Alias Part 2: B Level

[cyberghostface]

So here we are with the second arc of Bendis' Alias.

#6...

The issue opens with Jessica and Carol Danvers eating lunch together.



Carol says she heard it on the grapevine. Jessica says they're not going out.







Jessica attempts to schedule a personal meeting with him while posing as another guy online.

Later, Jessica meets a young teenager who wants to work for her.



She turns him down.

Someone knocks on Jessica's door and it's a woman looking for Jessica's assistance.





#7...





Jessica tells the woman that she must be mistaken, because she's not related to Rick and has never met him. She still takes on the case but can't promise anything.



For space reasons, I can't post them but throughout the arc there are excerpts from Rick's book in prose form with illustrations by Bill Sienkiewicz.

Later, Jessica is reading the book when a young woman walks up to her and asks if she has powers. Jessica asks how she would know, and she responds that she is a mutant and her power is detecting others'.





She asks them if they know him, and they tell her that he sometimes hangs around the park telling people stories. Jessica later finds an advertisement for Jones' concert and goes to see it.



After it's over, she goes into the dressing room but when he sees her he runs off.



#8...

Jessica grabs his arm.



Jessica tells him to go home to her to find out, but he says he can't because of the Skrulls. Jessica asks him why he told his wife that they were related, and he says he didn't, that his wife is crazy and concocts theories in her mind with little foundation.



The "boom" is just the sound of a car but Rick runs off. Jessica chases after him and asks him about the Kree-Skrull War.





She asks how come he doesn't just go to Captain America, and he says its because Cap was mad because of what he wrote in the book. They decide to go to the Baxter Building instead, but the Fantastic Four is away.



He runs off and gets lost in the crowd, leaving Jessica alone and baffled.

#9...

Jessica leaves a bunch of calls for the Avengers explaining what happens, when she gets an e-mail from the gay guy whose wife hired her. He agrees to meet Jessica at a Starbucks. He, of course, thinks that Jessica is another guy.

She later gets a call from the Avengers' butler Jarvis, who tells her that the Rick Jones who she has been following is not who claims to be.



Jessica is understandably pissed, for lack of a better word.



Jessica asks "Rick" how the trouble he got into worked out, and he responds "not in front of the civilians".

Later, back with Jessica's other client, the one who discovered that her husband was gay; thinking that Jessica is a guy, the husband schedules a date with her at a Starbucks. It turns out he's a psychotherapist.

Comments

[dc2houseofmystery]

It's interesting that Bendis became "the man" at Marvel, because this book is a microcosm of every weird little tic he has yet it's the one that got him Avengers and then the whole world.

The repetitive dialogue that's supposed to be "naturalistic", and then the reeeeeally decompressed storytelling... The shoe-horning of his favourite characters like Luke Cage into the lives of his original characters (that are at times are really Mary Sue-ish), it's just strange to me.

And while I DO enjoy Gaydos' work, the copy and paste of art from one page to another really bothers me for some reason, and it wouldn't be like that, I think, if it wasn't for the demands of the story Bendis is putting out there. That scene with the gay husband for example-- really blatant copy and paste. It's quite distracting.

[cyberghostface]

Not sure how Jessica would even begin to qualify as a Mary Sue given that she fits none of the criteria. She's average in looks, she was rather unremarkable as a superhero and she's a bit of a fuckup in general when the series starts. There's no scenes where Bendis pokes you and goes "See how great she is?" like he did with Miles.

As for shoe-horning, Luke Cage makes perfect sense for a street-level title like this.

[coldfury]

I've read that for certain dialogue scenes Bendis actually requests that the artist do the cut and paste for framing reasons.

[bizarrohulk]

Well, Alias was originally supposed to be a Spider-Woman book, which would explain all the "remember the new guy" stuff and Jessica being friends with established characters.

[cyberghostface]

That's actually an urban legend. Bendis had a separate idea for a Spider-Woman book but Jessica Jones was never her.

[lyricalswagger]

She reminds me a lot of Maura Tierney for some reason

[bradygirl_12]

Not even a big fan of Jessica's but this is a good book.

[reveen]

One thing I really like about the art here is the creases and deformation in Jessica's face when she makes expressions. I goes a long way to make her actually look like a real human being rather than a porcelain supermodel whose face never stops looking gorgeous.