I just want to feel something different

Alias #1 (2001)

Chosen by me from my shelf. One of the books that really got me into comics in general and marvel comics specifically.

Cover art by David Mack

The early 2000s were an interesting time for Marvel. They had just come out of a bankruptcy and the tail end of that weird Image comics influenced era where Liefeld ruled all. There was a lot of bad comics around (and a lot of good stuff too, as it ever will be) and Marvel in particular looked tired, hokey and irrelevant. 

In came Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada and really shook things up in a way that is still felt today.

Part of their initiative was given books to interesting creators and sort of letting them run wild. I'm sure I will be looking at a number of these comics before long, like the incredible Milligan/Allred X-Force run, Ultimate Spider-Man, New X-Men and lots more.

This was the time I started really getting into comics. I had read a few key books because my home town library had quite a good selection of trade paperbacks - Sandman, Watchmen, Miracleman Claremont/Byrne X-Men stuff but i was still mostly snobby about superheroes. Couldnt understand the point of them. Read a lot of 2000ad and judge dredd the megazine.

Couple of years before Alias' first issue came out I went to university and suddenly I had a local comic shop, never had before, and the world of sequential art opened up. 

To begin with I mostly got licensed stuff, Star Wars and the like. But books like the Kevin Smith Clerks issues got me onto Whiteout (leading to Queen and Country), Preacher led me to Hitman and onto the Batman books which at the time were being written by Rucka and Brubaker. New X-Men, a few months before Alias really got me into the marvel universe. 

It's a period in comics I hold a great fondness for and will return to a lot for these posts.

But today's is about one of my all time favourites. With one of my all time favourite characters.

Alias (which, whenever I mentioned it to friends I would have to say was not related to the Jennifer Garner teevee show) starring Jessica Jones.

Jones was a brand new creation, part Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman, part Jim Rockford. The excellent maxi series from a year before - The Sentry had pulled a gag where it was claimed to be a Stan Lee hero everyone had forgotten about and Alias does a similar thing. Jessica is a part of the history of the marvel universe but she is entirely separate from it. Which was just perfect for a cynical newbie like me. She was my gateway into these baffling, silly characters with powers. She was funny and interesting but brittle and off-putting. If she could do the right thing and not allow for the humiliation of Captain America maybe I should give him a second look (and a couple of years later Brubaker and Epting's amazing run on that title would begin). but some of that would come later. 

The first issue just blew me away. 

The first word is "fuck". Now that may be a low bar way of differentiating yourself from the rest of Marvel's superhero output but it's impact is undeniable even now.

It's frank about how much of a screw up Jessica Jones is, not as part of an after school special on addiction or some such but just as part of her character.

From the very first scene she takes no shit from a man, who is dismissive and misogynistic (unsubtly he is portrayed in a 'wife-beater' vest), the next she uses a good man for sex (heavily implied to be anal) and refuses to feel guilty for it and then gets on doing her job.

Bendis' writing ticks and quirks are very evident, the Mamet style patter, repeated patterns and panels but had never really been applied to comics like this and offer a amazing window into the world of this drunk private eye. 

Gaydos has a great eye for character, Jessica feels real from the very moment we see her, and pages like the one where we have a collection of panels spilling down the page reflecting Jones taking in details of her client are beautifully simple but detailed. Showing you the way she thinks without having to rely on words telling you.

I simply love this book so much.