THE VARIANTS #3: Pulling The Broken Pieces Together

Gail Simone continues to prove that her character writing is some of the best in the business
in an issue that brings Jessica and her variants together. Simone smartly bounces Jessica off
of her mirror selves in superbly resonant ways that not only dig into the psychology of
Jessica PRIME but also crack open and interrogate the psychology of her variants in truly
meaningful and heartfelt ways. What this does as is it brings these variants into much sharper
focus and all of a sudden while they may all be Jessica, they become distinct shades of the
who we know Jessica to be. They are all defined by loss in their own ways. Simone beautifully
delineates those differences yet doesn’t forget the storyline and central narrative with
all this character work and smartly balances it with this mysterious threat that comes after
her family. We get to see more of She-Hulk (who Simone writes amazingly) as well as Daredevil, Danny Rand, and Luke Cage. Her Luke Cage is excellent and there’s a great fight scene with Simone’s quippy dialogue toward the end of the book that’s tragic yet pitch perfect. It’s serious writing, with serious themes but Simone manages to break the seriousness with some great humor as well, the coffee shop scene is a great example of how she does this before plunging back into the mystery of what’s happening to Jessica.

Phil Noto continues to wow, The opening page is absolutely breathtaking. It’s another issue
with a lot of talking and dialogue but again Noto is equal to the task. The play of emotions
on the various Jessica’s faces as they interact with each other is masterful. He makes you feel the emotion of Simone’s script in wholly believable ways and then pivots to an action scene that plays out in the most marvelously cinematic yet tragic way so that the last page is like the cliffhanger ending of your favorite marvel tv series. His various Jessica’s are marvelously the same yet different, the Jewel Jessica is younger and it’s reflected in the way he draws
her and the Jessica who was married to Daredevil has harder expressions than all of them, it
speaks to a skillset of someone who is a master of their craft.

Noto’s issue #3 cover is perfection and if you are into variants Betsy Cola’s marvelous art for the recap page is available as a variant cover for this issue.