Comic Book / Jessica Jones

Jessica Jones is a Marvel Comics superheroine, originally created by Brian Michael Bendis. She was the main character of Alias (November 2001, also written by Bendis) which was the first comic released under the R-Rated MAX imprint, which notably had the word "FUCK!" on the first page.

Jessica Jones, also known as Jessica Campbell as a teenager, lived in Forest Hills, New York, where she attended Midtown High, where a certain wall-crawling hero also attended at the same time. On a family drive one day, her father lost control of the vehicle and collided with a military convoy carrying radioactive material. Her entire family (father, mother, and little brother) were killed and she ended up in a coma. When she awoke, she was adopted by the Jones family and she soon discovered she had superpowers.

She soon put on a costume and created a heroic identity: Jewel. She had a pretty low-key career and was somewhat known to the New York superheroes, especially Ms. Marvel, until she encountered the Purple Man, who seized control of her mind for eight months and subjected her to psychological abuse. He sent her to The Avengers' Mansion in order to kill Daredevil and she attacks the only person wearing red at the mansion: the Scarlet Witch. Jessica endures a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown by Iron Man and The Vision until Ms. Marvel saves her. Jessica slips back into a coma and is brought out only by psychic therapy by Jean Grey. Soon after therapy, and after a short stint as a hero named Knightress, Jessica decides to hang up the cape for good.

She goes on to start Alias Investigations, a private detective agency where she soon finds out she cannot outrun her past as a superhero (as it's brought up by almost everyone she meets). In between solving cases and snarking, she vacillates between romantic feelings for Scott Lang and for Luke Cage. By the end of the book, she realizes she's pregnant with Luke Cage's child and the both of them start a romantic relationship.

After Alias, she was a character in The Pulse (a series focusing on the Daily Bugle), in which she and Luke are a couple and she gives birth to their daughter, Danielle. She later marries Luke Cage in New Avengers and is a sometimes member of the team, when she's not being a mother. She also played a significant role in the first few arcs of Young Avengers.

A television show based on this character, originally intended for ABC, was said to languish in development hell for years ... until Netflix finally dusted it off for their line of shows set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Jessica being portrayed by Krysten Ritter. The entire first season of Jessica Jones was released on November 20th, 2015, to wide critical acclaim, and the show was renewed for a second season as of January 2016. Jessica will team up with Matt Murdock, Luke Cage, and Danny Rand in a mini-series called The Defenders, based on the Marvel Comics team of the same name.

In October of 2016 Jessica once again got her own solo series.

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Notable Comics

• Alias (2001 — 2004)
• The Pulse (2004 — 2006)
• Young Avengers vol. 1 (2005 — 2006)
• New Avengers vol. 2 (2010 — 2012)
• Jessica Jones (2016 —)
• The Defenders vol. 5 (2017)

Television

• Marvel Cinematic Universe (2015 — present):
  • Jessica Jones (2015)
  • The Defenders (2017)

Video Games

• Marvel Future Fight (2015)
• Marvel: Contest of Champions (2015)

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Jessica Jones provides examples of the following tropes:

• Action Mom: The Superheroine/detective has a daughter.

• Berserk Button: Bringing up the Purple Man incident was a big one in Alias.
• Break the Cutie: One of the more extreme examples in the Marvel Universe.
• Broken Bird: After the incident with the Purple Man, leading her to quit being a superhero.
• Character Development: Thanks to the need to lighten her so she could appear in stuff outside of the MAX imprint (see bellow in Lighter and Softer), the Jessica of Alias is very different than the Jessica of New Avengers. As a result, it ends up looking like her relationship with Luke and the ending of Alias helped her get out of her depressed state and grow as a person.
• Drowning My Sorrows: She drank quite a lot in Alias to mask the emotional pain.
• Expy: She shares a lot of similarities with Bendis's version of Spider-Woman, both with the private detective background, the friendship with Ms. Marvel and the snarky Knight in Sour Armor demeanor. In fact, Alias was originally going to star Jessica Drew, but Bendis could not use her, so Jessica Jones was created instead. The two later team up at one point during Alias.
• First-Person Smartass: Her narration in Alias. Spider-Man has a rival to the throne of Marvel's premier Deadpan Snarker.
• Flight: She says she can't fly very well, though it seems that she's just out of practice. In her early days as Jewel, she flew just fine.
• Flying Brick: Flight? Check. Super Strength? Check. Invulnerability? Check.
• Happily Married: Her marriage to Luke Cage has a lot of love. In fact, their love for each other and their daughter has helped them defeat a lot of problems together.
• Lady Swears-a-Lot: She curses very frequently in Alias. She was cursing even as a teenager, and even after she moved beyond MAX's mature imprint and onto the G-Teen rated comics, she kept it up, sometimes being covered up by Symbol Swearing.
• Lighter and Softer: An Enforced Trope via Marvel Comics' policies on their MAX publications, in which Jessica started. Marvel only permitted a limited few of their characters (such as Luke Cage, Punisher and Jessica herself) from making extended appearances in a MAX book outside of being The Cameo. Due to the mature language, sexual content, and other things, the vast majority of their exhaustive cast of characters were not allowed to participate. When Bendis felt he had done all he could with the character under these limited conditions, he ended Alias and integrated Jessica into the main Marvel Universe. As a result, she had to become a much lighter and softer character.
• Love Triangle: In Alias, she was caught in between Ant-Man and Luke Cage. She also had a interest in Matt Murdock.
• Mama Bear: Do not mess with her daughter. Norman Osborn and Kang the Conqueror both found this out the hard way.
• Mind Rape: The extent of the Purple Man's mental torture was so severe, she couldn't tell whether or not she was doing things with her own will or his.
• Mugging the Monster: In the first book of Alias, a Corrupt Corporate Executive sends a goon after her, who taunts her about being a necrophiliac rapist. Unfortunately for him, Jessica is much stronger and much tougher than he is and it doesn't go well.
• Pregnant Badass: During The Pulse. She beats the daylights out of Norman Osborn for a while after she thinks he caused a miscarriage.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Subverted. Several people ask her if Kilgrave ever raped or sexually abused her while under his control, and she insists that he never did. However, she also insists that she feels no less humiliated, traumatized and violated than if he did.
• Remember the New Guy: She was retconned into Marvel continuity as a Midtown High student who had a crush on Peter Parker (she was even there when he was bitten by the spider). From there, she was supposedly a minor superhero known by Carol Danvers since The Bronze Age of Comic Books. Jessica's Anti-Hero stint as Knightress before she started Alias investigations was also retconned into The Pulse.
• School Newspaper Newshound: Her Ultimate Marvel universe counterpart, who also attends school with Peter Parker.
• The Snark Knight: Not just a Deadpan Snarker, but she had some serious self-esteem issues before finally working on them at the end of Alias.
• Super Strength: An undefined amount, thought it's at least enough for her to lift and toss cars.
• Super Toughness: Jessica is much tougher than an ordinary person, and though she survived being beaten by Iron Man and the Vision, she sustained serious injuries. She also admits that she is unsure of whether or not she is bulletproof.
• Time Travel: Encounters an adult version of her daughter Dani in issue 3 of her 2016 series. She's from around 30 years in the future, and has the combined powers of Jessica, Luke, and Captain America.

• Where Da White Women At?: Jessica says to her daughter that being the product of an interracial relationship and two superheroes is enough to make her life hard. Her husband, Luke Cage, got called out by this by the new Power Man.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: As part of her Jewel costume, she dyed her hair a purplish pink.

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