The Variants #3 // Review
It has been sixty-three days and seven hours since the last time Jessica Jones had coffee. She’s having a cup right now. She is literally beside herself as she does so. She-Hulk is about to come into the room to refill her cup. Things are weird, and they’re going to get weirder in The Variants #3. Writer Gail Simone reaches the mid-point of her story with the cleverly refined aid of artist Phil Noto. Simone’s story takes Jessica Jones through a particularly complicated journey into her own psyche in a deeply provocative chapter in the five-part series.
She-Hulk is concerned. Jessica’s heading off to The Stomping Grounds for...more coffee. She’s in good hands, though: she’s hanging out with three of herselves. If anyone can take care of Jessica Jones...it’s Jessica Jones. It’s probably nothing, but she’s a time bomb waiting to go off...and it’s NOT the coffee: it’s the Killgrave. (Maybe.) Jessica’s waiting for a particularly morbid ten-year anniversary. There are four coffees and a croissant between the four of herselves while she waits to find out if she’s going to blow up. Before Jessica leaves, She-Hulk makes a joke about the world exploding. She might be a bit closer to the truth than she knows...
There’s a deep, dark poetry to Simone’s work. The multiple Jess thing that she’s exploring with this series is a chance to examine the character from multiple angles at once as they all try to relate to each other. They’re all different people, but they’re all essentially the same. One of them is young and idealistic. One of them is Captain America. The other one is essentially her. It’s a nice ensemble of Jesses for the center of the series in one of the most interesting coffeehouse scenes in a comic book in recent memory.
Noto’s art captures subtlety with a clean kind of brilliance. He doesn’t clutter the panel with too much detail. The simplicity of the composition keeps the focus squarely on the drama. Nuanced shades of emotion and suspicion can be read on Jess’s face as she waits around in a nice, little coffee shop. The tension in Jess’s apartment is delivered with the casual presence of someone as beautifully fantastic as She-Hulk, who decided to show up in an old Fantastic Four outfit. The casual surreality of the drama feels deliciously understated.
The strange multiplicity of the recent Loki series on Disney+ was fun. A god of mischief feels a hell of a lot more at home hanging out with a bunch of himselves. One would expect him to show up with a whole bunch of copies. (He’s done that before in the comics just for the sake of confusion.) Jessica Jones makes for an interesting study in a world of parallel timelines and multiple variants. Simone has identified a really cool mutation of a similar premise that dives into the nature of Jess’s life in a way that makes for a deeply engaging story.
