Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Alias (Vol. 1), Issue #14 – “Rebecca, Please Come Homel (Part 4)”! In the previous installment, Jessica Jones continues yelling at pastors and looking for clues about the disappearance of Rebecca Cross. Half the town thinks her dad is responsible, but when Jones returns to his residence for more conversation SHE DISCOVERS A KNIFE IN HIS CHEST!
Oh yeah, there might be a clue in one of Rebecca’s scrapbooks. They keep talking about the fucking scrapbooks, so let’s just find the clue in the scrapbook and wrap this puppy up.
Alias (Vol. 1), Issue #14 [December, 2002]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Rebecca, Please Come Home (Part 4)”
There’s a one-woman show going on down at the LAUGHZ AND GIGGLEZ HUT, in front of a brick wall and everything. She — this sixteen-year-old girl — she’s talking about how all the tabloids are saying that Daredevil is Hunky Lawyer Matt Murdock. And his two worlds collide and meld into this “entirely dark, morally screwed up… thing.” And now she’s incredibly in love with him! It’s weird, right? Lawyer by day, vigilante by night? Representing something so morally ambiguous. Good vs. Evil. Heroes vs. Lawyers. Anyway, she wrote a poem and you’re all damn well gonna hear it.
Jones is at a table listening to this drivel, knowing that she’s watching the embarrassing and cringey performance of a very alive Rebecca Cross. After Rebecca is done, she shares a kiss with her girlfriend and they both suddenly stare in Jones’ direction. “Fuck — you found me!!”
That she did, little lady, and your father is worried stabbed about you! Jones grabs Rebecca’s arm to drag her away, and Rebecca’s girlfriend calls Jones a cuntwipe! A cuntwipe! I’m reading Marvel comics and saw the word “cuntwipe”! What a time to be alive!
The bouncer at the club tries to stop Jones from dragging a paying (minor) customer out of the establishment, but Jones simply kicks him square in the nuts and moves on out of there. Into the car Rebecca goes! Time to go home!
…
…
And then what? Fall to your death off of the Sichuan-Tibet Highway? Idiot.
Jones is getting a lot of guff from this girl and she ain’t havin’ it.
“Do you even want to hear my side of it?” Rebecca grumbles. Jones only needs to know one side, baby: she’s 16, her mother hired her to find her, she found her, end of story.
“This is such shit, man!” Rebecca grumbles. She looks a little bit like Garth from Wayne’s World, I’ve decided. Rebecca bitches about how her hometown is a racist hellhole. She has to listen to all these assholes hate on mutants and the like. Constantly. And she didn’t think there was any other way. She thought this is how the world was, just a bunch of assholes hating on mutants and the like. She doesn’t give a shit about prom! Or the mall! This is about SELF-EXPRESSION and LIVING LIFE, man!
So, one day, Rebecca was pissed off enough to get on a bus headed for the next town “to take a breather on life”. And she met all these cool people who were lesbians and dudes with tattoos and they didn’t give a shit about any of that wack shit, man. She could kiss girls and hang out with druggies and talk about Jefferson Airplane without feeling the wrath of her hometown critics.
“And you know what? The second you leave… I’m going to up and do it again.”
Oh wait, she’s not done talking.
Kids say the darndest things!
After a few more panels of ranting, Jones tells Rebecca that people have been worried sick about her. This sets off a whole ‘nother set of rants. Mom’s a lying bitch! Dad’s a weak bitch! All he does is fart and watch VHS tapes he buys off of Time Life! Fuck them! Fuck all of them!
Rebecca’s neighbor Lenny, you see, she’s the only kid in town that she told where she was going. That little fucker probably ratted her out, right? “I love that little kid and the only reason I wanted him to know what I was doing is he’s the only person in the entire city I didn’t want to worry.”
But fuckin’ Lenny ratted and now she’s in a car with… *squints at nametag* Jessica Jones.
Rebecca pauses momentarily, and then she’s about to ask if Jones is really a superhero when Matt Murdock calls her on her weird 2002 dashboard Apple Watch thing. He needs her “services” ASAP! Come to New York City on the morrow! Bring donuts!
And, of course, Rebecca is pleased as punch that she got to be in the same car as a woman who just had a casual conversation with MATT FUCKING MURDOCK. So she let’s her guard down for the splittest of seconds. Jones gives her a look. A look that was drawn like shit, but a look all the same.
Rebecca sees the “REBECCA, PLEASE COME HOME. WE LOVE YOU.” billboard as they enter town and looks rather glum. But she’s home now. Safe and sound with a murdered dad to boot!
Upon returning home, Jones finds Rebecca’s aunt being arrested for the murder of Ed Cross. She has the right to remain silent. Anything she says could be used to pad out this issue further.
I finally get a name for the reporter lady. It’s Patricia, and she’s really hounding this aunt. Riding her hard with questions. And then she notices that Jessica Jones is back with Rebecca.
Rebecca runs out of the car perplexed. “Hey — wait! What is this?! What are you doing? What’s going on? W-why are you arresting my aunt?”
Silence. Awkward looks from the townsfolk.
Her mother runs up to give her what looks like, at first, to be a hug. But it’s definitely not a hug unless “slapping” counts.
Geez, let the whore have some time to get situated.
Jones plays a passive role in all this. Rebecca cries and asks Jones why she didn’t tell her about her dead-as-a-doornail dad. Then she runs away again, much to her mother’s chagrin. “That’s right! Run away again! See who you kill this time!”
Later, somehow, I don’t know how, Jones finds Rebecca at the top of the church bell tower. She tells her that she didn’t really kill her father. You know. A knife did!
Jones tells her that she knew where she would be because her scrapbooks make many references to “getting high at the church bell tower”. She wishes she had some pot right about now. Jessica Jones is right there with her on that one.
So, this is the part where Jones tells Rebecca how talented she is and other similar words of encouragement. “I have a writer friend who told me once: nothing makes a writer like a fucked up childhood. So…”
Rebecca stares at her. “What the fuck kind of superhero are you?”
lmao. Anyway, after seeing what’s going on in Rebecca’s fair town, Jones asks Rebecca if she wants a lift back into the next town. The better town where moms don’t slap their children and call them whores for indirectly killing their dads.
But, as it turns out, Rebecca’s girlfriend was in town looking for her anyway. They go off and do their own thing. Sheriff Luke Wilson approaches Jones to give her the check for her detective work.
Wise words from a fucking pig-ass fucking pig cop. Do you smell bacon, you fucking cop?
Anyway, he’s got a shitload of paperwork to fill out on this knife murder thing. Jones hands him a scrapbook that she forgot to give back to Rebecca. Then they part ways.
On her way out of town, Jones gets a call from the Antiest of Men! Jones had a really rough couple of days so she indulges Paul Rudd a little bit and asks him to stay on the line to keep her company.
“Tell me something funny,” she says.
Final Thoughts
Underwhelming. The missing Rebecca case conclusion was underwhelming, and now she has a dead dad and her possibly adult girlfriend whisked her back away out of town. Nice and legal, this.
Whatever. I still like this comic.
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