Life is good for Jessica Jones, until one fateful day. Why is there a dead woman in Jessica’s office, and who is she? Find out in Jessica Jones: Blind Spot #1 from Marvel Comics.

JESSICA JONES: BLIND SPOT #1

Writer: Kelly Thompson
Artist: Mattia De Iulis
Letterer: VC’s Cory Petit
Editor: Alanna Smith
Publisher: Marvel
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: January 15, 2020

Previously in Jessica Jones: She has powers; she’s been a superhero. That didn’t go out so well. Now she’s a private investigator and she finds out she has a knack for that. She has a husband and a delightful little girl. Everything seems to be on an even keel and she’s even a little bit happy. But who knows what’s around the next corner?

A MOMENT OF HAPPINESS AND THEN THE STORM

I like a good detective story with a compelling but flawed main character. Jessica Jones: Blind Spot #1 embraces this with verve. After a brief but foreboding scene, we joint the story on a beautiful day, with Jessica and Luke Cage walking through Hell’s Kitchen Park with their daughter Danielle. It’s a couple pages of normal life, even good life.

But when Jessica goes to her office half an hour later and finds the door slightly ajar, things change in a hurry. There’s a woman on the floor of her office. Jessica has enough time to check her pulse – or lack thereof – and pull out her phone, and then the police arrive. That’s just a bit suspicious. Jessica knows what she’s doing – I like a smart detective – and they have their guns out, so she complies with them and they bring her in.

Several hours later, they still haven’t charged her with anything, and she’s assessing them as much as they’re assessing her. I like the terse dialogue as they try to get her to say something incriminating and she sticks to her guns. She does find out the police got a tip. And when they finally show her a picture of the corpse, she recognizes the woman.

This is where the story starts getting intriguing. The dead woman, Dia Sloane, was once a client. She was in a bad relationship and suspected her boyfriend of cheating on her. She wanted Jessica to find proof of this in the hope that it would give her the impetus to leave. He was cheating; Jessica got the proof. But Dia sort of fell off the face of the Earth and the case was never closed. This was six years ago.

Jessica has a good lawyer in Matt Murdock who shows up and gets her out. I love that these are superheroes, but they’re also people. And here, they need to be people and work within the framework of normal life. (Normal life including screaming toddlers, that is.) And this is a mystery that has to be solved by detective work – superpowers don’t help with everything. Jessica digs into Dia Sloane’s file and loses track of time, even falling asleep. When she finally awakes, she hears something unusual…

DELICIOUSLY MOODY

Jessica Jones: Blind Spot #1 has some really pretty artwork – the sunny day in the park looks warm and inviting, and the dappled light coming through the leaves makes it feel like an early summer day. The lines continue clean when we go to Jessica’s office, but the only light comes from the hallway or through the blinds. I like the play of light and shadow, the use of panels to focus attention, and the limited viewpoint of what’s going on.

One thing that brings home to me that Jessica is a P.I. is the way her observations are depicted. While the police interrogate her, she is observing them. The little things she sees about them we see highlighted as though they’re close up snapshots. They’re things she sees; she doesn’t necessarily jump to conclusions from them. But it is a way to show us how analytical she is.

BOTTOM LINE: SERIOUS MYSTERY

Jessica Jones: Blind Spot #1 is a solid and dramatic opening to a mystery. Jessica is as tough as they come, and when she gets caught up, we cannot help but follow along.

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