Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Alias (Vol. 1), Issue #15 – “It’s Raining Men”! It’s a standalone issue, but I’ll talk about the previous storyline anyway. Previously, Jessica Jones was on a missing girl case in a podunk town. The missing girl in question ran away from home because she was too doggoned liberal for her shitty, racist, hick town. In the end, the girl’s dad gets stabbed and her possibly adult girlfriend picks her up to run away again.

Now that that unpleasantness is over, let’s see what all this raining men is about.

Alias (Vol. 1), Issue #14 [January, 2003]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“It’s Raining Men”

“Mr. Murdock is expecting you.”

“Oh.”

Jessica Jones shuffles down the hallways of the Law Offices of Nelson and Murdock and sits down outside Matty’s office reading Vogue magazine. As a woman walks into his office, the bodyguard by the door says “Hey, Babe.” Well, after about 506 silent panels, Jones just cannot let that one go! Isn’t he supposed to be bodyguarding? “We’re just letting strange women walk right into Matt’s office?”

Well, lady. That was no ordinary strange woman! This was a special strange woman. You might have heard of her? Natasha Romanov? The Black Widow? Scarlett Johansson? Ring a bell? Lost in Translation with Bill Murray? Wake up.

Whatever! Jones is of the opinion that the guard still should have stopped her. The guard with his sunglasses indoors and his exposed pecs.

So I don’t know what’s going on. Here’s an exchange between the two:

“I don’t understand you,” says the bodyguard. “Why’d you take this job if you’re so fucking pissed at me?”

“Clearly, I didn’t know you were going to be here.”

“You fucked me.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You heard me. You – fucked – me.”

Ah, it’s Luke Cage. I see now. She did fuck him. That did happen.

Whoa, sir. We keep it classy here at the Law Offices of Fatso and Blind Guy.

“I was drunk.”

That’s always why she fucks anyone, it seems. Cage lays it all out on the table, obviously he’s been thinking about getting this off his well-oiled chest for months. She came to him when she needed someone. He helped. She was ungrateful.

Then a moment of silence.

“And who was that in your apartment that night when I came by?” Jones asks.

“Do you want to be my girlfriend?” he asks back.

Jones makes a face. “What? No!

“You don’t want to be my girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Do you want to get married?”

“Hell, no!”

“Then it’s none of your fucking business who was in my bed.”

It seems that this is what the whole issue is going to be about. Airing dirty laundry in the hallway of an office building. Jones calls Cage a “cape chaser”. Do you have a fetish or something, my man? You even fucked She-Hulk? She smells like pickles!

Cage defends himself. If he was a lawyer, he’d be fucking a lot of lawyers probably, right? So, he’s in the superhero business. He fucks a lot of superheroes. What of it?

I hope to get Iron Fisted someday.

Cage concludes his rant by informing Jones that she’s angry at herself, not him. So cork it. Jones apologizes and then thanks him for that one night.

“Hey, do you think it’s true?” she asks.

“What?”

“The shit with Matt being Daredevil?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Huh. So then he heard this whole conversation we just had.”

“Hmmm… guess so.”

Cage then asks Jones out, but she’s got plans. Probably with Ant-Man. She and Ant-Man are gonna bone with his tiny little ant penis. But enough of that for now, it’s Jones’ turn to walk into Matt Murdock’s office! Finally, we’re gonna get to the meat and potatoes of Issue #15!

Oh wait, no, we jump right to Jones’ date with Ant-Man. Fuck.

I now find out that Jones, too, was bodyguarding Matt Murdock’s office for some reason. Maybe because Luke Cage isn’t man enough. She apologizes to Scottie Lang for being late as she was helping the blind guy do his job.

“Is he really Daredevil?” Lang asks.

“Does it matter?”

I lied about raping E. Jean Carroll so I had to owe the courts 83 million dollars.

Jones orders a double vodka on the rocks, but Lang stops her. “I was hoping we could not drink tonight,” he says, then orders himself a Coke. Jones is too stunned to rebut, so she orders a Sprite.

Lang knows Jones’ reputation of getting really drunk and then hating herself! So, maybe this first date could instead have a lot of not that. Sound good? No? Are you mad? You’re mad, aren’t you? Please don’t be mad. He’ll show you his little ant penis…

Jones isn’t mad, she’s just stunned is all. Lang apologizes and insists that she should order a drink if she wants to; he overstepped. She says it’s ok. She’ll stay sober for once in her life.

“So…” Jones breaks the ice a bit here. “You were in prison?”

This is met with silence, of course. “I think I need a drink,” he says. This is all very humorous, isn’t it?

“I was young. I did something insanely stupid. And I paid the price for it.”

“Rehabilitated, are you?”

“I left a better person than when I went in and I never went back. And I never will.”

Jones feels ashamed for even bringing it up. This date is going super well so far. Maybe Hitler can rollerblade into the scene and kill some Jews in front of them while they’re at it.

Then they kind of make light of the situation. Jones says she’ll do even more backround checks on him. He says, yeah man, you’ll see a bunch of shit about my divorce! Jones loves divorced men, they’re so eager to please!

Lang takes a pause and wonders out loud why Carol Danvers thought to set the two of them up. Jones figures that he looks like the kind of man that she would sleep with. He takes this as a fun compliment! Hell, she probably would’ve gone out with him herself if he didn’t go to prison once! LOL!

No, it’s cool. I love remembering being raped all the time. Nice compliment.

Scott Lang isn’t liking what he’s hearing again, but he gives her the benefit of the doubt. She tells it like it is, after all. No filter. Always an admirable quality.

By the time the waitress brings drinks, Jones and Lang are talking about his daughter. “I think I might make a good mom,” Jones says even though nothing in the last 14 issues has given me evidence for this claim.

Lang tells Jones that she’s fascinated by her current line of work. She shrugs that off, which makes him grumble “I hate dating” out loud. Again, these two are scoring major points here.

He rambles about how fucked up it must be to date a superhero. And how a superhero must feel dating a non-superhero. How can they be trusted? Etc.

“You’re the first person I’ve met in ten years who hasn’t asked me why I wasn’t a superhero anymore,” Jones says.

“Well… you’re the first person I have met in ten years who hasn’t asked me why I was a superhero.”

“Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

Then he’s about to ask her why she isn’t a superhero anymore when suddenly they see Doctor Octopus outside the restaurant crushing Jones’ taxi with his metal tentacle. Spider-Man is in tow. Jones and Lang watch as they both rampage down the street.

“You — uh – you want to go help?” Jones asks.

“I didn’t bring any of my Ant-Man stuff. Do you want to go?”

“Mmmmmmmm… nah. They got it. And I really – I don’t do that anymore.”

More silence. Then Jones thanks Lang for stopping her from drinking tonight. “I guess I kind of needed someone to do that for me.”

Outside the restaurant is a twisted mess of destroyed cars and confused, scared people running around.

“I don’t think our waitress is coming back.”

Final Thoughts

Jessica Jones is going to get drunk anyway and bone Ant-Man and get pregnant with his little Ant-Babies.

The thing about Jessica Jones is that they don’t really show her investigative abilities. We see her trying to find clues and then we see her get nowhere, and then, suddenly, at the beginning of the next issue, she has already found the person for no reason and the case gets wrapped up. It’s almost like Brian Michael Bendis doesn’t actually know how to write detective fiction! Go figure.