Comic Info
Comic Name: The Pulse
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Bret Anderson/Michael Lark
# of Issues: 4
Release Date: 2005
The Pulse #7
Reprints The Pulse #6-9 (January 2005-July 2005). Something has happened. Jessica and Luke find themselves attacked by a mysterious woman in their apartment. Now, Luke is fighting for his life and his powers could literally be the death of him. When Jessica discovers that the attack is somehow tied to Nick Fury, Jessica discovers how deep and powerful Fury’s control can be. Jessica finds herself in a race against time, and Luke Cage’s time could be running out.
Written by Brian Michael Bendis, The Pulse Volume 2: Secret War is a Marvel Comics superhero comic book collection. Following The Pulse Volume 1: Thin Air, the series is a tie-in title to Secret War and features the art of Bret Anderson and Michael Lark. Issues in this collection were also collected as part of Jessica Jones: The Pulse—The Complete Collection.
Alias was a great title. It was edgy, dark and featured a “superhero” so fractured and broken that she seemed more vulnerable than any human…and then it got turned into The Pulse. The Pulse really ruined Jessica Jones and the momentum being built by Alias. The Pulse 2: Secret War shows an intersection between two bad takes by Brian Michael Bendis.
The Pulse #9
Secret War was a mess. Not only was it a bad story, but the release of the comic dragged. If you did care about the story to begin with, you really didn’t by the time the last part was released. This means that tying Secret War into The Pulse gets all the baggage of Secret War on top of the problems that are in the writing of The Pulse.
The comic book has little substance. Bendis made a career through segments of silence. While this worked in some of his titles, it doesn’t work here. The Pulse has little meat. It starts with a bang…literally. Unfortunately, if you read Secret War, this title didn’t really add much to what you read in that series (which is the point of a tie-in title). In this four issue collection, Jessica walks around pretty much two issues (the HYDRA encounter goes nowhere) and then there is a kind of significant interaction between Jessica and Danny. Most of the time four issues isn’t long enough to explore aspects of a story…here, four issues is too much for a series that feels flimsy.
The Pulse really was a downer. I was excited for more Jessica Jones, but the neutered Jessica Jones isn’t Jessica Jones. The decisions in this series took away most of my interest in the character and this combined with Brian Michael Bendis’s New Avengers title which removed a lot of interest in The Avengers as well. The Pulse 2: Secret War was followed by the final volume of the series The Pulse 3: Fear.
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