Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Alias (Vol. 1), Issue #3 – “Alias Investigations, Part 3”! In the previous installment, Jessica Jones considers destroying the footage she shot of Captain America at her client’s sister’s house. After discovering that her client’s phone was disconnected, that her client’s address led her to a storefront, AND that the client’s sister’s house is now a crime scene, Jones heads to Luke Cage’s apartment. He blows her off in an already-married fashion.

The next morning a detective questions Jones. She is told that her client’s sister has been murdered. Jones fakes surprise, but then is busted when the police shows her a whole mess of photos of her present at the crime scene! Oopsy-daisy! Down to the station with you, Jonesy!

This series is a humdinger so far! I’m positively frothing with delight! Please join me in part three of the thrilling story!

Alias (Vol. 1), Issue #3 [January, 2002]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Alias Investigations (Part 3)”

Interrogation room time! She’s sitting at the table, alone, talking to the mirror. Finally, Detective Paul Hall shows up being all coy and cute behind his Edward James Olmos mustache. He starts prying with questions into her past stint as Jewel, the superhero, the “alias” as it were. She’s sweating a bit and getting catty with him. He never stops smiling. “What can you do?” “I don’t know — stuff.” “Are ya strong?” “Stronger than you — yes.” “Are you threatening me?” “No. I was answering your question.” “Uh huh.” She’s only cooperating because she knows enough to know that it’s the smart thing to do at the moment. You can tell she wants to kick his teeth in, though. He shows her one of her portraits from her superhero days. “Why no costume?” “Just not me.” “I would wear a costume.” “Why don’t you, then?”. Ol’ Paul here stays pretty fixated on the costume, going on about how a costume can be very meaningful as a symbol to people. A symbol that people can trust. “Or hate…” she retorts, glumly.

He starts grilling her about other powers she might have–stretching, invisibility, growing tall–all of which she denies curtly and asks if she can make a phone call. “You know who asks for phone calls? Guilty people” Detective Hall says, the little scamp.

Go fuck yourself, Edward James Olmos!

The questioning continues. “Do you use your special super powers to get work done as a private dick?” “Yes.” “How’s that working out for you?” “Up until today — pretty good.” He then asks if she knows any of the Fantastic Four, which makes her weirdly uncomfortable, and then he asks if she was hired to trail the murdered woman. “Yes.” He then asks what happened next, and she says the most words she has been able to say so far, basically catching the reader up on what has gone on for the last two-and-a-half issues.

Listen, the only thing I could murder right now is a cold cut combo with a bag of Baked Lay’s.

“Why did you lie to me when I told you the woman was dead?” he asks, to which she responds earnestly by admitting that she wished she hadn’t and that she had panicked in the moment, especially since she had spent the better part of an evening paranoid that someone was fucking with her. Hall finds this hard to believe, but she lays out her reasons and then tells him that someone must be fucking with him too if he really believes she’s guilty. Sounds like the desperate flailings of a guilty person to me!

Jones tells Hall that her whole involvement amounted to finding Miranda, as she was hired to do, and going home. He asks what time she got home. She says 1am. He asks why she called Miranda’s sister at 1am. She says because her client was so distraught about her sister’s disappearance that, maybe, a middle-of-the-night phone call to let her know she was safe was appropriate. “But she wasn’t safe, was she?” Hall points out. “She was when I left her.” Jones replies. She keeps asking him throughout this interrogation if he finds it at all odd that he received an anonymous tip about all of this in the first place, which is a question he has repeatedly completely ignored.

“Why did you call officers to your place of employment yesterday?” he asks, referring to the incident with the hostile client at the very beginning of this series. He grins when she freezes up. “You threw this man through a plate glass window.” “He attacked me first. I was defending myself.” Hall then asks Jones if she thinks it’s fair to use her powers for self-defense purposes against people without powers, and then starts to imply that maybe she has a recurring habit of displaying her out-of-control temper. Throwing men through plate glass windows. Strangling young women. That kind of thing. Thinking maybe it wasn’t Jessica Jones at all. Thinking maybe it was “Jewel”. Thinking maybe there are even other personalities kicking around ideas in that brain of hers. This is where she starts to get mad!

All 38 of the people in my head agree that you’re out of line, mister!

Now Hall’s gone and done it! Jones ain’t playing anymore! After telling Hall to go fuck himself, some suit with red sunglasses walks into the room and announces that he is Jessica Jones’ lawyer and that they are both gonna blow this popsicle stand! Why it’s none other than MATTHEW MURDOCK, also known as Daredevil, and it looks like I’m gonna have to start reading some Daredevil comics too. Shit! Murdock lays down some cold, hard, legalese which backs Detective Hall into a corner, and then they skedaddle on out of there.

Hell, if even Jesus-Boy Matt Murdock thinks you’re guilty, then it’s really not looking good.

Outside, Jones asks who Murdock is and he says that they’ve met before. She doesn’t remember. “Luke Cage and I go way back” he tells her, which is probably true! What do I know? I’m just here reading comics! Murdock tells Jones that Cage contacted him about her situation and he made haste to swoop in and intervene. She insists that she can’t afford a lawyer, but Murdock’s all “don’t worry about it”. I’m sure all this doesn’t help Jones feel better about her paranoia. She spends a lot of panels projecting her insecurities about feeling stupid, and it’s at this point that I’m admitting that the Krysten Ritter Jessica Jones is way more confident and badass than this Bendis Jessica Jones. Maybe she gets it together at some point, she seems pretty unsure of herself and meek. And she’s letting all these guys run the show constantly? Come the fuck on.

And, as you can see, even Murdock has to ask if Jones didn’t kill Miranda. He’s skeptical, but turns a blind eye (ha!) and assures her that the cops don’t have a case against her. “Some of these cops just like meeting superheroes”. He tells her to go on with her life, get some rest…and, uh, don’t leave town. He gives her his card.

Jones heads back to her office, where, to her disbelief, she finds the tape untouched. She can’t get over that; she has no idea why no one took it while she was detained. She calls the number on Murdock’s card to make sure it was a real number (it was). Calming down a little, finally, she looks again at the photo of the superhero crew hanging on her wall. As Jewel, Jones is shown standing next to a taller blonde woman in a black eyemask. Looks like she’s going to be the next person that Jones is going to sheepishly contact for help.

Look, Jones, nobody likes you. Go crawl into a hole.

Carol Danvers. Jones asks if she can come in, but Danvers is curt. Jones asks if she can talk to Captain American, Danvers says no. Jones says she was by the Avengers mansion and no one was there. Danvers says they’re out, and she has the flu so she couldn’t go with them. After Danvers makes it bluntly clear that she will not help, Jones asks her to at least use her security clearance to find out where the phone number she originally got from her client came from. Danvers is obviously still bitter about some past event where Jones treated her like crap, but finally gives in.

Later, Jones gets an email from Danvers with the info she asked for, plus some genuine apologies and even a friendly smile emoticon! Does anyone even call them emoticons anymore! I do! Anyway, Danvers gives Jones a contact’s phone number with a Washington D.C. area code. Jones tries calling it and she’s connected to the office of Democratic presidential candidate Steven Keaton. The issue ends with her annoyed, confused face.

:-]

Final Thoughts

I was unironically hoping for a whole bottle episode here where Jessica Jones spends the entire issue getting interrogated. Most people probably would’ve hated that, but not me! I like boring stuff like that.

The intrigue keeps on building. I’m as perplexed as Jessica Jones! I like not knowing what’s going on in a story in a good way, and not in the way that I felt lost during that Gifted story arc in Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men. I mean, come on, is this even about the dead woman anymore? Who cares, right? Old news!

Good stuff, keep it coming. I hope we see her kick someone’s ass again soon! Oh baby!