Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Alias (Vol. 1), Issue #21 – “The Underneath (Part 6)”! In the previous installment, Jessica Jones and Jessica Drew team up to find Denny and Mattie. And they do find them in a hotel in Manhattan! The Jessicas are gonna fuck some bitches up!

And now, the “thrilling” conclusion!

Alias (Vol. 1), Issue #21 [July, 2003]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“The Underneath (Part 6)”

One of Denny’s henchmen is a spindly little nerd whose super ability is shooting out colorful bubbles that pop all around the room. “The fuck?” Jones says. The nerd can’t control it; bubbles pop everywhere. Jones goes for Mattie, but she starts losing her balance and falls to the floor in a daze. The next three pages are bereft of dialogue: it appears that Jones is having a vision of herself as Jewel fighting off various Avengers, which include the Hulk, Doctor Strange, and a guy in a tight speedo, among others. After this brief vision, Jones wakes back up among the colorful bubbles.

The nerd still can’t stop controlling his bubbles. Denny makes his way over to the door and yells at Jones. “Bitch, I don’t know who you are – but I swear to God, for this, I am going to find you, rape you, and kill you.”

This Denny guy is a pleasant bloke, huh?

“FUCK YOU!” Jones yells back, kicking Denny in the leg.

This has basically been eight pages of “AHHHH, AAIIIIEEE, OWWW, FUCK, AHHHH, OHHHH, AAAGGHHHH, FUCK” without much else going on. Everyone in the hotel room just kind of keeps bumbling and falling down.

Another dude in a leather jacket tries to strongarm Jones, but he gets zapped by Drew. That’s the most exciting thing to happen so far. Jones punches the glasses off of him while he keeps muttering intentions to murder. Jones bashes his head in with a rotary phone. Jones unbolts the TV from the dresser and smashes it on his head. This one finally knocks him out.

The room is lousy with passed-out and/or critically injured motherfuckers. There’s not a single usable panel so far, so I’ll just use this one:

Classic Denny.

Anyway, after knocking Denny out, they speak to Bubble Guy (aka “Speedball”). Drew asks what the fuck he’s doing here, and Speedball is confused. He thought the ladies were with them. “Considering we kicked the shit out of everyone but you, what do you think?” Drew sneers. Speedball is still confused, he barely even knows where his dick is! Jones and Drew say they’re here to rescue Mattie. Speedball is here to bust the dudes for drug dealing!

“Well, what the fuck is up with your shit powers?” Drew asks the nerd. Speedball gets defensive now, all like “I was here first!” and “Where’s my dick?”

“…heeey, man, what’s goin’ on?” says Mattie, waking up in a daze. Jones picks the girl up.

“Mattie? Sweetie? It’s me, Jessica Drew.”

“Noooo shit. Hey, girl.”

Nice reunion. The cops are here, by the way. They’re here because Speedball called the cops earlier and the cops are helping him. Helping him step on black guys’ necks, that is! That’s all cops are good for, right?! HEH HEH HEH! BACK THE BLUE, WOOP WOOP WOOP!! Jones wants to get Mattie out of the room before the cops see her. “What should I do?” Jones asks as the police try to bust the door down.

There’s an easy answer to this, and thank god they do it. Jessica Drew zaps the fucking police as they try to enter the room, and Jones leaps out of the window with the girl and lands safely on her feet after falling 20 stories! Whew, that’s the stuff!

“Hey, what’sss going on?” Mattie says, drugged all hell the fuck up. Jones hails a taxi and gets in with the kid to take her, presumably, to the Jamesons. I don’t know. They don’t show it. They just show Jessica Jones in her office six weeks later playing Neopets or something on her computer.

Then she gets an unexpected guest!

Ohhhh, you’re not dead? Geez, this is kinda awkward…

Mattie shows up with Mrs. Jameson. She’s very nervous, but she’s no longer drugged or oozing from a wound in her back or anything like that. “I wanted to thank you for saving my life,” she finally says after a few panels of “hummina hummina hummina”. Then Mattie starts rambling about her life spiraling out of control, how she thought she met a “cool” older guy. “We went out once, and all of a sudden I don’t even know where I am half the time…”

Jones sympathizes with the girl. The apologies are not necessary and all that, yada yada yada. Mattie presents Jones with a gift: It’s a front-page newspaper clipping with the headline “SUPERHERO TEAM UP TRIO SAVE MYSTERY TEEN FROM DRUG DEALING PARASITES”.

Before Mattie and Mrs. Jameson walk out of the office, Jones stops them with a nagging question. When Mattie was in Jones’ apartment she had said something like “They lied to me.” “Who told you to come to my house?” she asks. “Who did you think I was? Jessica Drew?”

Mattie doesn’t even remember being in Jones’ apartment! Sorry! No answer for you today! Jones grimaces with frustrations.

That evening, Scott waits for Jones by her office building. She rebukes him for not calling for the last six weeks. He claims he was discouraged because she yelled at him after he asked if she was raped. So he thought “Life’s too short for crazy.” Heh heh, isn’t that interesting? Uhm.

Jones calls this the worst apology in the history of the universe and of apologies in general, sir. She tells him to shove his head up an ant’s ass. And also, stick your little boner in a electrical soc–

“I think I’m in love with you,” Scott says. Oof. Then he retracts, saying that he didn’t mean to blurt it out while they were yelling at each other. He apologizes some more with words that are a little less shitty. “You’re a better person than you think you are,” he tells her. “You’re prettier than you think you are. You’re all those things… There, that’s what I meant to say.”

She stares at him with half-lidded eyes for a moment. “Uggghh! Fuck!! Fuck!! I’m so mad at you and you do this now. Fuck!!”

He asks her out on a date. She says “Fuck!!” again, then requests a fancy date. “Better be damn fancy. You got a lot riding on it.”

Final Thoughts

That’s a wrap! What an underwhelming story about child trafficking and, uh, weird superhero blood-based drugs.

What adventures are in store next for Jessica Jones? Underground Nazi mutant aliens? Cold cans of SpaghettiOs? Some of that good ol’ Scott Lang dick? Let’s hope for SpaghettiOs.