The Main Character
Jessica Jones, also known as Jessica Cambell as a teenager, lived in Forest Hills, New York, where she attended Midtown High, where a certain wall-crawling hero also attended at the same time. On a family drive one day, her father lost control of the vehicle and collided with a military convoy carrying radioactive material. Her entire family (father, mother, and little brother) were killed and she ended up in a coma. When she awoke, she was adopted by the Jones family and she soon discovered she had superpowers.
She soon put on a costume and created a heroic identity: Jewel. She had a pretty low-key career and was somewhat known to the New York superheroes, especially Carol Danvers until she encountered the Purple Man, who seized control of her mind for eight months and subjected her to psychological abuse. He sent her to The Avengers' Mansion in order to kill Daredevil and she attacks the only person wearing red at the mansion: the Scarlet Witch. Jessica endures a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown by Iron Man and The Vision until Carol Danvers saves her. Jessica slips back into a coma and is brought out only by psychic therapy by Jean Grey. Soon after therapy, and after a short stint as a hero named Knightress, Jessica decides to hang up the cape for good.
She goes on to start Alias Investigations, a private detective agency where she soon finds out she cannot outrun her past as a superhero (as it's brought up by almost everyone she meets). In between solving cases and snarking, she vacillates between romantic feelings for Scott Lang and for Luke Cage. By the end of the book, she realizes she's pregnant with Luke's child and the both of them start a romantic relationship.
After Alias, she was a character in The Pulse (a series focusing on the Daily Bugle), in which she and Luke are a couple and she gives birth to their daughter, Danielle. She later marries him in New Avengers and is a sometimes member of the team, when she's not being a mother. She also played a significant role in the first few arcs of Young Avengers.
A television show based on this character, originally intended for ABC, was said to languish in development hell for years ... until Netflix finally dusted it off for their line of shows set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Jessica being portrayed by Krysten Ritter. The entire first season of Jessica Jones (2015) was released on November 20th, 2015, to wide critical acclaim, and the show was renewed for a second season as of January 2016. Jessica teamed up with Matt Murdock, Luke Cage, and Danny Rand in a mini-series called The Defenders, based on the Marvel Comics team of the same name.
In October of 2016, Jessica once again got her own solo series. After Brian Bendis left Marvel to go to DC Comics; Kelly Thompson took over the title by his request.
Jessica Jones appears in:
Notable Comics
- Alias (2001 — 2004)
- The Pulse (2004 — 2006)
- Young Avengers Vol. 1 (2005 — 2006)
- New Avengers Vol. 2 (2010 — 2012)
- Jessica Jones (various runs):
- Jessica Jones Vol. 1 (2016 — 2018)
- Jessica Jones: Blind Spot (2018)
- Jessica Jones: Purple Daughter (2019)
- The Defenders Vol. 5 (2017)
- The Variants (2022)
Television
- Marvel Cinematic Universe (2015 — present), played by Krysten Ritter:
- Jessica Jones (2015 — 2019)
- The Defenders (2017)
Video Games
- Marvel Future Fight (2015)
- Marvel: Contest of Champions (2015)
- Marvel Puzzle Quest (2018)
- Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order (2019)
Jessica Jones provides examples of the following tropes:
- Action Mom: She's a superheroine/detective and fiercely protective of a daughter.
- Alliterative Name: Jessica Jones.
- The Alcoholic: Several dialogue bubbles had Jessica say, "Where is mu $%&/()(/&% drink!?"
- Break the Cutie: One of the more extreme examples in the Marvel Universe.
- Broken Bird: After the incident with the Purple Man, leading her to quit being a superhero.
- Byronic Hero: She means well and tries to help people, but she's an internally traumatized and considerably temperamental wreck and alcoholic who struggles with her tragic superhero past and future as a detective and mother of a child out of wedlock.
- Character Development: Thanks to the need to lighten her so she could appear in stuff outside of the MAX imprint (see bellow in Lighter and Softer), the Jessica of Alias is very different than the Jessica of New Avengers. As a result, it ends up looking like her relationship with Luke and the ending of Alias helped her get out of her depressed state and grow as a person.
- Deadpan Snarker
- Expy: She shares a lot of similarities with Bendis's version of Spider-Woman, both with the private detective background, the friendship with Carol Danvers and the snarky Knight in Sour Armor demeanor. In fact, Alias was originally going to star Jessica Drew, but Bendis could not use her, so Jessica Jones was created instead. The two team up at one point during Alias.
- Lampshaded when Carol Danvers enemy Star shows up to the Alias Investigations office.
Star: You're ... you're not Danvers' friend ... that's the other one, Jessica Drew ... the Spider-Woman.
Jessica Jones: Yeah. We share her. Joint custody. - First-Person Smartass: Her narration in Alias. Spider-Man has a rival to the throne of Marvel's premier Deadpan Snarker.
- Flight: She says she can't fly very well, though it seems that she's just out of practice. In her early days as Jewel, she flew just fine.
- Flying Brick: Flight? Check. Super Strength? Check.
- Happily Married: Her marriage to Luke Cage has a lot of love. In fact, their love for each other and their daughter has helped them defeat a lot of problems together.
- Lighter and Softer: An Enforced Trope via Marvel Comics' policies on their MAX publications, in which Jessica started. Marvel only permitted a limited few of their characters (such as Luke Cage, Punisher and Jessica herself) from making extended appearances in a MAX book outside of being The Cameo. Due to the mature language, sexual content, and other things, the vast majority of their exhaustive cast of characters were not allowed to participate. When Bendis felt he had done all he could with the character under these limited conditions, he ended Alias and integrated Jessica into the main Marvel Universe. As a result, she had to become a much lighter and softer character.
- Mama Bear: Do not mess with her daughter. Norman Osborn and Kang the Conqueror both found this out the hard way.
- Mind Rape: The extent of the Purple Man's mental torture was so severe, she couldn't tell whether or not she was doing things with her own will or his.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Subverted. Several people ask her if Kilgrave ever raped or sexually abused her while under his control, and she insists that he never did. However, she also insists that she feels no less humiliated, traumatized and violated than if he did.
- Remember the New Guy?: She was retconned into Marvel continuity as a Midtown High student who had a crush on Peter Parker (she was even there when he was bitten by the spider). From there, she was supposedly a minor superhero known by Carol Danvers since The Bronze Age of Comic Books. Jessica's Anti-Hero stint as Knightress before she started Alias investigations was also retconned into The Pulse.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Jessica still has lingering trauma as a result of her time as a slave of the Purple Man, whose effect on her with his ability was essentially Mind Rape.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: One of Marvel's biggest examples, and certainly the biggest female one. She curses very frequently in Alias. She was cursing even as a teenager, and even after she moved beyond MAX's mature imprint and onto the G-Teen rated comics, she kept it up, sometimes being covered up by Symbol Swearing.
- The Snark Knight: Not just a Deadpan Snarker, but she had some serious self-esteem issues before finally working on them at the end of Alias.
- Super-Strength: An undefined amount, thought it's at least enough for her to lift and toss cars.
- Super-Toughness: Jessica is much tougher than an ordinary person, and though she survived being beaten by Iron Man and the Vision, she sustained serious injuries. She also admits that she is unsure of whether or not she is bulletproof. As of Blind Spot, it turns out she's not bulletproof. Jessica was killed by a bullet to the head from Evil!Jared, but then resurrected by Good!Jared.
- The Unhug: When people give her hugs, Jessica tends to accept them passively with her arms hanging at her sides.
Jessica's Family
Luke Cage
Luke Cage is Jessica's husband and father of her daughter. They met during Alias and had a one-night stand, which resulted in the pregnancy, but both agreed to give a real relationship a try. They got married in the pages of New Avengers.
Cage has superhuman strength and bulletproof skin from an experiment while in prison. He first appeared in Luke Cage #1.
For more, see: Luke Cage
Danielle Cage
Alter Ego: Danielle "Dani" Cage-Jones
Notable Aliases: Danielle Jones-Cage
Debut: The Pulse #13 (March, 2006)
Luke Cage and Jessica Jones daughter.
- Ambiguously Gay: She is married to Lucy Rand, daughter of Danny Rand and Misty Knight, in one universe. However, this seems to be the only universe where she is romantically interested in anyone.
- Cheerful Child: Being as she is a toddler. When Doctor Strange exposed the New Avengers to a magic spell that was meant to expose everyone's true nature, Dani just giggled, much to Jessica's surprise. Stephen explains that there's no purer spirit than a baby.
- Future Badass: Her future in multiple universes is as her generation's Captain America, and in at least one universe she is that universe's Thor.
- LEGO Genetics: Most future versions of her have inherited a mix of both her parents' powers, making her a Flying Brick.
Villains
A former Daredevil villain who was transplanted into being Jessica's Arch-Enemy. See here for more information.
