The Pulse #11:  “Fear - Part 1”

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Michael Gaydos
Colorist: Matt Hollingsworth
Letterer: V.C.’s Cory Petit

Jessica Jones is about to become a mother. She knows she should be happy, but fears and doubts continue to plague her mind. Jessica turns to the one person with the most experience in the area of being a mother and a superhero, Sue Storm, The Invisible Woman from the Fantastic Four. Meanwhile, back at the Daily Bugle, Ben Urich is following up on a story involving a masked vigilante known as D-Man, a former Avenger, who appears to have fallen on hard times. All this and Luke Cage, the father of Jessica Jones unborn child, tries to find a new costume.

Ah, it feels just like old times. The original team from Alias, the comic that The Pulse spun out of, is back together again and it just feels right. I was a huge fan of Alias, a book that chronicled the adventures of Jessica Jones, a former superhero turned private eye. When I found out they were canceling that book and creating a new one called The Pulse I was a little wary. The Pulse is about the next stage of Jessica’s life. She’s pregnant, living with Luke Cage and working for a man she used to hate, J. Jonah Jameson, the publisher of The Daily Bugle. It is now Jessica’s job, along with reporter Ben Urich, to provide fair and balanced stories regarding the world of super heroes.

I really enjoyed the first arc of The Pulse and while it didn’t feel exactly like Alias (Mark Bagley was drawing the book instead of Gaydos) I was still looking forward to picking the book up on a regular basis. But the second arc of The Pulse seemed to abandon the concept of super hero/private investigator turned investigative journalist and tied in directly with Brian Michael Bendis’ Secret War mini-series, a book that has taken over two years to tell and hasn’t even wrapped up yet. The next issue after the “Secret War” arc was a House of M tie-in. Needless to say I seriously wanted to drop the book. It seemed to have abandoned its core concept and was quickly becoming unreadable.

Issue #11 turns the whole thing around. With the original Alias creative team of Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos back together it feels like I’m reading an old favorite comic again. The emphasis on whatever crossover or mini-series of the week is gone and the old flavor that made Alias and the first few issues of The Pulse so enjoyable is back.



Special thanks go out to Jeremy Shorr, owner of Titan Comics for allowing us to use his advance preview books for review purposes.
 

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