Alias (graphic novel)

AUTHOR: Bendis, Brian Michael

ARTIST: Michael Gaydos (illustrator); Matt Hollings-worth (colorist); Cory Petit (letterer); David Mack (cover artist)

PUBLISHER: Marvel Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 2001-2004

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2003-2004

Publication History

According to its creator, Brian Michael Bendis, Alias originated in a discussion between Bendis and then Marvel editor in chief Joe Quesada about writing a crime comic. Bendis wrote part of it as a screenplay, without editing himself. He took it to Marvel publisher Bill Jemas, who decided to rethink the company’s lack of titles for mature readers. Michael Gaydos, with whom Bendis had gone to art school years earlier, was hired as the artist. The series also occasionally featured work by additional artists, including Mark Bagley, David Mack, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Matt Hollingsworth. Alias launched in 2001 as the first title of Marvel’s mature-rated MAX Comics line.

The first issue of Alias was published in November, 2001, and the series ran for twenty-eight issues, until January, 2004. Various collected editions followed, starting in 2003. Alias introduces former superhero Jessica Jones, who works as a private investigator. The character had not existed prior to this series; however, she is treated as though she has had numerous previous interactions with established Marvel characters. Many of the characters included in Alias, such as Luke Cage, J. Jonah Jameson, and Jessica herself, moved to The Pulse, Bendis’s mainstream Marvel Universe series that followed the completion of Alias.

No connection exists between Alias and Chuck Dixon’s comic book of the same name from the 1980’s or the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) television crime series. Bendis derived the title by rearranging the letters of his wife Alisa’s name.

Plot

Jessica Jones, a former superhero, is a cynical private investigator whose relationships with other superheroes, many of whom are incorporated into the series, are filled with tension. In the first issue, she and Luke Cage, a former friend of Jessica and a superhero sometimes known as Power Man, have a one-night stand.

While on a case for a client, Jessica inadvertently captures the secret identity of Captain America on tape. Made paranoid by this discovery, Jessica wonders if she has been set up, especially when her client is murdered. Fearing the worst, she goes to Luke’s apartment but is turned away. Jessica is arrested for the murder, but the police seem to care more about her former life as a superhero than the crime. Lawyer Matt Murdock, also known as the superhero Daredevil, keeps her out of jail at Luke’s request. Carol Danvers, also known as Ms. Marvel, reluctantly helps Jessica find out who has set her up. The culprit is revealed to be a tycoon seeking political gain by discrediting Captain America. SHIELD agent Clay Quartermain exposes the tycoon, and Steve Rogers, the civilian identity of Captain America, thanks Jessica and secures the tape. Carol warns Jessica that Luke is a “cape chaser” and sets her up with Scott Lang, also known as Ant-Man, instead.

A new client hires Jessica to find her husband, Rick Jones, a missing superhero sidekick who is related to Jessica. Although the Rick Jones that Jessica finds is an imposter, the reader gets a chance to read part of the real Jones’s autobiography, Sidekick, which briefly revisits past story lines of the Marvel Universe.

Another client, J. Jonah Jameson, the antisuperhero editor of The Daily Bugle, hires Jessica to learn Spider-Man’s secret identity but offends her in the process. She scams him in return, using the fee she is paid to help orphans and AIDS patients. A case dealing with bigotry against mutants in a small town in New York leads Jessica to get involved with the sheriff, a reporter, a family, and a murder. After resolving the case, she connects with Scott Lang by phone on her drive back to the city, confiding in him and beginning a romantic relationship marked by misunderstandings.

For the following six months, Jessica deals with two Spider-Women, one of whom is the first Spider-Woman, Jessica Drew, and the other the victim of a drug dealer who exploits superheroes. She again encounters Bugle editor Jameson, and a mystic, Madame Web, who sees how Jessica’s past haunts her.

The series then explores Jessica’s origin story, flashing back fifteen years to when she was a teenager. At that time, Jessica attended the same high school as Peter Parker, who developed superpowers and became Spider-Man. Like Peter, Jessica gained her superpowers in an accident, hers involving large quantities of radioactive chemicals. Her parents and younger brother were killed in the accident, and Jessica was adopted by the Jones family.

In the story’s present time frame, Jessica accepts a case that entails obtaining confessions from the incarcerated supervillain Zebediah Killgrave, the Purple Man. This leads Jessica to confide in Luke and explain her history with Killgrave, who had controlled her mind and subjected her to psychological torture years before. This event led her to give up her superhero identity of Jewel.

Knowing she must confront Killgrave, Jessica visits him in prison. He greets her as Jessica Jones, his favorite comic book character, and continues to insist that they are all characters in a comic book as she attempts to get the confessions. Killgrave escapes and continues to play with Jessica’s mind, but Jessica regains control and punches Killgrave into unconsciousness just as the Avengers arrive to help her. Feeling that they have experienced something important, Scott realizes he wants to be with Jessica. However, she tells him she is pregnant and that the child is not his, ending their intermittent attempts at a relationship. At the end of the series, Luke tells Jessica that she has become more important to him than he would have thought and that he wants to be there for her. She tells him that she is pregnant with his child, and the two begin a long-term relationship that continues in two of Bendis’s next works, The Pulse and New Avengers.

Volumes

•Alias (2003). Collects issues 1-9, featuring Jessica’s reconnection with Luke, her ambivalent relationship with other superheroes, and several cases.

•Alias: Come Home (2003). Collects issues 11-15, featuring Jessica’s developing relationships with both Scott and Luke and a case involving bigotry and prejudice against mutants in a small town.

•Alias: The Underneath (2003). Collects issues 10 and 16-21, featuring J. Jonah Jameson, The Daily Bugle, and two Spider-Women.

•Alias: The Secret Origins of Jessica Jones (2004). Collects issues 22-28, linking Jessica’s past with her present.

•Alias Omnibus (2006). Collects issues 1-28 and What If Jessica Jones Had Joined the Avengers?

•Alias, Ultimate Collection Book 1 (2009). Collects Alias, issues 1-15.

•Alias, Ultimate Collection Book 2 (2009). Collects Alias, issues 16-28.

Characters

•Jessica Jones, the protagonist, is the owner and sole employee of Alias Investigations. She had a brief career as the superheroes Jewel and Knightress, but after a traumatic encounter with the supervillain the Purple Man, she decided to give up superheroics altogether. However, she retains her powers, including superstrength, relative invulnerability, and flight, which she has yet to fully master. Her past has given her some friends and contacts within the superhero community.

•Luke Cage, a.k.a. Power Man, is a friend to and on-and-off lover of Jessica. He is part of an organization called Heroes for Hire. His powers are superstrength and near invulnerability due to his unbreakable skin. Luke and Jessica’s awkward early relationship grows more meaningful as the series progresses.

•Carol Danvers, a.k.a. Ms. Marvel, has been a friend to Jessica since Jessica’s days as Jewel. She sends Jessica on a date with Scott Lang but also gossips behind her back. It is implied that Carol and Jessica had a past love triangle with SHIELD agent Clay Quartermain.

•Scott Lang, a.k.a. Ant-Man, dates Jessica at different times throughout the series. They were originally set up by their mutual friend Carol Danvers. The two connect, but their attempts at a relationship end when Jessica finds out she is pregnant with Luke Cage’s child.

•Matt Murdock, a.k.a. Daredevil, is a lawyer in his civilian life and represents Jessica when she is wrongfully arrested. Later, he hires her and Luke Cage as bodyguards to further assert that he is not Daredevil after his identity is revealed by a tabloid newspaper.

•J. Jonah Jameson is the publisher of the New York newspaper The Daily Bugle. He has an irrational antisuperhero agenda and hires Jessica to uncover and expose Spider-Man’s secret identity. He is also the foster father of Mattie Franklin, the third Spider-Woman, whom Jessica rescues from the clutches of a drug dealer. Jameson later hires Jessica as a superhero liaison in the series The Pulse.

Artistic Style

Gaydos’s art is gritty, with bold lines and abundant use of shadows. This gives the series a film-noir effect that is fitting, as the main character is a private eye. Additionally, Hollingsworth’s muted color palette enhances the somber mood displayed throughout the series.

The ability to convey characters’ expressions is one of Gaydos’s significant talents. He is able to suggest different emotions in panels that do not have word balloons or captions, giving the series the quality of “good acting.” Information and emotion are also conveyed through the strategic use of page layouts. An interesting technique is repeatedly used when a client is telling Jessica his or her story. The panel is split into two parts: The top half shows Jessica listening, while the lower half features the clients’ changes in expressions and mannerisms as they explain their stories. This technique reinforces Jessica’s character and provides a certain cohesion to the storyline.

Consistency is one of the art’s strongest qualities. When the art does change, it does so to further the verisimilitude of the story. For example, in “The Secret Origin of Jessica Jones,” Gaydos illustrates a flashback to Jessica’s teenage years, during which she went to school with Peter Parker, by drawing in a style similar to the early Spider-Man comics of the 1960’s.

Although Gaydos supplies the vast majority of the art, Alias features guest artists a few times throughout the series. This is done purposely to reflect different eras of the Marvel Universe. For example, for flashbacks of Jessica as Jewel, the art is penciled by Mark Bagley, an experienced Marvel artist whose work reflects the visual style of early 1980’s and 1990’s comics. Furthermore, the lettering, coloring, and page format also reflect this era, giving the reader the feeling that the episodes did happen and could have been published years ago. When Jessica reads Rick Jones’s autobiography, Sidekick, the accompanying one-page illustrations are drawn by Bill Sienkiewicz, another veteran artist with a distinct style. These “photos” from the book therefore separate themselves visually from the narrative reality contained within Alias.

Cover artist Mack uses a complex, layered approach. He employs a collage technique featuring the juxtaposition of realistic illustrations, childlike line drawing, and photos. This unique style separates Alias’s covers from those of other superhero books and gives depth to the characters. Overall, its unique style of art makes Alias stand out among other superhero titles and gives the series a visual maturity that accompanies Bendis’s adult themes.

Themes

Alias explores themes of identity, manipulation, self-control, escape from one’s past, and the possibility of happiness. From exposed secret identities to characters finding themselves, identity is the main theme in this series. Jessica is embarrassed by her past superhero personas. Her first adventure finds her accidentally filming Captain America as he changes into his costume, and she struggles with what to do with this information about his identity. When hired to find the missing former Hulk sidekick Rick Jones, she discovers that the man she is looking for is merely a Rick Jones impersonator. Neither the civilians nor the superheroes in Alias have a fixed identity.

Manipulation is demonstrated most blatantly in the story line “Purple,” in which the sociopathic Zebediah Killgrave, the Purple Man, is the villain. He possesses the ability to control people’s minds, and as the flashback sequence reveals, Killgrave had previously manipulated and tortured Jessica, causing her to relinquish her superhero identity.

The theme of self-control manifests itself through Jessica’s inability to fly. She can get off the ground, but not always reliably, and landing is a problem. In addition, she finds it difficult to remember and process what her own thoughts and desires were before Killgrave began controlling her mind. She remembers loving Killgrave, even though she knows he planted those thoughts in her head. Thus, the themes of identity, manipulation, and self-control are manifest in Jessica’s situation.

After alluding to it for most of the series, the story arc “The Secret Origin of Jessica Jones” shows the effects of a traumatic event from Jessica’s early years on her adult life. Jessica gained her powers as a teen when the car carrying her family crashed into a vehicle transporting radioactive material. In this single event, her family died and she developed powers as a result of her exposure to the chemicals. Jessica is unable to use her powers without being reminded of how she got them, manipulated by her past just as she was manipulated by Killgrave, and this contributes to her ambivalent feelings about being a superhero. Nevertheless, her triumph over Killgrave and her happy union with Luke at the end of the series demonstrate a final theme in the Alias series: the possibility of happiness in a world of dubious identity and past regrets.

Impact

Alias was the first title published by Marvel’s mature-rated line, MAX Comics, and was more of a critical success than a financial one, in part because of its mature-readers label. The label not only restricted sales to minors but also prevented Bendis from using popular Marvel characters such as Spider-Man and Wolverine in the series because of their appeal to younger readers. When Spider-Man, for example, does appear in Alias, he is only shown peripherally as teenage Peter Parker. However, the mature label enabled the characters to enter into more realistic relationships and adult situations, allowing them to develop as individuals both in Alias and in the works that followed.

In addition to introducing protagonist Jessica Jones, Alias served as a springboard for the reintroduction and further development of an earlier superhero, Luke Cage. The relationship, including their child and their marriage, continues beyond Alias, and they are featured in The Pulse and the New Avengers comics, in which Luke leads the team of superheroes.

Further Reading

Bendis, Brian Michael, and Mark Bagley. The Pulse (2004-2006).

Bendis, Brian Michael, and Alexander Maleev. Scarlett (2010- ).

Bendis, Brian Michael, and Michael Avon Oeming. Powers (2000- ).

Vaughan, Brian K., and Tony Harris. Ex Machina (2004-2010).

Bibliography

Giles, Keith. “Bendis Reflects on Comic-Con International 2001.” Comic Book Resources, July 27, 2001. http://comicbookresources.com/print.php?type=ar&id=176.

Yarbrough, Beau. “Marvel Grows up with Mature Readers Line as Bendis Gets Down and Dirty with Alias.” Comic Book Resources, May 7, 2001. http://www.comicbookresources.com/print.php?type=ar&id=224.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Would an Alias by Any Other Name Smell as Sweet?” Comic Book Resources, May 10, 2001. http://comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=226.