Alias: Ultimate Collection Book 1

Alias: Ultimate Collection Book 1 by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos collects issues 1 through 15 of Alias. 360 pages.

Alias is about an ex-superhero, Jessica Jones, working as a private detective. The first story is interesting because someone essentially tricks Jessica into finding out Captain America's identity by having her investigate a woman who ends up being Captain America's girlfriend and who gets killed that night. Jessica is then in trouble with the police and the only way out is to out Captain America which would be a big political hit on the President of the United States. As you can imagine this puts Jessica in a difficult situation.

During the series we get to know Jessica. Her good decisions, her bad decisions and we get to know a strong, flawed female character. The series is very good in that it mixes detective stories with superhero stories with ease, while also making us care for the main character. It develops a character and it tells stories about superheroes that we don't normally here. We get to see a young girl who is inspired by Daredevil to be her self. We see an ex-superhero sidekick go through issues. We get to follow interesting mysteries. A lot of cool stuff goes around in this comic.

I think the best thing about the art is that it does a very good job of making conversations seem real, which is important to do in a book where you have a writer like Bendis that writes a lot of dialogue. The art works great here.

However my favorite piece of art comes in the painted tenth issue. An issue that is not really involved into longer arcs. In the tenth issue we have Jameson trying to hire Jessica to find out who Spider-Man is. The whole issue revolves around this and a lot of funny things happen which I won't spoil. I highly recommend this issue.

The series is a very good book. I would recommend it to anyone interested in detectives in the superhero universe.