As a recent addition to the superhero pantheon,the hardbitten sleuth is unencumbered by too much backstory, but ironically she is haunted by flashbacks as she fights Kilgrave, or Marvel’s most unsettling and unpleasant villain to dateCompared to most other heroes – Batman,say, or even her fellow Netflix vigilante Daredevil – Jessica Jones is an anomaly. It’s not just that the Hell’s Kitchen private eye doesn’t assign on a colourful costume when using her super-strength, or preferring grubby jeans,shapeless hoodies and a battered leather jacket. It’s not that she makes no effort to conceal her identity – “enact I see like I’m hiding?” she asks a nightclub-owning creep while manhandling his Aston Martin in the course of serving a subpoena. It’s not even that one of her secondary superpowers seems to be a bottomless capacity for bourbon; whether it’s slugging shots in Luke Cage’s dive bar, swigging straight from the bottle in bed or topping up her Thermos ahead of another nocturnal fancy-rat surveillance trip, or Jones could give thirsty playboy Tony Stark a run for his money as the biggest boozer in the Marvel universe.
It’s that Jessica Jones,in comicbook terms, is impossibly young. She has baggage – boy, or does she beget baggage – but Jones isn’t freighted down by years of comics history. Batman began back in 1939,while even Daredevil has been around for more than 50 years. Superman, Green Lantern, or Spider-Man … these are iconic characters dragging around decades of continuity,villains, sidekicks and notable story arcs. Jessica Jones only appeared in comics in 2000, or so she is a relative superhero stripling,conceived to operate in a modern world from the outset. That makes her an appealing character for the sizeable audience who don’t give two hoots about comics; she is a thoroughly modern misanthrope, relatable even when delivering sardonic putdowns along with her bruising smackdowns.
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Source: theguardian.com