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Feeling the Pulse #12-13

Posted on April 18, 2016 by Logan Dalton

Feeling the Pulse is a weekly issue by issue look at the follow-up series to Alias featuring Jessica Jones and a team of reporters at the Daily Bugle, who investigate and report on superhero related stories. In this installment of Feeling the Pulse, I will be covering The Pulse #12-13 (2005-2006) written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by Michael Gaydos with colors from Matt Hollingsworth.

In The Pulse #12-13, which concludes the three part “Fear” storyline, writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Michael Gaydos continue to have a two plot structure with Ben Urich investigating and writing a story on D-Man while Jessica Jones goes into labor, gets discriminated against by an anti-mutant hospital administrator, but gets swooped up in the nick of time by the New Avengers. (Luke being on the team is super helpful.) Getting Gaydos and colorist Matt Hollingsworth back for this pivotal moment in Jessica Jones’ life is a true coup as her raw emotions are on display while they show just how much Luke cares for her as he runs through the streets of New York (breaking up a drug deal along the way) and leaps into a Quinjet just to be with his girlfriend, who will hopefully become his wife.

The Pulse #12 opens frantically with Carol Danvers (Ms. Marvel at this time) flying Jessica to the nearest hospital where she is peppered with questions about her mutant and radioactive status. This is while Luke Cage is stuck in the New York traffic and can’t catch a cab so Wasp does the old “Avengers Assemble” thing so he can be with Jessica. While this is happening, Ben Urich continues his titanic struggle with J. Jonah Jameson, who finds D-Man’s name and backstory to be amusing, but quickly backpedals when he thinks that this story is a cover for trying to keep Daredevil safe because he is currently being investigated by the feds after his secret identity is outed in Daredevil. Urich does end up doing the story, finds out that D-Man (whose real name is Dennis Dunphy) has been arrested for vagrancy multiple times, and ends up meeting him in the sewers after one of the shopkeepers he’s robbed tells him that he uses it for travel. Back at the hospital, an administrator basically says that Jessica can’t deliver her mutant abomination under her care, but the New Avengers show up in the nick of time and take her to the best doctor around, Stephen Strange.

The Pulse #13 deals with the birth of Jessica and Luke’s daughter as well as Ben Urich interviewing and helping D-Man. Bendis and Gaydos show that Jessica and Luke are non-conventional parents when Jessica keeps swearing and also makes a leaning on the fourth wall reference to Alias when she tells Dr. Strange about her mouth “a few years ago” while Luke asks for Public Enemy and not soft music to be played in the delivery room. And then the press decides to show up overwhelming Dr. Strange’s valet, Wong so Captain America takes over the PR duties and lets Kat Farrell come through because Jessica signed an exclusive with the Daily Bugle to cover the birth of her child. However, Jessica refuses to talk to Kat and let the Bugle have the story because they lambasted Luke Cage in the paper back in New Avengers #15.

Speaking of the press, D-Man takes Ben Urich to his sewer home after complimenting his news stories about Daredevil and offering him a stale cupcake. There is some voiceover narration (Ben typing the story) about D-Man refusing to join the Avengers to be a hero for the homeless, but now he is just alone. Ben confronts him about stealing the jewelry, and it is clear that D-Man isn’t in his right mind as he thinks that the pieces of jewelry are Infinity Gems. And finally Jessica has her baby while J. Jonah Jameson is furious that he got scooped by the Daily Globe and printed a story about D-Man instead. Urich says he shouldn’t have disrespected her, and it flashes back to Urich getting in contact with Daredevil, who gets D-Man the help he needs. The issue closes with Jessica and Luke holding their baby when Luke proposes to her.

The D-Man and Jessica giving birth plotlines in The Pulse #12-#13 aren’t super suspenseful, but they tie together nicely through the shared theme of empathy or the lack of it. Whether they are homeless petty thieves or celebrities (Superhero news stories are the celebrity gossip of the Marvel Universe.), these superpowered beings are human beings, who just want to make ends meet or start a family while helping others. Ben Urich chooses to listen to D-Man’s problems and not just use him for a story about a fallen story or as a joke, finds out that he respects Daredevil tremendously, and uses his connection with Daredevil to find him some kind of help or shelter.

And I don’t recall reading any of D-Man’s appearances in the past ten years, but currently, he is an important supporting character in Nick Spencer’s Captain America: Sam Wilson so perhaps Urich did some good. His actions are one final example of his belief that superheroes (even masked ones) are a force for good in society that is the complete opposite of his editor J. Jonah Jameson and fellow Pulse reporter Kat Farrell’s view that they’re good front page fodder to sell newspapers. Jessica Jones drives this point home more emphatically when she yells on the phone that Jameson is a mustache sporting Nazi while giving birth. Ouch, indeed.

On the other hand, with Jessica’s pregnancy, The Pulse #12-13 is a true example of superheroes cooperating to help one of their own even if they have different backgrounds from the retired Avenger Janet Van Dyne making the initial call to Carol Danvers being an amazing friend and holding Jessica’s hand and literally carrying her through this ordeal and finally to the New Avengers and Doctor Strange. Each New Avenger or guest hero (With the exception of Spider-Woman even though she and Jessica teamed up back in Alias.) has a great moment or line in support of Jessica.

Carol’s shining moment comes straight out of the gates as she flies between New York skyscrapers and ensures Jessica checks into a hospital as quickly as possible and is followed by Wasp saying “Avengers assemble” as she immediately goes from chit chatting about fashion with Luke Cage to getting him a ride to the hospital. Wolverine gets to basically tell the anti-mutant hospital administrator to go to hell, Spider-Man makes awkward, badly timed jokes about the Vision and Scarlet Witch’s kids, and Iron Man flies the Quinjet moving Jessica from a hospital run by a bigot to the Sanctum Sanctorum of Doctor Strange. And Captain America pays forward Jessica’s saving of his reputation back in the first arc of Alias by being a literal shield for the hordes of press surrounding Dr. Strange’s house.

Cap gives a measured speech as Gaydos zooms into the star on his chest showing that he’s a champion for his fellow heroes whether they’re facing aliens, mind control, or journalists. Matt Hollingsworth’s color palette is usually pretty faded on Alias, but he makes the panels just a tad brighter when the various superheroes show up even Daredevil, whose red acts as a light to lead D-Man out of squalor and into a better life. Hollingsworth’s colors also stand out when Luke Cage is running to be with Jessica as she’s in labor and the street around him is all yellow because of the taxi cabs. Yellow has been Luke’s color since his Power Man days in the 1970s, and the use of color in both his shirt and surroundings shows his determination to be with the women he loves as she brings his daughter into the world. Their relationship continues to be the center of the story as he helps her get through the pains of labor holding his hand as she starts her contractions. (It was vice versa, but the unbreakable skin did more harm than good.)

As I mentioned last week, Michael Gaydos’ return was super timely as he draw the dark corridors of the New York City sewers as well as the emotions that are running high as Jessica Jones has her daughter. Most of his facial expressions are pained as Jessica goes into labor while being hounded by doctors and various hospital people, who are asking about her mutant status, her superpowers, and kick Carol Danvers out because of her energy based powers. However, it gets better in The Pulse #13 when Carol, Luke, and Cap are there to soothe her as the pain increases, and the censored profanity increases. Even though he’s not allowed to show the actual words because this is a comic set in the mainstream Marvel universe, Bendis uses profanity in a manner similar to Alias to show Jessica’s raw feelings as she is about to experience a life changing moment. And Gaydos’ depiction of Jessica with her newborn daughter is quite touching as he goes away from the grid filled double page spreads that he uses to show the verbal tete a tetes that Jessica, Ben Urich, J. Jonah Jameson, and other characters have engaged in throughout Alias and The Pulse to back to back full page spreads. Also, the final page with Luke and Jessica is pure bliss with well-earned smiles everywhere. Of course, we don’t hear her answer to his proposal because Bendis has to leave one thread untied for next issue’s finale. (Jessica’s reaction to the proposal is priceless and ambiguous though.)

J. Jonah Jameson detests it and mentions taking legal action while continuing to denigrate Ben Urich as less than a reporter, but the D-Man story that Ben Urich writes is what Jameson had in mind for The Pulse when he first came up with the idea. These articles that are in-depth, analysis pieces on superheroes that every day people can connect to, like human interest stories with a side of colorful costumes and punching. And this is the kind of story that Urich excels at writing even though he’s best known for investigative journalism about the Kingpin and Norman Osborn as D-Man talks about the “layers” he gave Daredevil, and how his writing style brought the Man without Fear close to a struggling superhero and wrestler, like him.

I’m not saying that Ben Urich is a self-insert character for Brian Michael Bendis, but it is handy to have a writer character in your story to expound your ideas on a certain topic: superheroes in this case. In his superhero comics from Ultimate Spider-Man to Daredevil, Avengers, and way too many event miniseries, Bendis finds a kind of middle ground between deconstruction and reconstruction. He can write a character like Jessica Jones, who rejects the superhero life as painting too much in broad strokes and not looking at the big picture, or he can write Ultimate Peter Parker, who is the embodiment of heroism mingled with teen angst and optimism. Bendis’ best work and characterization has definitely come with the solo street level heroes, like Spider-Man, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage, and he does better at telling dialogue driven stories focusing on the human side heroes with splashes of action even though he has a couple of cool concepts in him, like House of M alternate reality, Nick Fury’s Secret War, and bringing the original 1960s X-Men to the current time period.

The Pulse #12-13 has plenty of emotional payoff for the characters of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage as they overcome discrimination and just the usual fears of bringing a child into the world with the help of their superhero friends. And in the B-plot, Bendis and Gaydos continue to show why Ben Urich is one of the most underappreciated supporting characters in the Marvel Universe as he uses his skills as journalism to not only tell the truth about the world around him, but also to create empathy for his fellow human beings even smelly, homeless Z-list superhero dropouts, who happen to be people with dreams, aspirations, and ideals too.

Feeling the Pulse #10-11

Posted on April 11, 2016 by Logan Dalton

Feeling the Pulse is a weekly issue by issue look at the follow-up series to Alias featuring Jessica Jones and a team of reporters at the Daily Bugle, who investigate and report on superhero related stories. In this installment of Feeling the Pulse, I will be covering The Pulse #10-11 (2005) written by Brian Michael Bendis with issue 10 pencilled by Michael Lark, inked by Stefano Gaudiano, and colored by Pete Pantazis and issue 11 drawn by Michael Gaydos with colors from Matt Hollingsworth.

In The Pulse #10, writer Brian Michael Bendis and artists Michael Lark and Stefano Gaudiano tie the comic into yet another Marvel “event” and instead of the relatively self-contained Secret War, it’s House of M, a comic which really kickstarted the decade plus Marvel tradition of having a summer event that ties into virtually their entire publishing line. To jog everyone’s memory (Thank goodness for recap pages!), Scarlet Witch lost control of her reality warping powers in the famous or infamous “Avengers Disassembled” arc (also written by Bendis) and killed the Avengers Hawkeye, Ant-Man (Scott Lang), and her ex-husband Vision. After this, she flees to her father Magneto while Professor X gathers the X-Men (from Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men run) and New Avengers to decide what to do with her and hopefully not killer. But this confrontation causes her powers to go into overdrive and create a whole new reality called House of M where mutants led by Magneto and his children rule the world, and humans are hated and feared. Wolverine and Layla Miller (A smart teenage mutant from Peter David’s X-Factor) remember the pre-House of M reality, and this leads to complications when Layla reminds the still living Hawkeye that he died in another reality.

And Hawkeye freaking out leads directly into The Pulse #10, which doesn’t feature Jessica Jones or Luke Cage, but focuses on Ben Urich, Kat Farrell, and the Daily Bugle, whose editor-in-chief is somehow Mystique. The issue opens with Kat Farrell investigating an explosion of a Stark Industries building, which Bishop, a bodyguard/PR guy for the House of Magnus, blames on a human using mutant growth hormone when Kat spots kinetic energy absorbing mutant Sebastian Shaw and members of SHIELD on the scene. Thinking she has a scoop, she brings it up at a newspaper meeting, but is deflected by her editor-in-chief, who is waiting for SHIELD to make a comment. Then, Kat gives Mystique a piece of her mind and has a heart to heart with Ben Urich about working within the system and occasionally breaking a big story. And while working late, the story happens as Hawkeye bursts in and starts to realize that there were two realities when a newspaper headline about his death turns to something about the House of Magnus memorial. And when he tries to show Kat Avengers Mansion, it turns out to be a memorial to mutants killed by Sentinels. Reality is flimsy, and it freaks him out. And in his freakout, he destroys the Sentinel memorial with exploding arrows, asks Kat to tell his story, and runs off. The issue kind of ends with a note to follow the rest of Hawkeye’s story in House of M proper. Sometimes event tie-ins can be really annoying.

The Pulse #11 takes us back to the friendly haunts of Earth-616 as well as reuniting Bendis with Alias artist Michael Gaydos and colorist Matt Hollingsworth for the final arc “Fear” before cancellation. And they give us an excellent character-driven story with a B-plot featuring a Z-list superhero and the Daily Bugle journalists that wouldn’t be out of place in Alias. Also, Gaydos just plain understands how Jessica Jones looks as a character and her reactions to things, like when she is scared, being sarcastic, or just being happy. The Pulse #11 focuses on her taking a trip to the Baxter Building, seeing how the superest of moms Sue Richards deals with having kids and superpowers, and then going to lunch with her and Carol Danvers. Their conversations are raw, honest, and kind of read like What to Expect When You’re Expecting, but with superheroes. And while Jessica is lunching, Ben Urich is investigating an interesting case of a smelly, out of breath superhero, who looked like Daredevil in his original yellow costume , helping stop the robbery of a store way out of Hell’s Kitchen. Kat Farrell identifies him as D-Man, a wrestler turned superhero and former Avenger, thanks to his “Wolverine hat”, which is what cowls should be called from now on. And it turns out that he took more than just a bottle of water from the store. The Pulse #11 concludes with Janet Van Dyne working on redesigning Luke Cage’s costume because he’s now a New Avenger when Jessica’s water breaks.

In characterization and art, The Pulse #10 isn’t a bad read as Kat Farrell is the lead character for the first time in the series. Her tenacity and willingness to tell the truth, snap a cellphone pic, and break a story even in the face of a mutant, who has both telepathic and energy absorbing abilities are on full display this issue. It’s also a subtle inversion of her role in the main universe The Pulse series as Ben Urich is the one courting controversy, hiding Daredevil’s secret identity, and possibly taking down Nick Fury while Kat is more willing to play ball with editorial. In this issue, Ben is the one giving Kat a mini-lecture about picking battles and working with Mystique until they can really blow the whole Magnus regime open. Artists Michael Lark and Stefano Gaudiano with colorist Pete Pantazis even give us a glimpse at the writing process with a double page spread that cuts between the dusty Daily Bugle archives, and Kat desperately trying to churn out a story. Her computer has a slight glow in the dark building and will remind anyone of that burning feeling you get in your eyes when you’re trying to beat a deadline the night before.

However, the story of Kat Farrell intrepid journalist comes to a halt halfway through the issue and becomes the tale of Hawkeye Crossover Event Explainer Man. He doesn’t even let Kat get in a word edgewise, threatens her with his arrows, and blabbers on about what’s happened to him in the previous issues of House of M. There is a payoff to all the chatter, which isn’t bad to read as Bendis makes Clint a real salt of the Earth fellow as he quips about only reading the sports page of the newspaper, with the earlier mentioned destruction of the Sentinel memorial, but the issue just ends. There’s no reflection on Kat’s part just a silent scene as the police pull up. It’s like this House of M tie-in was supposed to be a two-parter with Kat writing the story in the second half and trying to get it past editorial, but it only ended up being one issue. It’s an example of what not to do with an event tie-in as Bendis and Lark set up story-worthy themes, like the difference between journalism and PR, and intriguing situations, like Mystique being interested in print media for some reason (She’s been a high school principal too so this isn’t her weirdest form of employment.), but fail to explore them and just explain the events of the main series.

But, if The Pulse #10 has you down, The Pulse #11 is the breath of freshest air. And one thing that surprised about me is the comedic timing of Michael Gaydos despite his rougher hewn style compared to say, this series’ original artist Mark Bagley. And it’s on display from the opening page where Jessica Jones can go right up to see the Fantastic Four in the Baxter Building after being escorted out by security back when she needed their help in Alias with the FF’s receptionist still having that creepy rictus. Next, there is his and Bendis’ riff on the fights between the Thing and Human Torch that seemed to happen during Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s run on Fantastic Four. Gaydos’ realistic style shows the serious side of their battle as the Thing almost falls into a very pregnant Jessica Jones (who is saved by a last second force field from Sue Richards). But it ends being a great set-up for a line by Sue about Franklin and Valeria being more well-behaved than these grown men and superheroes in their twenties and thirties. And the comedy comes back in the final pages as Gaydos nails Luke’s painful reactions to the various superhero costumes that Janet Van Dyne is trying to interest him in as Carol and Jessica giggle in the background. It’s also a larger meta joke about Luke Cage not having an iconic costume since his days as the tiara wearing, yellow silk shirt sporting Power Man back in the 1970s and just wearing jeans and a t-shirt in Bendis’ New Avengers run. (Maybe Sanford Greene will change this in his Power Man and Iron Fist run.

The lunch with Jessica Jones, Carol Danvers, and Sue Richards is another showcase of Brian Michael Bendis’ ability to craft characters through dialogue and conversation. Gaydos’ faces are key too as he can do subtle really well, like Jessica spacing out when Sue gets a little bit too earnest about the Fantastic Four’s mission, and how her children “live a life without superficial judgment”. But most of their talk is dealing with the cold, harsh realities of motherhood, and Sue doesn’t sugarcoat things for Jessica saying that her superhero status could leave to villain attacks and kidnapping and that it’s super freaky to be entrusted to take care of another human life. But in the end it’s all worth it, and Jessica is actually pretty refreshed to see how “normal” the Richards kids are as Franklin adorably touches her pregnant stomach and gets scolded for saying “butt”. Bendis continues his tradition of writing mothers well (Aunt May in Ultimate Spider-Man comes to mind.) and gives Sue a warm voice as she loves her kids, but also can get exasperated by them. It’s unfortunate that the Fantastic Four and their family dynamic is one team he hasn’t been unable to write so far.

And because this is a comic about journalism and not just Jessica Jones, Bendis and Gaydos give us a pretty interesting journalism subplot about Ben Urich and Kat Farrell investigating the re-emergence of D-Man as a vigilante and thief. Gaydos and Hollingsworth initially sell that this is a Daredevil story by using plenty of shadows in the art as well as touch of red in the background as a gun goes off. But, then there’s a cut to D-Man ambling around the store with his gut hanging out and moving a little slower than the Man without Fear. The store owners that he save don’t paint the most flattering picture of him saying that he had a smell and took some jewelry. And thus begins Ben Urich’s investigation into superheroes, who don’t have the benefit of a well-paying job as a lawyer or the sponsorship of a billionaire philanthropist or bald guy.

The Pulse #10-11 features one example of how not to write a tie-in for a company-wide and one example of how to tell use superheroes to tell a story about a real life situation in this case, becoming a mother. It encapsulates the uneven nature of The Pulse as a series, which didn’t know if it wanted to tell Jessica Jones stories or and found a balance between both in the “Fear” arc just as it was being cancelled. At least, the art is consistent with Michael Lark, Stefano Gaudiano, and Michael Gaydos finding a sweet spot between realism and cartooning with a side of natural facial expressions and the awkwardness of superhero costumes. (Honestly, only George Perez, Jack Kirby, and the animators of Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes can pull off the “Purple H” Hawkeye costume.)