Civil War II: Hollow Realization Followup: Briefcase Lady

[informationgeek]

So, remember that briefcase lady from issue #4? You don't? Well I don't blame you, but let's refresh yourself and get to the point of this post...



Alright, so here's the post from Civil War II: Hollow Realization #4 I did a few months back that focuses on briefcase lady.







Then later...








And then she disappears from the plot, never to be seen again...





...until Jessica Jones #3 apparently. In the last issue, our title character got kidnapped by Spot and was apparently brought before his boss. And here we are...









Oh boy... guess that's one way to deal with a plot point. Just dump it into another comic.

Comments

[seisachtheia]

So she is sketchy, huh? That does seem kind of important just to drop it off in another comic.

[thehood]

Read again, it's more like she has grudge against them because of what they did to her in CW2, hence why she wants to hire Jessica.

Carol was still wrong, her briefcase was not a weapon.

She's also doesn't sound well informed, considering she doesn't seem to know of AIM'S new status .

[bruinsfan]

So Ulysses' prophecy regarding her was a self-fulfilling one?

[thehood]

Doesn't seem like it, since it was about a specific point in time and so far, she's not planning on killing anyone.

[junipepper]

I don't know. I'm having a hard time getting a read on her.

[balbanes]

"You know, I think I met your best friend..."
"Jack Daniels?"

Wow, that was awesome.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

I wish Bendis would learn to compensate with his dialogue. Because without an actor or any type of inflection, it all really just sounds the same

[cygnia]

So, if she's Skeevy All Along, will Carol get any sympathy?

Or will the powers that be try to force it as "Carol Drove Her to Skeeviness LOL!"

[draganoche]

Carol driving her seems to be the thing. I mean with the marvel civilian trope being so prevelant, is it really a surprise that she might not take being shanghaied well?

[freezer]

So, if she's Skeevy All Along, will Carol get any sympathy?

Nope. The options as I see it.

1. Marvel sat on that revelation, giving me no reason to sympathize now.


2. This was an ass pull to make Carol look better. No sale.


3. The "Carol Drove Her to Skeeviness LOL!" option, Which makes Carol look even worse, no matter how arbitrary it feels.


4. This is Bendis picking up a plot thread CWII dropped on purpose. Which makes it not about Carol.

[thehood]

She does say she wants to stick it the capes because of what Carol did to her.

So it's not her being bad all along and Carol was still wrong about her being with Hydra.

[thehood]

Except Alison here still isn't a Hydra agent, so Carol was still wrong.

In fact, the implication here is that she now has a grudge against super heroes because of what Carol did to her.

Also, to her credit, she only took Jessica to the building across from her office.

[balbanes]

Maybe Alison becomes a Hydra agent, then detonates the briefcase? There's definitely precedent for Ulysses handing out self-fulfilling prophesies.

[thehood]

She's rather dismissive of Hydra and AIM. Her plans also doesn't seem to involve killing anyone.

So far, it seems like she wants to get dirt on capes and humiliate them.

[starwolf_oakley]

Briefcase Lady looks like Elizabeth Reaser, known as Esme Cullen from the Twlight movies and Rebecca Pope from the 4th season of Grey's Anatomy.

[cyberghostface]

I know this place likes to rag on Bendis for whatever but I'm not seeing the issue. As the OP says, most people have probably forgotten about the lady. And if she is important, we'll find out eventually in another title.

Cap manipulating everyone behind the scenes of CW is a much more important plot point but no one seems to mind that not being covered on the main title.

[thehood]

One thing that bug me is that Alison mocked aim, saying "That why they're still where they are", when that's not the case. AIM is in a new position, they work for the US government now and they trust AIM more than they trust SHIELD.

At first i thought maybe this was set before USAvengers, but Jessica clearly knows of Dani Cap. So I guess Alison is just not very well informed.

[astrakhan42]

Maybe Bendis found out at Al Ewing's version of Civil War 2 as told in The Ultimates was way better than the actual mini and was throwing some shade at New Avengers in response... or more likely he still just doesn't give a shit about books other than the ones he's writing.

[thehood]

Kinda figured, seeing as how Bendis also ignored Bruce Banner's development in TAH, but i didn't want to assume.

Still, he referrenced Dani Cap, so he must be aware of what Ewing's doing.

[beyondthefringe]

So Jessica's plan was to alienate her friends and family, get thrown in jail, and generally puts herself into the position where this lady with a grudge decided to tap her as the exact sort of person she needed for her plan... right? I mean, Bendis wouldn't have made the plot and underlying mystery so obvious this quickly, right?

Because it's all that makes sense. Alison is all "You're exactly what I need" and Jessica is like "Yeah, my life sucks." And given the Jessica we've seen up to this point, who loves her husband and baby and is okay with her life...

Yeah. Just putting this here and seeing how it plays out.

[thehood]

If that was the case, i doubt she would be preventing Luke from seeing Danielle.

No, whatever is going with Jessica doesn't seem to be about Alison Greene.

Whatever is going on with Jessica seems to about Danielle.

[shadowpsykie]

I don't know... the two issues could be tied together.... This does sound like something Jessica would do... and if something happened with Allisson that leads to something happening to future Danni, then maybe that would explain everything. Also.... she might be keeping Luke away because of the cover.

[shadowpsykie]

I don't know... the two issues could be tied together.... This does sound like something Jessica would do... and if something happened with Allisson that leads to something happening to future Danni, then maybe that would explain everything. Also.... she might be keeping Luke away because of the cover.

[mrstatham]

If they keep this up with Carol they're going to need to majorly rehab her image for that movie in a couple of years. Seriously. I don't understand how we can go from the likeable, awesome character of Deconnick's run to this.

That said, they handwaved Tony's responsibilities away pretty easily. Although that in itself pisses me off. I'm getting sick of seeing Marvel invoke these big 'real world' issues - and profiling and the shit Carol's doing here ARE big, real world issues - and then not having the balls or skill to deal with what they're invoking properly.

[caivu]

An overwhelming majority of moviegoers are not going to give a flying red slap about what Carol is like in the comics. Her comic portayal, even currently, is not going to affect the movie's success one iota.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

No, but you know how Marvel likes their movie synergy, which means they'll likely have to backpedal this something fierce around the time the movie comes out.

[thehood]

Doubt it, because they don't think she's the badguy.

[freezer]

Said synergy gives me a cynical suspicion that's what Jessica's heel turn is all about: Break her and Luke up and turn her back into the broken bird she was in Alias and is in her Netflix show.

[fiddlingfrog.livejournal.com]

I'd say there's about even odds of Carol either being dead or not Captain Marvel by the time her movie comes out. As much as people complain about synergy it usually only affects the comics after the movie has come out, and even then Marvel killed Thor just a couple months after his movie came out.

[thehood]

That makes no sense, Iron Man was still Iron Man and not dead when his movie came out and that was back when people still hated him for his actions in Civil War.

Also, they're pushing Carol as Marvel's top female hero, so no. They're not going to kill her and they're not going to replace her, especially not when her movie is out. At that point they will be pushing her book extra hard, like they always do.

And Thor was alive when his film came out and if you are talking about his death Fear Itself, that didn't last long and was back in a couple of weeks.

[captainbellman]

That her last name is Green makes me suspect that this might eventually have hilarious repercussions in a future issue of Squirrel Girl.

[raspberryrain]

I thought she was related to Rachel.

[icon_uk]

So the briefcase was a self-fulfilling causality loop? They must intervene because it's dangers, but it's only dangerous because they intervened and thus changed it's owners outlook.

I'm more curious as to why Ulysses power would have focussed on the briefcase, when it's a maguffin, and his power should see through that. It was the treatment of Alison that's caused the problem, not her briefcase.

[bruinsfan]

I still think it's insane that someone who's supposedly building future scenarios based on currently extant data could predict exactly where and when Thanos would teleport in. He no longer existed as far as anyone on Earth knew at the time, and in Ultimates he apparently followed Galactus' wake back into the multiverse to a location in a far distant star system. There wouldn't have been any data about him available for absorption until after he appeared on Earth.

[long_silence]

To be fair in the Ultimates tie-in, Project PEGASUS was building a new cosmic cube out of Iso-8. They'd drawn the attention of the galactic community, including a Shi'ar representative monitoring Earth. Thanos attacked his vessel and demanded information from him.

So depending on Ulysses' range then it's not outside the realm of possibility for him to predict that "New cosmic cube with practically zero defenses + Thanos learning of cube = an attack on Project PEGASUS is imminent".

Plus even if Thanos and the Shi'ar monitoring vessel were outside of Ulysses' range, it's still possible that someone in Alpha Flight was in contact with that vessel and they were aware that Thanos had returned

[shakalooloo]

No-Prize: The briefcase was full of an undetectable brain virus that infected Carol when she opened it, explaining her unlikable behaviour in the event from then on.

[scorntx]

What about her unlikable behaviour before that?