, as a slightly generic sci-fi coming-of-age novel, it's pretty solid—but its presence in this book line is baffling. It's unlikely to attract existing Marvel fans, and so far removed from the Marvel universe that I don't see it bringing many romance readers back to other Marvel properties. I'd even go so far as to say that there's no indication it takes place in the Marvel Universe at all. And yes, its categorization as romance is tenuous at best. So what's the point?
Graeme: It's possible that Woodward understood the brief differently from Acosta, and thought that the goal was simply to reinvent the character for an entirely different audience. But there's still no connection to the tone of either the Marvel movies or the comics; it just feels like a stand-alone story that's weirdly sterile and closed off. At the end of the book, I have no desire to find out more about the character, or her world. Even if this was meant to be the only Rogue title, it fails as a gateway to any other Marvel product. Based on *The She-Hulk Diaries *and Rogue Touch, I feel ambivalent about the Hyperion line so far; I'd definitely want a lot more of the former, and almost none of the latter. But I'm a comic nerd, so maybe that skews the results.
Rachel: I'm a bit more optimistic. Rogue Touch might be dead in the water, but She-Hulk Diaries is a welcoming, bidirectional gateway—I could easily see it bringing comics readers to romance novels and vice versa-- and I'm hoping that means more in kind.
