Jessica Jones

So far for Horror Month, our regularly scheduled "Marvel Monday" feature has brought you the queen of the dead, a mentally unstable mutant, a giant insect, the very symbol of death, and a killer robot, but today we close the month out with something that is apparently the scariest thing in the world to a lot of guys: a woman who's strong enough that she doesn't have to put up with their crap. When a mind-controlling sociopath named Kilgrave resurfaces in New York City, Jessica Jones must use her gifts as a private eye to track him down before he causes more damage. Jessica Jones, in the Netflix series, has a few differences from her comic counterpart, but nothing major: 616 Jess was a classmate of Peter Parker's before gaining her powers, and had a brief superheroic career after, but otherwise? Pretty much the same. The job, the attitude, the snark, the alcoholism... what you saw on TV was exactly what you'd see in the comics (though the show had more of a focus on the realities of stalking and abuse, because that's hard to deftly do on the printed page, especialy when Bendis is trying to fit 45 word balloons into every panel). Also, while her abuse by The Purple Man is in the books, her dealing with it (and him) got a much bigger spotlight on TV - so yes, very similar, but with its own unique touches to make it stand on its own. As folks predicted, Jessica has the same sculpt as Mary Jane Watson - clearly MJ was just a pre-paint. It's not a direct copy, however, because the superpowered private investigator wears tougher clothes than the model/actress: there are loose pieces on the ankles to turn the flats into boots, and she wears a black leather jacket over her shirt, which also necessitated new arms for the toy. Both her hands are balled into fists, and the sculpted wrinkles on them make it clear she's wearing her fingerless gloves. The only thing missing is the scarf she seems to wear at all times, but you can correct that yourself very easily. Surprisingly, the figure has a fairly mediocre likeness. She uses the new screen-printing process for the paint, so it's all applied well, but there's something slightly off about the sculpt - the jawline, maybe, or the placement of the lower lip? It looks okay from some angles, but head-on, this looks more like Kate Mara than Krysten Ritter. Heck, Sif looked more like Krysten Ritter than this figure does. The articulation is precisely what you'd expect: ankles, knees, thighs, hips, torso, wrists, elbows, shoulders, neck and head. If you do the scarf mod for her, that kind of limits the up-and-down motion of the neck hinge, but that is a tradeoff we can live with; now, if there were a sculpted scarf doing the same thing? That'd be a different story. Her shirt is the same black as her jacket, and her jeans are painted with a different wear pattern than MJ's were. She gets no accessories - no shoulder bag, no camera, nada. Of course, the fists mean she wouldn't be able to hold anything anyway. She does have a piece of the series Build-A-Figure, though. The BAF is Man-Thing, and her piece is the entire torso. Because it is very big, and she is very small. Jessica Jones is an unlikely candidate for an action figure, because she's just a normal person in normal clothes - not exactly the sort of thing that would set the toy aisles on fire. But as part of a Netflix-themed series of Marvel Legends? She has a home. -- 10/30/17

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