Wednesday is Comic Day!

Before I begin to comment on the contents of this comic, I have to first ask - "What's with the cover?" No-one on the cover is actually in the book. Okay. That's done, now I can begin the lovefest. I LOVED this comic. When I was in college I had to stop reading comics for a few years - both because of an absence of funds and because there was no nearby comic book store. When I graduated and got a job and then eventually found a new comic shop, one of the first books I picked up was Alias. It along with Kingdom Come were the books that drug me back into this wonderful world of comic collecting. Alias was written and drawn by two names that were, at that time, unfamiliar to me (Brian M. Bendis and Michael Gaydos).

Their styles were so different than what I'd grown up with that it took a while for me to warm to it. Alias was an excellent book and if you haven't read it, I recommend looking for it. There was an AbsoluteOmnibus edition put out a while ago. Anyway, you might be asking what the heck does that little reverie have to do with this comic? Much of the issue is a flashback to the time period covered by Alias and the meeting of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. For those flashback scenes, Michael Gaydos returns to do the art. The 'contemporary' scenes are drawn by Billy Tan. Okay, I guess I will say one negative thing - I don't think Bily Tan was right for this issue. Billy does good superheroes, but Jessica Jones is a little more ordinary looking. As depicted in Alias I always imagined more Janine Garafalo than Janine Lindemulder. Billy draws her a little too young and hot. At the end of Secret Invasion #8, Jessica sees Jarvis coming off of the Skrull ship with the other kidnapped and replaced heroes. She immediately panics and takes off, because she had left her's and Luke Cage's baby with 'Jarvis' - the SKRULL Jarvis. The scene ends with her and Luke realizing that the Skrulls have taken their child. New Avengers #47 begins with a scene a few weeks before - a typical family scene - with Luke changing the baby's diaper. Luke starts to tell the baby the story of how he and Jessica met. Much of the issue, and I presume some of the next will tell that story. The book ends with the same scene from Secret Invasion. We don't really learn any more about the fate of the baby, in this issue - other than to make it very, very clear that Luke Cage is pissed. I can't wait for #48.