What If…Jessica Jones #1: The Webs Be Tangled

With a small twist of fate, the radioactive spider that changed Peter Parker’s destiny found a new target. Jessica Jones becomes the Spectacular Spider-Girl, but a personal tragedy cuts her time in the limelight all too short. However, when an old foe returns to menace New York, she reluctantly has to get back in gear.

This volume of Marvel’s “What If” has been the definition of a mixed bag. The bad stories are really bad, the mid stories leave no impressions, and the good stories would benefit from more issues. This one falls into that middle category. What could have been an interesting story about Jessica Jones navigating the “power and responsibility” metaphor becomes just an ok Alias story except Jessica has some spider powers.

Justina Ireland tells a story that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but that is a bit of a problem here. The banter between Jessica and the character’s she interacts with is entertaining, but it fits more of the style of a Its Always Sunny, than the dark humor of the original Alias or the Netflix show. We speed past Jessica’s career as Spider-Girl and get into more familiar territory that makes this “What if” feel more fanficky than others before it with no real interesting hooks to latch on to. The twist at the end is also fairly predictable, but in a bad way that just shoehorns another character in for shock value.

David Messina’s art is solid throughout, but he has done better in other places. The pages and panels set in Jessica’s past have this nostalgic pop art style that emulates those old 60s comics, but beyond that there isn’t much else that stands out. Mileage may vary on how you feel about Jessica’s hero costume, but the way she uses her webs gives an interesting visual.