Alias, The Pulse and Jessica Jones

Alias made its debut in September 2001, a month before Brian Michael Bendis took over as writer on Daredevil (but a full year after Ultimate Spider-Man), appearing the same week as issue #1 of the more-heavily publicised Wolverine: Origin. It was the first title from Marvel’s Max imprint, and was the first title set in the mainstream Marvel Universe to use the word fuck – indeed, it is the very first word anyone says, right on page one.

 Alias

Issue 1 of Alias introduced the world to Jessica Jones; former superhero turned private investigator, dealing mainly with missing persons cases. Over the course of the first arc, originally collected as simply Alias, Jessica gets involved in a small scale missing persons case which leads to her accidentally filming a major Marvel superhero changing out of their secret identity. When the missing person is later found strangled to death, Jessica is a prime suspect, and has to clear her name whilst at the same time unravelling who did this to her and why.

Right from the start, Jessica is integrated into the heart of the Marvel Universe – we see a picture of her in her old costumed identity of Jewel, alongside members of the Avengers. She gets legal assistance from Matt (Daredevil) Murdock, and meets with her friend Carol (Ms Marvel) Danvers who tries to pair her up with a new man. Issue 1 also gives us the first appearance of Jessica’s unusual relationship with Luke (Power Man) Cage – and definitely the first ever anal sex scene in a Marvel Comic.

Articles from the time made mention of the original printing firm literally stopping the presses on the title, describing it as “obscene”. Bendis remarked that “There’s nothing in Alias that you wouldn’t see on The Sopranos”, but the printing was moved to a different company.

The second arc brings us another missing persons case and more appearances from mainstream superheroes, while Jessica looks for a man who may or may not be who he seems.

The back of the first trade refers to Jessica as “a chain-smoking, self-destructive alcoholic with a mean inferiority complex” – and while this is certainly true, she still has her successes. Issue 10 is a single issue story, told in almost transcript form. Here she is hired by Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson to work alongside investigative reporter Ben Urich to try and find out who Spider-Man really is. Needless to say, she doesn’t manage to find this out, but manages a victory of a completely different kind. The change in format means that the issue works as a showcase for the skills of both Bendis and his artist Michael Gaydos. The issue also makes further mention of Jessica’s superhero days, including a second costumed identity – Knightress. This is a thread that was not to be touched on again for quite some time.

The third arc (Come Home) in issues 11-14 deals with a young girl who runs away from her home in upstate New York. Jessica’s investigation brings her into contact with some of the more close-minded denizens of small-town America, as well as anti-mutant prejudice. She gains an insight into the girl’s life from her journals, with collage artwork by series cover artist David Mack. Jessica’s habit of drinking too much and getting carried away brings her attention from the local Sheriff. We also have a dream sequence/flashback to Jessica’s superhero days, drawn by Mark Bagley (Bendis’ regular artist on Ultimate Spider-Man). Jessica discovers that the girl is not what she appears and is troubled by the chain of events this brings about. On her journey back to Manhattan she calls the man Carol Danvers was trying to set her up with – Scott (Ant Man) Lang.

Issue 15 is another done-in-one, dealing in part with the ongoing storyline of Bendis’ Daredevil, where Matt Murdock was outed by the Daily Globe. In issue 36 of that title, Jessica and Luke Cage are working as bodyguards for Murdock, and we see here a scene from that other title from Jessica’s perspective. She then goes on a date with Scott Lang, who takes a modicum of control and stops Jessica from making one of her usual mistakes. She takes it well and their date is a success. The issue works as a catch-up on a couple of dangling threads, a break from the ongoing action (not that “action” is a key part of this series), and as a part of the whole.

Issues 16-21 comprise a story entitled The Underneath. A more proactive Jessica takes matters into her own hands when she comes across an intruder in her apartment – a confused young girl in a Spider-Man costume. She is Mattie Franklin, the third Spider-Woman, and she is in trouble. Jessica’s quest for answers brings her into contact with some unsavoury characters, which ties in with a larger subplot from Daredevil - the popularity of Mutant Growth Hormone amongst the city’s drug pioneers. They are literally smoking scrapings of the skin and cells from superhumans to briefly obtain superpowers. She also encounters another detective on the same case – Mattie’s friend, the original Spider-Woman, Jessica Drew (currently to be found in the pages of the Bendis-written New Avengers) Jessica and Jessica go through a version of the old super-hero standard “Meeting, misunderstanding, fight, then team up and go fight the real bad guy” – but are almost scuppered at the last moment due to the intervention of possibly the most unlikely and surprising superhero possible.

We also see another Daredevil scene from Jessica’s P.O.V., this time from Daredevil #42, and another Bagley-drawn flashback/dream. It seems that Bendis had decided he could only tease people for so long, as the next story (in issues 22 and 23) is called “The Secret Origin of Jessica Jones”.

In these two issues, we see exactly how Jessica fits in with the rest of the Marvel Universe – we meet the boy she had a crush on at high school, and in a curious spin on an established story, it’s the young Peter Parker, and she sees him get bitten by the spider. On her journey home, she narrowly avoids being hit by the radioactive waste truck that gives Matt Murdock his radar sense. This makes Matt a good two or three years younger than Peter, which doesn’t really tie up. On the other hand, at least according to the calculations of “Madgoblin” at the Spider-Man fansite www.spideykicksbutt.com, the fifteen years figure is correct. Maybe this isn’t the exact truck that hits Matt, but another similar one, just to point out how often these things happen in the Marvel Universe. It must be fairly often, as within a few pages, Jessica’s family car gets into a crash with a military vehicle carrying experimental hazardous material. Her family are killed and Jessica falls into a coma, awakening during the coming of Galactus. She returns to school feeling more alienated, and when Peter Parker tries to reach out to her she mistakes his empathy for pity, and runs – and then she starts to fly.

This kind of retrofitting, continuity implant storytelling can either succeed or fail miserably, and it is to Bendis’ credit that he makes it work. We now know more about who Jessica is, and how she got her powers – but that is only half of the story.

The final storyarc, Purple (Issues 24-28) brings us back to the present day. In the equivalent to a pre-credits sequence, Jessica encounters one of the more curious aspects of shared-universe storytelling, the unusual characters who somehow cross one another’s paths. One aspect of the series that has entered into every storyline is how an “ordinary” person interacts with the wonders of a superhero world – the meeting of the fantastic and the mundane. She is confronted with a bizarre case, and turns it down. Then we get into the story proper. A call out of the blue requesting Jessica’s assistance with a case brings a name back into her life – Killgrave. Just hearing it is enough to make Jessica vomit.

Jessica’s trauma sends her back to the bottle, and after several too many she crashes into the apartment of Luke Cage – and then we get the next part of Jessica’s superhero story. Mark Bagley’s art returns, as the story of Jessica’s fall is told as if it were an old-school Marvel comic. We see Jessica as Jewel, encountering Zebediah Killgrave, more commonly known as the Purple Man. Killgrave has the power to control people’s minds – and he decides that he will control Jessica. For the next eight months he puts her through abuse after abuse, until he finally decides he has had enough. He sends her out to kill a superhero, and she comes across a whole bunch – a meeting of big-name super-teams the Avengers and the Defenders. She starts a battle, and gets beaten. Fast. She lapses into another coma, and is saved only thanks to the mental assistance of Jean Grey of the X-Men.

She is rehabilitated at a facility belonging to super-secret security agency S.H.I.E.L.D. and rejects their offer of becoming an agent and liason with the Avengers, but rejects it. She’s plan to leaving the superhero world behind, and have a normal life, which brings us where we first met Jessica to the start – but now she has to face Killgrave again.

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essica visits him in prison, where he taunts and mocks her, and then the worst thing possible happens he escapes. Killgrave attempts to control Jessica once more, but fails, due to an unfortunately poor plot device and then Jessica finally gets to vent her frustrations on his face. She finally comes to terms with what happened to her, and is able to move on. She also has to confront Scott Lang with some information which he doesn’t take very well – she’s three months pregnant. And it’s not his. It’s Luke Cage’s baby, and she and Luke decide to get together.

This is the moment where Bendis chooses to end Alias. In his afterword, Bendis writes ‘I wrote #28, which you just read, and I was like “Uh, I think I just wrapped up the series” […] But I, like you, am far from done with Jessica.”

One of the problems Bendis had faced with Alias was that, despite the book being set in the middle of the Marvel Universe, he couldn’t use the real big-name guest stars like Spider-Man or Wolverine, due to the “mature readers” approach. As he said himself ‘We can’t have the kids picking up an issue of Alias looking for Wolverine and getting a mouth full of my potty’. As such, he took some suggestions from Marvel Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada about something Marvel had been considering, and tooled it around Jessica. The result was a new bimonthly book called The Pulse.

 The Pulse

As well as being the title of the book, The Pulse is the name of a new superhero supplement from the Daily Bugle. J Jonah Jameson begrudgingly admits that his very negative opinions on superheroes may be losing him readers, which is not a good idea when newspaper sales are falling. Bendis gave these lines to a character in issue 2, but has also said the exact same thing himself in interview - “This is the first generation where newspapers aren’t a habit. The habit is broken. Now you have to put on a real dog and pony show to compete with the four other daily papers, and the five 24-hour news networks, and talk radio, and the Internet, and people don’t read.” JJJ hires Jessica as a superhero analyst, someone who knows superheroes.

The book came out at a time when appearances by JJJ and the Daily Bugle staff had not been making many appearances in the main Spider-Man titles, giving them a chance in the spotlight again. Bendis also brought in two other Bugle journalists to work on The Pulse – Kat Farrell, star of an underrated miniseries from a few years beforehand called Deadline, and Ben Urich, who had mainly been appearing in Daredevil.

The first storyarc, Thin Air (issues 1-5), brings in Spider-Man, and deals with the process of bringing one of Spidey’s biggest foes – Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin - to justice. The Pulse is far more of an ensemble piece than Alias, with a supporting cast of thousands. So, as part of the opening arc we also get the drama of Luke and Jessica’s relationship, and a great confrontation between Spider-Man and Ben Urich where Ben explains how he knows who Spidey really is – and Spidey tells Ben the full extent of the damage Osborn has done to his life.

A lot of people were very vocal in their disapproval with The Pulse in compared to Alias – saying that it was “watered-down” and “a pale imitation” of its predecessor. Other said that they missed the swearing. People who were expecting The Pulse to be exactly like Alias were missing the point, to a degree. Jessica’s life had altered, and she wasn’t the same person she had been at the start of Alias. She had experienced actual character growth, and true change, rather than just the illusion of change. There was also disappointment that Osborn had not been taken down by Spider-Man – but dialogue later in the story definitely implies that Spider-Man’s involvement was far greater than that shown (Indeed, it is more than likely the same chase of Osborn shown in Marvel Knights Spider-Man #1). Also, the reality is that things don’t always work out the way they should. The mob boss gets arrested for tax evasion. The dictator dies in prison before he can face justice at the end of his war crimes trial. Real events don’t obey the rules of storytelling – and sometimes, a good story can be told by breaking one of those rules.

The next arc, Secret War (Issues 6-9), dealt with Bendis’ mini-series of the same name, but from Jessica’s perspective. The Pulse issues definitely add to the enjoyment of the mini-series, but were marred by the delays in that series. Jessica is offered the opportunity to join a terrorist organisation, and is forced to deal with the greater consequences of Luke’s involvement in the Secret War. Following the storyline here is not impossible without reading the mini, but anyone choosing not to will definitely be missing out on the bigger picture. The story also gives us a potential explanation as to why so many Daily Bugle front pages seem to be along the lines of “Spider-Man: Threat or Menace?”.

It is unfortunate that some of the storylines referred to in early interviews about The Pulse did not come to pass. A quote from Bendis promised “[The] deconstruction of one of the most famous marvel characters in the first arc. We have a reporter’s view of Wolverine’s life, and we have a story I’m really excited to write - a three-generation story of the Marvel Universe a la Once Upon a Time in America”. The deconstruction of the Marvel character would be the Norman Osborn storyline, but Wolverine only appears in the Secret War storyline, and the closest thing to the generational story that springs to mind would be the Golden Age (Daredevil 66-70). Bigger titles and projects have definitely taken Bendis away from The Pulse – besides Daredevil he was also writing New Avengers and the 8-part miniseries House of M.

Issue 10 of The Pulse is unusual in that it is a done-in-one full story, but also was a tie-in to the House of M storyline, where reality had been altered by long-time Avenger the Scarlet Witch. The issue deals with Ben and Kat’s roles as journalists and as humans in the mutant-majority House of M world. It also details the meeting between Kat and resurrected superhero Hawkeye. A good issue, but one that works far better as a part of House of M than as an issue of The Pulse. Another tie-in to the House of M storyline was a mock newspaper insert from the House of M world, but as Jessica was not involved with the Daily Bugle in that alternate reality, it does not concern us.

The Pulse ended with the four part Fear storyline in issues 11-14. This story reunited Bendis with Alias artist Michael Gaydos for a Jessica-centric storyline, which immediately gives the book a little more of the old Alias feel for those who had been missing it. Whilst Jessica worries about the risks involved for the child of two superhumans – dangers during delivery, the potential for the child being born with powers of its own, the risk of kidnapping and vengeance attacks – Ben Urich investigates a series of thwarted jewellery thefts involving one of the more obscure Marvel superheroes, D-Man. Jessica’s worries are intensified when she goes into labour three months prematurely.

While the birth is not without drama, the potential for “will she lose the baby” storylines, along with any pre-birth discussions of the baby’s gender were undercut slightly by the baby’s first in-story appearance being in (of all places) the 2005 Marvel Holiday Special – although at least this time the baby retains the same skin colour throughout.

It’s a girl, by the way.

Part three of the storyline again suffers slightly from release date problems, in that it refers to events that happen in New Avengers #15, which came out the same week, but by the time the final storyarc is collected that won’t be a problem.

The birth of the baby prompt Luke Cage to ask a vital question of Jessica, as he finally gets round to proposing. This seems to have been a long time coming, but since they got together in the final issue of Alias only three months of comic book time have passed. Jessica makes her decision in the final issue of The Pulse, where we also get to go back and see Jessica’s first meeting with Luke Cage, on the final night of her very brief return to superheroing under the name Knightress… or is it? Although she abandoned the costume, she has still been fighting crime and mixing with the super-community ever since, occasionally using her powers and even fighting with the odd supervillain. Depending on your definition, it could be argued that she’s always been a superhero.

Jessica has made appearances in titles by other writers – as Luke Cage is currently in the New Avengers alongside Spider-Man, she has had very minor cameos in the Spider-titles, although it is not currently clear if she knows he is really her one-time high school crush, Peter Parker. She appeared in the above-mentioned Marvel Holiday Special, and in the Marvel Knights Fantastic Four title. Her biggest role to date outside of her home titles has been in Young Avengers, where her combined role as former superhero and Daily Bugle consultant has bought her into contact with the neophyte superteam. In the first storyarc in issues 1-6 (Collected as Young Avengers: Sidekicks), Jameson assigns Jessica and Kat Farrell to find out more about the team, in part due to Jessica’s former costumed career. Kat notes that Jessica has about 200 fansites dedicated to her, and even notes that she wanted to be Jewel when she was younger. She encounters the team in their second public appearance, and settles in very quickly alongside Captain America and Iron Man deal with the young heroes. She also appears in the Young Avengers Special, once again drawn (at least in part) by Alias artist Michael Gaydos.

Jessica has also made some cameo appearances in Bendis’ Daredevil, the majority of which are covered above. Her biggest appearance is in issue #59, where she confronts Daredevil, angry that she was acting as his bodyguard and making her put her life on the line without him ever letting her know who he was.

She also merits a mention in a noteworthy scene in New Avengers #3. In the middle of a mass prison break, Luke Cage is confronted by the Purple Man. Killgrave taunts Cage, ordering him to kill his fellow superheroes and then kill himself. He then promises to “take very good care of Jessica Jones” and their baby. Unfortunately for the Purple Man, his powers have been totally deactivated by neutralizing drugs – and Cage proceeds to beat him with justifiable brutality.

Alias won several awards, including the Harvey Award for Best New Series in 2002, and the Comics’ Buyer’s Guide Award for Favorite Comic Series in 2003. It has been collected in four trade paperbacks, equating roughly to the four main storyarcs. The Pulse has also been collected into two trade paperbacks, with a third sure to follow.

Coming very soon is a hardback collection of the entire 28 issue run of Alias in one volume. In a recent interview, Bendis revealed that the collection may also feature interviews, and anything Alias-related – possibly even an “early, early draft” for the series, when it went under the name of Marvel, Inc. Hopefully, this may also put a stop to discussions as to whether or not Jessica Jones is a replacement for Jessica Drew, a character who many have stated was due to be the original star of the series. However, in an interview before the first issue came out, Bendis had this to say:

“Nope. This is an urban myth that I believe I will never live down.”

“I was at one time toying with doing Jessica Drew because she has the best hair of any superhero in comics, but this book is entirely different than what that idea was to be. This character is totally different in every way but sexual gender. And there’s that Jessica name that’s not going to help me convince anyone.”

One additional feature in the hardcover will be the one-shot What If Jessica Jones had joined the Avengers? An alternate reality tale by Bendis and Gaydos, it gives us a glimpse of what Jessica’s life would have been like if she had decided to accept S.H.I.E.L.D.’s offer to join them as agent and Avengers liaison. In this world, her presence in Avengers Mansion helps catch the Scarlet Witch’s mental problems before it’s too late, thus avoiding the events of both Avengers: Disassembled and House Of M. She also finds love in the arms of another superhero – this time, not Luke Cage.

Jessica and Luke’s story will continue in the pages of New Avengers, and particularly in this year’s New Avengers Annual, which is due to feature their wedding. Paul Jenkins was due to take over The Pulse (without Jessica Jones) from issue #15, but will instead be writing a book entitled Civil War: Front Line, tying in with this summer’s Marvel big event storyline. In his afterword in the final issue of The Pulse, Bendis promises “I am not abandoning Jessica, Luke or the little Cage baby. Promise.”

In the pages of Alias and The Pulse, Brian Michael Bendis attempted to show us a side of living in a superhero world that had rarely been seen. The popularity of both series is a testament to his success at this, and the collected editions are readily available should this article persuade you to investigate them.

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  • Russell HillmanRussell Hillman was born in London but now lives in Coventry. His hobbies include precious little. He doesn’t get out much, but thinks reading a lot of comics makes up for it. He’s wrong.