Jessica Jones: Alias: Reed Band #5 // Review
Jessica Jones is being questioned. Not at some precinct headquarters or in some darkened room by criminals who want information from her. She’s being questioned at New York City Counce Chambers. They’re asking her about her investigations, their illegal nature and her husband’s possible involvement in them. She’s trying to keep her composure, but she’s about to let them know about a lot of things...but she’s going to make it perfectly clear that her husband wasn’t involved in Jessica Jones: Alias: Reed Band #5. Writer Sam Humphries conclude an interesting suspense thriller with the art team of Geraldo Borges and Arthur Hesli.
One month ago, Jessica Jones was having a conversation with Typhoid Mary. (No. Really. They were working together and everything.) There was some question of the possible involvement of the extra-dimensional deity known as Mephisto. Jessica Jones had worked with people who claimed to be gods in the past, so a devil isn’t that much of a stretch for her, but she’s not about to let the existence of a single dark deity prove that there’s a supernatural source for evil. Still...the mutliple homicides she’s investigating with Mary are going to need to be explored carefully. They could be totally in over their heads.
The. distinct mix of the cosmic, the supernatural, the superhuman and the street-level has always been something that’s been really, really tricky to try to accommodate for any writer. Humphries has done a strikingly good job of mixing it up with this series. The mundane concerns of daily life in one of the most totally dangerous places in the Marvel Universe is given an intrigungly layered perspective in Humphries’ conculsion to a remarkably nuanced story. The action seems compelling enough to carry the series through a remarkably satisfying final chapter in late July.
There is the heavy in of heavy shadows that seemed to coat everything in the big finale. There's some remarkably clever bits of layout as the two protagonists of the series continue their dissent into shadowy darkness. The more supernatural elements of the actions seem to get the page in a way that feels like a natural outgrowth of the darkness of human emotion. So it feels very earthbound. It might be supernatural and spectral things of that nature, but ultimately really is seated in human emotion. And that's exactly the approach that one would need an order for this thing to come across as anything other than silly.
The Marvel Universe would feel a lot more well-rounded if there were more series that attempted to reconcile all of the different genres that go into it. That's all the way has been one of the deeper problems. It's all well and good to have all of these characters exist in a single goal, continuous world. The full reality of what that would be like on our own day-to-day level is never really given the kind of complexity it deserves. Series like a Jessica Jones one are a definite step in the right direction.
