Investigating Alias is a weekly issue by issue look at the source material that inspired the popular and critically acclaimed Jessica Jones Netflix show.

In this installment of Investigating Alias, I will be covering Alias #18-19 (2003) written by Brian Michael Bendis, drawn by Michael Gaydos, and colored by Matt Hollingsworth.

In Alias #18, Scott Lang commits relationship suicide by asking Jessica if she was raped after she won’t open up about the past experience that Madame Web saw in the previous issue. After fielding an annoying phone call from her friend Carol Danvers aka Ms. Marvel, Jessica actually goes to her day job as a bodyguard for Matt Murdock, who is afraid that Daredevil’s enemies will come after him after he was outed as Daredevil in the tabloids. With the appearance from Murdock and later mentions of mutant growth hormone (MGH), writer Brian Michael Bendis intertwines “The Underneath” arc of Alias closely with his then current run on Daredevil. After work, her annoying fanboy Malcolm introduces her to Laney, the sister of a wannabe drug lord named Denny Haynes, who is supposedly having sex with Mattie Franklin and likes to party at the charmingly named Club 616. Jessica affects the clothes, makeup, and speaking patterns of a Manhattan socialite, gets into the club, and then sees Denny with Mattie super doped up right beside him.

Alias #19 features some downright pulsating colors from Matt Hollingsworth as Jessica’s attempt to rescue Mattie is foiled by Denny and his friends, who are shooting up MGH taken directly from a wound in her back. It’s a jarring, sickening sight for Jessica, and she tries to grab Mattie, but is actually defeated in a physical fight by some men who are hopped up on MGH. After getting thrown out of the club bleeding and barely conscious, she meets Ben Urich, who says he has been tailing her because J. Jonah Jameson thinks she has Mattie, and gives her important information about MGH. Then, she checks into the hospital, lies to police officers about being mugged, and finally ends up back in her apartment for a much needed rest. However, the issue ends on a real shocker (Pun fully intended) of a cliffhanger as Jessica Drew (formerly Spider-Woman) shows up in her apartment furious about what has happened to Mattie.

In these two middle issues of “The Underneath” arc, Bendis and artist Michael Gaydos go right at the jugular at every day sexism beginning with making Scott Lang a textbook mansplainer in the opening of Alias #18 and flat out asking her if she got raped even though she doesn’t want to talk about her past. And even when Jessica tells him that she’s angry, Scott asks why his unsolicited comments about her theoretical rape offend her. He’s more concerned with coming across as a “good guy” than her feelings with some awkward dialogue about hearing the end of her story about Madame Web from the previous issue. Gaydos’ storytelling is deft as he goes from three intimate panels of Scott and Jessica in bed to quickly having her dress and leave while Scott has the same dumb expression on her face. And then he floods the next few pages with emotions as Jessica’s paranoia returns while she walks around her apartment. Alias is usually a wordy book, but Bendis lets Gaydos have a few almost silent pages to show Jessica drinking to deal with Scott being a terrible person (Carol calling about him doesn’t help.) and collect herself so she can find Mattie Franklin, who appears in a flashback.

The theme of sexism continues (and is called out directly by her) in Jessica’s day job as a bodyguard for Matt Murdock, who she respects and empathizes with because his secret identity was compromised without his consent. However, she does throw a little shade his way because he told Luke Cage his secret identity and not her. This is sexist in her opinion and in her own special way, she trolls him by never knocking on his door when she arrives for her bodyguard duties and smoking on his porch because he can sense her with his superpowers. It’s just a friendly reminder, and Matt and Jessica actually have a solid, professional relationship as shown in a Sorkin-esque walk and talk scene where she tells him about how Jameson is pressuring her to find Mattie. Matt promises to help with that situation by doing a “client harassment” call, and Jessica instantly repays the favor by warding off the press, who calls Jessica an “ex-superhero slash private investigator person.” Elevator pitch, much.

The sexism comes to a roaring crescendo towards the end of Alias #18 when Jessica uses gross men’s ideas of female beauty and sexuality to her advantage in getting inside Club 616. After a rude bouncer compares to a cast member of a sequel to The Crow, Jessica puts on makeup, lipstick, a crop top, and short skirt so she can get into the artificial world of the club and save Mattie. She understands the heterosexual male gaze, loathes it, but uses it so she can do the right thing. And her observations about the vapidness of Club 616 are right on point and relatable to any introvert. Hollingsworth creates a digital glare with his colors to simulate the noise of the club, and Gaydos’ art blends together so that the people look just like a clump with no individuals being distinct. And Bendis puts the finishing touches with his sharp as tack inner monologue for Jessica, who sums why noisy clubs are so annoying in one powerful sentence, “These people are the reason I never go anywhere remotely resembling any place like this.”

And then she goes to work mining the bathroom gossip until she finally gets close to Denny Haynes, an evil, wannabe power player, who only sees female superheroes as notches on a belt. We learn about this from Jessica’s chat with his younger sister, who said that he wanted to sleep with a superheroine because a Russian gangster named Ivan used to date Dazzler. (I wasn’t aware this disco themed superhero was ever involved in mob activities.) Also, Denny is more horrible in person as he pressures Jessica into joining his friends, who are doing drugs even when she wants to leave and wait by the entrance to grab Mattie. There is an air of menace about Denny and his private VIP lounge with Gaydos shading his eyes, and Hollingsworth using a purple palette as Denny kisses the barely conscious Mattie before basically smoking parts of her DNA.

Gaydos shows the abominable nature of his activities, and how it affects Jessica by having the panels in the pages where MGH is being used wobble and break perspective. It’s your usual comics panel grid, but freakier. And it gets Jessica angry as she punches a guy with yellow eyes, who then knocks her out. Gaydos uses pitch black panels mixed with blurry ones and close-ups of Jessica’s bloody face to show what a bad state she’s in until she goes to the grey and brown of a New York alleyway to talk with a very angry and foulmouthed Ben Urich, who is justly angry at MGH and its users. He’s also a nice exposition fairy for readers, who haven’t read Daredevil and have no clue what MGH is.

Sexism rears its ugly, thematic head one final time as police officers question Jessica about her injuries while she’s recovering in the hospital. Bendis and Gaydos break the fundamental “show, don’t tell” rule of storytelling, but there have already been two major interrogation sequences with Jessica and the police and perhaps they didn’t want to be redundant. And Bendis’ writing is colorful enough as Jessica heads to her department. She calls the cops “fucking power tripping mother fuckers”, who treated her like a little girl and shamed her for being out after dark. They are a part of rape culture, who think that because women walk in certain areas and wear certain things that they were “asking for it”. Jessica’s words lash out at this terrible, invisible, yet very real institution, and Bendis isn’t afraid to expose his male characters’ sexism and biases even the heroic ones like Scott Lang and Matt Murdock. The feminist ideals that pervade Alias #18 and #19 make it so much more than the middle chapters of a trade paperback-length storyline and add a layer of social commentary to Jessica’s own character arc.

But what makes “The Underneath” really work as a story arc so far is Jessica’s personal connection to Mattie Franklin as young female superheroes, who both had to experience horrible things. It’s like her relationship with Hope in the Jessica Jones TV show, but with arachnid themed costumes. She’s doing straight up heroic things, like fighting guys with mutant powers, following leads, and getting beat up and ending up in the hospital just because she genuinely cares about Mattie and doesn’t want yet another female superhero to be manipulated by evil men. But her methods are different from traditional superheroes, and she ends up in hot water with Jessica Drew, who also cares about Mattie and used to mentor her. It will be interesting to see the two ex-superheroes turned P.I.s who share the same name work out their differences and interact in the concluding issues of “The Underneath”.

Alias #18-19 explores casual sexism, objectification of women, and rape culture through Jessica Jones’ continued search for Mattie Franklin, which gets tense and dangerous when she’s in real physical danger for the first time in Alias. These issues also allow Matt Hollingsworth to go wild with his colors from a sultry blue for the club sequences to a threatening purple when Jessica fights the MGH users or a morning shadow for when Jessica shows up for her day of work Matt Murdock. And Brian Michael Bendis continues to write the hell out of Jessica Jones, who is empathy, misanthropy, sadness, paranoia, and sarcasm all rolled into one of the most human characters to inhabit the Marvel Universe.