Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Alias (Vol. 1), Issue #4 – “Alias Investigations (Part 4)”! I’m liking these creative story names for these issues. In the previous installment, Jessica Jones is interrogated by a smiley homicide detective for about 49 pages. Matthew Murdock, aka Daredevil but maybe we don’t really know that yet (?) busts in lawyer-style and drags her out of there. He and Luke Cage go way back, and I guess Murdock owed him a favor. He’s Jones’ lawyer.
After that whole unpleasantness was finally over, Jones decides to visit her old superhero buddy Carol Danvers to try to enlist some help, and Danvers finally begrudgingly agrees. Jones asks her to look up the number she originally got from her client, and later Danvers discovers that the number is linked to the office of Democratic presidential candidate Steven Keaton in Washington D.C.
Weird, right! I thought so. Let’s see what happens next.
Alias (Vol. 1), Issue #4 [February, 2002]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Alias Investigations (Part 4)”
There’s some George W. Bush-lookin’ guy on TV in the first few panels here, and I started laughing because the artist drew some guy that looked like George W. Bush, and then I realized that it’s actually supposed to be George W. Bush! The political ad chastises Bush for spending taxpayer money on “servicing the interests of the elite” while footage of him rubbing elbows with costumed superheroes is shown. “Time to vote for someone who has your best interest at heart. Vote Keaton for president.” Keaton is some fucking Gerald Ford-lookin’ white guy. Fuck Keaton.
We cut to some public affairs talk show where panelists are analyzing the ad, and they’re all surprised that Keaton is pointing out Bush’s ties to the Avengers/Fantastic Four in a negative light. “One of the most poorly thought-out strategies in the history of modern politics” claims a pundit. Ha! Wait 15 or 20 years, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Four Seasons Total Landscaping, son.
As these political buffoons stroke their dicks, Jones, who is half-listening to the TV in a bar, starts relating her situation to losing car keys and tearing up the house looking for them, only to discover that they were exactly where they were supposed to be the whole time. Then you can’t believe how much of an idiot you feel afterward. The pundits arguing about “fearing the large men wearing masks” being a good idea causes Jones to break the shot glass that she was gripping tightly. The bartender asks her to leave, saying that he “doesn’t want her mutant shit at his place”. She drunkenly tries to argue with him with snappy comebacks like “thing is–man…”, but hobbles her way out of the bar anyway. It’s broad daylight. She’s in Washington D.C.
Ohhhhh…shhhhhiiiii….. hiiii guuuuuuurrrlll….
Jones puts on her favorite hangover-hidin’ sunglasses and ambles around town. The thing she feels like an idiot about is that her client set her up! Tricked her! Hoodwinked her! At least she thinks she was. I, personally, am not at all convinced about that yet. She makes her way to Keaton Campaign HQ, where she finds the woman who set her up! Tricked her! Hoodwinked her! Like I said, I thought so all along! The woman recognizes her, excuses herself from the conversation she was having with a colleague, and hurries to the back alley. She frantically attempts to dial a “Mr. Lawson” on her brick of a Year 2002 phone, but Jones ambushes her before she can connect. The woman faints or orgasms or something, hard to really say for sure! Jones grabs her cellphone and gets Lawson’s number.
Lawson is a lawyer, and the number goes to the Law Offices of Lawson, Daviano & Silver. Jones goes up to Lawson’s office and lays it all out on the table; says that she knows he hired her through a third-party. This guy is cocky and half-shadowed, so you know something is up! He asks her why exactly he would do that. Undaunted, she says she doesn’t know, but the girl she was hired to find is dead and she wants to know WHY and HOW and WHERE and WHEN and WHAT and WHO and HUH and WHY! Lawson starts stalling with some “you did NOT just come in HERE and accuse ME of a CRIME to my FACE in my own OFFICE” rigamarole. Her stony-faced, silent reaction speaks louder than words, but if they were words they would be “yeah I did bitch”. He doesn’t answer, but instead denies everything and threatens to throw her out. He gets on the phone and starts to call the cops, but pauses once she says that the cops would love to hear what she has to say about this. He hangs up the phone and remains silent. She walks out of there.
Hey, this is just like MY job but with less profanity.
Jones takes some time to catch up with her reading audience! That’s nice of her! Here’s the skinny: once she found out her client was trying to call her lawyer, Jones knew that he wasn’t who she needed to talk to anyway. BUT, she had some fun confronting the guy and dropping the murder bombshell on him. She knew that he was lying about being involved, but she also knew that the guy was surprised to learn the murdery murder part of things. She’s just happy to have given the lawyer a scare. With that out of the way, she now needs to figure out who hired the lawyer to hire the woman to hire Jones to follow a woman who ended up getting killed. And WHY! WHOWHATHUH! So she sits waiting in the parking garage of the law firm with the intention of following Lawson when he heads out.
While she waits in the car, she gets a phone call from our favorite little daredevil of a man Matthew Murdock! He declares that Jones is no longer a suspect after the murdered woman’s autopsy results came back. Congratulations! Plus, the grinning jerk who interrogated her in the last issue was pulled off the case! Double congratulations!
♫♬ HERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAAAAAAAY! ♬♫
I think Murdock was expecting his cock to get sucked at this point because the wind was taken out of his sails when she barely responded to this news. ANYWAY, no one’s got nuthin’ on her. She is grateful to be rid of one problem, but continues to be a Debbie Downer about all the other problems. You know, the who what where when why what where who why and how stuff about all the shit that’s going on. She’s still lost as to why she’s even involved in the first place! God Damnit! She asks him what evidence, exactly, ruled her out as a suspect. He says a very large man with very large man-hands strangled the girl, but has Murdock looked closely at Jones’ hands? She got some thicc-ass fingers, dogg.
Of course, as she ruminates over these large hands, a man with large hands suddenly grabs her out of her car and wraps his large hands around her throat. “What do you want from me” she chokes out. “Nothing” he answers, smiling like Erik Estrada.
Final Thoughts
Home stretch! One more issue left of this particular story! So much still to know, like, uh…everything. Seems to me that someone from the Keaton campaign is trying to involve Jones in damaging Bush’s reputation with the whole superhero angle, but why specifically HER is unclear to me. But it sure seems like the kind of storyline I’d expect from the post-9/11 500% approval-rating days of the Bush presidency, so no surprises there.
Too bad Jones seems damaged by her past and hesitant to really hand someone’s ass to them, but she’s got her WITS and that’s more than I can say about Batgirl who just fumbles her way through all her sticky situations WHOOPS-style.
Do I have more to say? No! Except that I’m JONESING for the next issue! lol
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