Faster than a DC Bullet: Jessica Jones, Part VI: The Pulse: Fear

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2006 (contents: 2005-06)
Borrowed from the library
Read May 2012

The Pulse: Fear

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis

Artist (for "Fear"): Michael Gaydos

Penciler (for New Avengers Annual #1): Olivier Coipel
Inkers (for New Avengers Annual #1): Drew Geraci, Drew Hennessy, Livesay, Rick Magyar, Danny Miki, Mark Morales, Mike Perkins & Tim Townsend
Colorists: Matt Hollingsworth, June Chung, Richard Isanove & Jose Villarrubia
Letterers: Cory Petit & Albert Deschesne

Now this is more like it! Michael Gaydos is back, but it's not just that that makes Fear the best volume of The Pulse by far.  It gets off to a rocky start, as Jessica visits the Baxter Building and meets three-quarters of the Fantastic Four. Nothing wrong with its execution; I'm just opposed to any moments where Jessica Jones has a genuine, full interaction with a superhero, as she stops being Jessica Jones at that moment.

But then Jessica has lunch with Sue Richards and Carol Danvers, and finally The Pulse revisits those themes that made Alias work so well: powerlessness.  Jessica is a superhero probably having a superbaby, but the powerlessness that that makes her feel-- how will the kid turn out? will she survive?-- is the powerlessness that all mothers feel. (Or so I imagine, having not been a mother myself. And hopefully not going to be one.) This is really driven home when Jessica asks Carol about her own superpregnancy. Ms. Marvel was impregnanted by an alien from another dimension: this hasn't happened to Jessica, but that's what it sometimes feels like to her.

There's one too many splash pages featuring the Avengers for my comfort, but other than that, this is a great Jessica Jones story.  The best part is the last issue, where we finally see a snippet from Jessica's brief career as "Knightress" and her first meeting with Luke Cage.  It's a lovely little vignette that's utterly consistent with everything we know about Jessica, but also makes sense of her love for Luke and her passion for motherhood that The Pulse has been lacking up to this point. The dialogue is finally written like it was in Alias, too. I kinda wish that we could have had this story sooner, but I also hafta admit that it's perfectly places here.

I also enjoyed the joke about how Jessica used to have much more foul language. Indeed, there were a number of good jokes.

In addition to this being a good Jessica Jones story, it's also finally a good Pulse story; while Jessica is giving birth, Ben Urich is tracking down D-Man, a homeless superhero inspired by Daredevil. It's a great little story that is eminently suited for the setup of The Pulse, unlike any of the stories told in it thus far, as it's actually about investigative reporting and also gives us a different angle on superheroes. Poor, hilarious D-Man.  Good jokes, here, too, but it's also oddly touching.

The book is closed out with the issue of New Avengers where Jessica and Luke get married. Olivier Coipel doesn't draw Jessica any better than anyone else who's not Gaydos, and though his art is nice, his storytelling isn't always great. Aside from the Jessica/Luke moments-- which are actually pretty good-- it's a pretty standard superhero throwdown. (Spider-Man makes a fun team member.) As I've said ad nauseam, I think having Jessica interact with the Avengers dilutes the premise a little too much, but if it's gotta happen, this is pretty good.

How come the teenage fanboy from Alias wasn't invited to the wedding, though? I mean, what happened to him at all? Poor guy. Dropped like he never even mattered.

Next issue: whatever happened to Green Arrow, Black Canary, and Cupid anyway? I don't care, but I'm going to find out regardless!

Faster than a DC Bullet: Jessica Jones, Part IV: The Pulse: Secret War

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2005 (contents: 2004-05)
Borrowed from the library
Read April 2012

The Pulse: Secret War

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis

Artists: Brent Anderson & Michael Lark

Inker: Stefano Gaudiano
Colorist: Peter Pantazis
Letterer: Cory Petit

I was excited to see that Michael Lark was one of the artists working on the second volume of The Pulse; he was the principal artist on Gotham Central, and judging by that series, his sensibilities ought to match that of Jessica Jones better than Mark Bagley's ever did. And indeed it does, though he's still not Michael Gaydos. (Not really his fault, admittedly.)

However, the story of Secret War might be better than that of Thin Air, but it still doesn't feel right. We get here The Pulse's perspective on a strange series of attacks across New York, and Jessica Jones is desperate when Luke Cage is kidnapped. If I bought into their relationship, I might care more. A lot of details here are purposefully withheld-- the reporters at The Pulse never find out what's going on, and so neither do we. While this fits the powerless ethos of the Alias stories, something about this never quite clicks. Maybe it's because Jessica is too close to the center of the superhero universe? Wolverine shows up for some reason.

The Pulse has a potentially interesting premise, but it keeps on squandering it. These are neither good superhero stories nor good inversions of superhero stories, leaving you with pretty much nothing.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Jessica Jones, Part III: The Pulse: Thin Air

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2004 (contents: 2004)
Borrowed from the library
Read April 2012

The Pulse: Thin Air

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis

Penciler: Mark Bagley

Inker: Scott Hanna
Colorists: Peter Pantazis with Brian Reber
Letterer: Cory Petit

The end of Alias wasn't the end of Jessica Jones; she soon became one of the central characters of another Brian Michael Bendis series, The Pulse, about the writers at the Daily Bugle, especially those in a special section focusing on superheroes.  (Jessica is there to investigate, though not write.)  This volume sees the Daily Bugle staff investigating the death of one of their own.

It's not very interesting.  I don't quite know why, but nothing the characters did ever grabbed me.  The mystery is pathetic.  There's no resonance to this.  Whereas Alias used the question "What would the Marvel Universe look like to a private investigator?" to say something very interesting about powerlessness, The Pulse asks "What would the Marvel Universe look like to newspaper reporters?" and discovers that the answer is "Exactly the same."  The subversion of the genre tells us nothing of interest.

And the reason I picked up the book, Jessica Jones herself, is weirdly off.  I don't think it's the dialogue, as the same guy wrote both Alias and The Pulse, but it might be, as The Pulse is paced much more like a conventional superhero comic; there's no awkward six-page halting conversations here.  It probably doesn't help that, now that she's pregnant, all Jessica does is worry about her unborn child.  I don't doubt that being pregnant would change her, but it's basically her only personality attribute here.  Worse, Michael Gaydos has been replaced by Mark Bagley, who has what is probably a decent style for a superhero comic, but is a complete mismatch for one about Jessica Jones.  As when Takeshi Miyazawa left Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, her body language is just wrong, and it makes all the dialogue seem off; she doesn't move the way Jessica moves or make the faces that Jessica makes.  Given time I might get used to it, but with only five issues collected in this thin volume, it's time I don't have.