Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Alias (Vol. 1), Issue #11 – “Rebecca, Please Come Homel (Part 1)”! And welcome to another fresh, steamy storyline from everyone’s favorite has-been superhero! In the previous storyline, Jessica Jones is hired to find a woman’s husband. The husband is Rick Jones, who used to be Bruce Banner’s buddy before he fucked him up and Hulkified him. Then he was with Captain America for a while. Then he sang David Bowie covers.

Jessica finds Rick Jones, but he’s some other guy pretending to be Rick Jones. A compulsive liar. That’s pretty much the whole story.

I hope this one’s better.

Alias (Vol. 1), Issue #11 [September, 2002]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Rebecca, Please Come Home (Part 1)”

Jessica Jones is cruisin’ in her shitty sedan belting out the lyrics to “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City”. Just really screaming it. Lost in her own blissful exuberance…

…until she passes a giant billboard that simply says “REBECCA, PLEASE COME HOME. WE LOVE YOU.” in white block letters on a black background. That shuts her right up.

Jones drives into downtown with her quaint little map in her hands. She’s lost. Then she finds one of those newspaper vending machines that shows the following headline on today’s paper: “Investigator called in to find missing girl Rebecca Cross, case continues”. There’s a picture of Jessica Jones’ mug right on the front page. “Mother fuck!” she yells to herself.

A nearby cop, recognizing Jones as the wretch on the front page of the newspaper, asks her if she needs directions to the Cross household. The David Cross household, that is! Comedy! The cop looks like fuckin’ Luke Wilson, I kid you not. Luke Wilson asks Jones to stop by and see him again before she leaves town. He smiles like a fucking pig cop bastard. Jones returns the smile. “Think it’s best we work together,” says Luke Wilson with a wry grin. Jones agrees.

Yeah, work together in Bone Town.

At Casa de la Cross, Jones introduces herself to Rebecca’s aunt Katherine and then holds the newspaper up to her face. Katherine beams, but Jones is like “I’m supposed to be your private investigator, bitch! Private!”

While explaining the inner workings of pointed topics like “the killer can hide the body”, Rebecca’s mother descends the staircase.

But my success rate is 0%.

Jessica Jones begins the uncomfortable interview. The last time Rebecca’s mother saw her was about a month ago. She left to play Bingo at the church and didn’t realize that her daughter was gone the next morning. She thought she went to school, and when the school called and said that Rebecca hella didn’t go to school, Rebecca’s thus-far unnamed mother was like “oh gee golly”.

Now, this lady, she doesn’t live with her husband anymore. Not even on speaking terms. Jones asks if he might have something to do with this, and Ms. Cross just rants about how much her good-for-nothing husband sucks ass with his fat face. She just had a feeling that he was constantly leering at 16-year-old Rebecca with her boobs and butt and other parts that girls have. Just some of that ol’ Alabama father/daugther dynamic.

Of course, Rebecca never said anything about it. Probably because she and Rebecca weren’t very close anyway… heh heh, uh… anyway, Rebecca’s been a real cold bitch at school to her teachers even though she gets straight A’s and is friends with all the chess nerds with orthodontic headgear.

Jones grabs a most recent photograph of Rebecca: hair dyed gray and purple-tinted glasses. Black lipstick. She looks 45.

“Nothing like this has ever happened in this town, has it?” Jones asks.

“No,” responds Katherine.

Cool. Well, Jones is going to have to have a nice chat with Mr. Cross. And then… of course… the hunky police-looking guy. And then the school. But first, cough up some dough. I know money might be tight, but if you look in your couch cushions you may be able to scrounge up some–

“I have 75,000 dollars in bonds,” says Ms. Cross. “Find my daughter.”

Yes, ma’am! Off to see Daddy Dearest first!

Off to a great start!

Mr. Cross sits all fat in his easy chair watching Maury or something. “She really gone and did it,” he mutters. “She fucking called a private eye to pin this shit on me.”

Yes, sir! Cuff ‘im, boys.

Jones introduces herself politely, to which Mr. Cross responds with a hearty “She tell you I fucked the kid?” Jones doesn’t take the bait. The jailbait, that is.

After a couple more tries for a civil conversation, Mr. Cross hefts his bulk up out of the chair. “You know what? I don’t think I’m going to help you help my wife put me in jail for nothin’. No. Don’t think so. I didn’t kill my daughter. I didn’t fuck my daughter. I didn’t even think about fucking my daughter.”

Methinks the sir doth protest too much, but then he gets sappy. He is proud of his daughter. He is proud that she grew up smarter than him. That she could go be better than her parents. Do something useful with her life. And she was going to… but someone kidnapped and fucked her, maybe! And now Ms. Cross wants to pin the blame on Fat Degenerate Dad. Well, no mas!

“Fuck you for coming here,” he says. “Fuck you for thinkin’ you can intimidate me – like I got anything left to lose.” Then he stops for a second. “But you go ahead. The house is yours. You go through everything. You go through this entire town. Just find what happened to my girl.”

Yes, sir! Cuff ‘im, boys.

Mr. Cross leaves the house. Jones starts snooping around for, like, leads and clues and shit. Like a real detective. She enters Rebecca’s room which looks cluttered, just how she left it I presume. Jones finds a charming ankh necklace! Case closed!

Hey there, Gorgeous. Do you want to go step on some unarmed black guy’s neck with me?

Jones then finds a diary, which she makes a bug-eyed face at. After looking under the mattress and finding a box with a couple of coins and some weed in it, the Luke Wilson cop shows up at the door looking sly and sexy. Like a fuckin’ fox. “Find anything?” he asks. Fuck this guy.

“Where she keeps her pot,” Jones smiles.

“Want to split it?” asks Luke Wilson.

I don’t think they actually split it because that would be a CRIME in 2002. But they do get talking. He asks her why he didn’t come see him. She says she was going to, but then didn’t! But she would’ve, for serious. “Any chance you know who the local pot dealer is?” she asks him. He pretty much grunts at her. This guy sucks.

“It’s one of the senior students, but I’m not sure which one,” he finally responds. She rifles through a pile of scrapbooks and asks the cop if she can borrow them. He allows it as long as she returns them. There could be some meaty clues in here, boy howdy. Like magazine clippings of Heath Ledger! Pre-corpse!

They both head outside, and the cop brings up an uncomfortable subject. “They say you got superpowers?” he nudges. She answers in the affirmative. He tells her to behave herself. Then he tells her to come see him again later. There’s some penis-in-vagina stuff that he wants to show her, of course! Wink!

Jones visits Rebecca’s high school but doesn’t speak to the principal. He’s fishing or dead or still on the phone or something. His secretary leads Jones to Rebecca’s locker, which is still chock full of bullshit that her parents didn’t bother to come collect. Jones asks her if she knows the clique that Rebecca runs with, but she doesn’t. Useless.

Rebecca has a picture of Daredevil taped to the inside of her locker door. I’m throwing up right now.

A woman, or perhaps a girl – the art sucks – sidles on beside Jones.

“You’re looking at the wrong side of the door,” she says.

“What?”

“What you’re looking for is on the front of the locker. See it?”

“No, what are–? Oh.”

The smoking gun!

“What is this?” Jones asks.

“What do you expect… she was a mutant.”

Oh snap.

Final Thoughts

That was a little rushed at the end there, wasn’t it? “DIE” is written on a girl’s locker and this mystery person is all like “what do you expect?”

Well, at least Rebecca’s dad seems cool. Wait.