Jessica Jones. For the first time (since the very short run of DC’s Birds of Prey), I feel like we have a truly brilliant adaptation of a female centered comic book on the horizon. Every teaser and trailer seems to be whispering, I’m the only one who matches you.
Yes, I realize that DC has just delivered the television series, Supergirl. I’ve seen the pilot. I might have loved the show if I had stumbled upon it five years ago. These days, The Devil Wears Prada superhero adaptation isn’t doing anything for me. (And I love Devil Wears Prada). Cat Grant is no Miranda Priestly. And sorry Kara, I have zero interest in that love triangle you’re predictably being sucked into. Good luck with that.
Jessica Jones
What makes Jessica Jones as a character great? Jones is the most human superhero I’ve ever stumbled across. She’s a swirling vortex of barely controlled violence, snark, and pain held together by overindulgence in alcohol. How can you not love her when within the first five seconds of the trailer and first two pages of her comic Alias, she cold-clocks a client through the window of her office? If you haven’t checked out the trailer, you should.
Like Daredevil, she received her powers (strength, durability, and the ability to fly) after being exposed to radioactive materials in a car accident. During a brief stint as a superhero she went by the pseudonym Jewel. She occasionally teamed up with the Avengers. Everything went wrong when she stumbled across a villain named Zebediah Killgrave, aka the Purple Man.
A Dangerous Superhero
Jessica as superhero Jewel.
Like its Netflix predecessor Daredevil (and unlike Supergirl), Jessica Jones offers us the gritty realism of being a superhero. Jones’ love interest Luke Cage says it best when he tells her, “being a hero just puts a target on your back.”
The Marvel comics are full of young heroes who face down dangerous villains and somehow survive without any long-term personal consequences. In Jones’ run as Jewel, she became one of the only young supers who stumble across a villain they can’t handle.
Long story short: a villain with mind-control powers kidnaps her, and she’s only able to escape after months under his influence. She leaves the superhero business in the dust and becomes a PI as Alias Investigations. And that’s where the comics and Netflix run begins—in the aftermath of her disastrous run-in with the Purple Man.
Dealing With Mental Health Issues
The Marvel blockbusters have mostly steered clear of serious issues that their Netflix shows are addressing head-on. For example, the movies ignore Iron Man’s battle with alcoholism. The recent Jessica Jones trailers hint that the Netflix run will show Jones dealing with alcoholism, depression, and PTSD.
That ability to tackle serious issues is the difference between entertainment that offers shallow fun and entertainment that tackles serious societal issues to incite change. Today in the United States, nearly 8 million Americans suffer from a severe mental illness. Nearly half of individuals who suffer from mental illnesses don’t seek treatment for a variety of reasons (some of which has to do with the negative cultural stigma attached to them).
The willingness to portray a character like Jessica Jones with a myriad of mental health issues can trigger change in the way people react to mental illness as they deal with it personally and think about its effect on others.
The Purple Man won’t be quite this purple on TV.
The Purple Man
The Purple Man is a nasty piece of work. He’s not one of those villains people love. He’s not a lovable rake, an anti-hero who fights injustice outside the law, or even a villain with a moral line he won’t cross.
He releases a mind-control pheromone that allows him to manipulate the mind of anyone in his vicinity. He’s not shy about utilizing that power throughout the comics and television series to force people to do things they wouldn’t otherwise ever do. In the comics, he utilizes his power:
- To force people to kill or harm his enemies or other innocent people.
- To force people to harm themselves.
- As a super-powered roofie to make women more willing to fall into his bed or beg him to let them have sex with him.
Killgrave’s penchant to force individuals to harm themselves and have sex with him definitely makes him a villain no one should root for. He doesn’t have a shred of honor. If Dr. Octopus wins a fight against Spider-Man, you half expect him to either settle for beating Spider-Man into a pulp or at the very least give him the courtesy of a clean death.
As for why Netflix chose the Purple Man as a villain, the Alias comics don’t really have a lot of super-villains or hardcore fight scenes. Without Killgrave, Jessica Jones would be a series of small-time PI cases with the occasional super-hero cameo. Not exactly something that screams Marvel superhero comic. Additionally, Jones is adamantly against becoming a super-hero again. At one point in the second volume of the comics, Jones witnesses Spider-Man battling Dr. Octopus and she chooses not to get involved. The Purple Man due to the fact that he has the powers to kidnap her again at any time just might be the only villain that could encourage Jones to become a superhero again.
Even though the Purple Man is a necessary evil in Jessica Jones, I expect a more toned down, less repellant version of Killgrave. The trailers thus far suggest that Jones’ 8-month abduction could have played out differently from the comics, where he (among other things) forced Jones to attack other superheroes, to watch Killgrave rape other women, and to beg Killgrave to sleep with her. And the fact that Killgrave keeps telling Jones that “I’m the only one that matches you” suggests a strange, stalkerish kind of wooing. As if he wants her to make the choice to potentially be with him without being clouded by his powers. Not exactly utilizing his powers as a roofie, but wrong on so many levels.
With less than a week before Jessica Jones is added to Netflix, I’m eagerly counting the days until I can finally dive into the snarky, dark fun that will be Jessica Jones.
Marvel’s Jessica Jones debuts on Netflix on Friday, November 20.
//Images via RadioTimes, Le Journal Du Geek, and SlashGear.
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