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General Information

Title: The Pulse #1

Author: Brian Michael Bendis

Illustrator(s): Mark Bagley

Original Publication Date: Wednesday, February 18,
2004

Cover Price: $2.99US, $4.25 Can

Past comic reviews can be found here.

Premise

J. Jonah Jameson regocnizes that his views of
superheroes may be
unpopular, so he hires Jessica Jones (of
Alias) as a
consultant to work on stories with Ben Urich.

High Point

“‘Congratulations’ is the word he was looking for.”

Low Point

The images on the monitors should be current, right?
I don’t think
that works for the Human Torchh.

The Scores

While titles about regular people in a world of
superheroes have been
done before, they’re still rare. The fact that this
is a natural fit
for existing characters is nice, too. I give the
originality
5 out of 6.

The artwork is as good as the Ultimate
Spider-Man
stuff. It’s still Bendis writing for Bagley’s
strengths, and that’s
what comes through. I give it 5 out of 6.

The story is a very interesting setup. It’s
just getting
started, but the characters are all in place, and the
first story
they’ll report on has just been uncovered. As it’s
Bendis, there’s
only so much you can tell from the first issue, but
we have a good
idea of how good this can be. I give it 5 out of 6.

The characterization of Jessica, Jonah,
Robbie, Ben, and Luke
(Cage) are all well done, particularly if you look at
the comparitive
roles of Robbie and Jonah at the Daily Planet.
There’s already growth
in Jonah’s character, and it’s only the first issue.
I give it 6 out
of 6.

The emotional response was positive from the
first page to
the end. (In case anyone’s wondering, Kat Farrell,
the reporter who
wrote that first article, was the lead character in
the
Deadline miniseries that ran last summer.
The trade
paperback collection is available, and I’ll be
reviewing it soon. Kat
will be in this title, and my copy of
Deadline showed up
yesterday.) There’s a lot of good interest here,
some decent jokes,
and an interesting perspective on Jonah’s techniques
for getting
people onto a project he wants them on. He’s gone
from the obsessive,
angry editor he was in his old Spider-Man
days into an angry
master manipulator. I’ll be here for the duration.
I give it 5 out
of 6.

The flow worked well, primarily because it’s
a series of
conversations that use a running plot about a body in
the bay to edit
out transit time for the characters. I give it 5 out
of 6.

Overall, it’s a solid first issue for a
mainstream book with a
less mainstream perspective. I give it 5 out of 6.

In total, The Pulse #1 receives 36 out of
42.

Additional Notes and Comments

The next review will be of the entire “Thin Air”
story arc this
starts, which will probably be the first six issues.
It’ll go
bi-monthly soon so Bagley can keep up, so that review
may not be until
the fall.