Page 45 Review by Jonathan
"Okay... I asked you a question: where's our daughter? Where's the baby?"
"Get out of here, Luke. I'm on a case."
"I don't give anything close to a shit."
"Just leave. This... this isn't the time. You were following me."
""Not the time"?! Where's my BABY?"
"Stop this macho shit. It doesn't scare me."
Jessica Jones has well and truly finished her extended maternity leave and is back in the investigative saddle, going undercover, playing double agent, and generally getting herself neck-deep into all sorts of preposterous trouble trying to find out who Alison Greene is working for. Alison Greene being the bean-counting, low level accountant Captain Marvel gave the full shakedown to, thanks to some equally shaky precognitive intel from the Inhuman Ulysses, during CIVIL WAR II. Ms. Greene was seemingly completely innocent, much to Captain Marvel's extreme embarrassment. Now it turns out, unsurprisingly, she has an axe she'd like to grind on Captain Marvel's head and is trying to recruit Jessica Jones into her merry scheme.
Meanwhile, Jessica's also been hired by Mrs. Brownlee to investigate why her husband claims to no longer be her husband any more, but someone else entirely. Given our superhero chums propensities for flitting from dimension to dimension and traversing back and forth to other worlds when the mood strikes them, a la SECRET WARS, she's desperately hoping for some sort of explanation that might mean he's not had a complete psychotic break. With Jessica's connection to the capes and tights world, Mrs. Brownlee's basically hoping she might entertain her insane sounding theory...
"So we're clear... You'd rather pay me to find out if your husband is from another earth than have him checked into a..."
"I'll pay whatever."
It's seemingly a nothing, nonsense case, right...?
There's much that's utterly brilliant in the opener of this new run of everyone's favourite female Marvel fuck up. (I nearly left out the female, but come on, all equality and feminism aside, Clint Barton is clearly even more of a fuck up than Jessica Jones, hands down, no contest!) In fact I think there is only one thing wrong with it. Meh, maybe two if I am being picky.
Firstly, it's just great to see Alias Investigations back. As fun as Jess' appearances in POWER MAN AND IRON FIST are, as the alpha-wife, hen-pecking poor put-upon Luke into submission, this is the version of Jones we want. Then, the dialogue, which is absolutely Bendis at his best, with every page a pure pleasure of witty to-and-fro. The only other thing he's writing at the moment that's anywhere near as good as this is INFAMOUS IRON DOOM featuring the trials and tribulations of a certain Victor Von Doom trying his hand a little superheroing. Then, there's that 'nothing, nonsense case', which is almost certainly going to turn out to be anything but, given the sting in the tale at the end of this volume. Fabulous stuff.
So what doesn't work for me then? Well, I find it kind of hard to believe that Alison Greene thinks Jessica would betray her friends, particularly her best friend, Carol Danvers. It's a real stretch, frankly. By the end of this volume I understood precisely why Bendis did it, and I shall say no more for fear of spoilers, but... it still feels forced.
Then, my real bugbear: Jessica takes Dani, Luke's and her baby, and leaves the marital home, without any word of explanation to Luke, as part of her going underground cover story. Yes, you can say she felt she couldn't tell anyone at all, including her husband, the father of her child, what was going on, blah blah blah, but the reality of it is, would she really put her husband and the father of her child through that, with no word of warning whatsoever, just out of the blue? I think not.
I understand Bendis clearly feels Jess works best as a character as the isolated outsider, rather than the happy contented wife, presumably also explaining the double meaning in the volume's subtitle 'Uncaged', which is quite clever, actually, I will give him that. This set up immediately achieves that isolation, stirring up a whole cement mixer load of dramatic tension between our leading dramatis personae as a bonus, but again, it felt rather forced.
It's almost as though Marvel, having seen the success of the Jessica Jones TV show - plus the forthcoming Defenders series featuring the character - has said, "Bendis, bring her back in the comics, just like before, exactly like before, nothing must change, just like Stan said, make it happen". "It's only a comic, Jonathan!" I hear you cry. But when Bendis has made his name writing realistic characters (and dialogue), I expect perfection.
Still, that sting in the tale I'm talking about, makes it all worthwhile and carries the story over the rocky plotholed (sic) ground. Plus I'm still reading the monthly single issues, so I'm clearly hooked and will shut up moaning now! And this title is a trillion times better than most of the utter shite Marvel is churning out at the moment. I really will shut up now.
Previous ALIAS collaborators Michael Gaydos and Matt Hollingsworth return on line art and colours, respectively, which is also a definite huge plus as the change in art ruined the PULSE material for me. Again, this welcome return of said dynamic drawing duo is presumably trying to make it feel like it is business as usual, but they are the definitive Jessica Jones art team so why not.
Also, at the risk of seeming like I actually condone variants, which I really don't, I was pleased to see they had included all the cover art, as chapter breaks too, rather than tucked away unnoticed at the back. When you've got the likes of David Mack, Alex Maleev, David Aja doing some brilliant covers, they do deserve as many eyeballs as possible rolling over them. There are also some totally duff covers from other people, mind, but they just make you appreciate the genius of the likes of the Mack even more.
