I watched the latest episode of Daredevil: Born Again, which featured an appearance by Jessica Jones. As a Spider-Man fan, I’ve always known that Kingpin and Punisher first made their first appearances in Amazing Spider-Man (#50 and #129) before becoming staples in Daredevil’s world. It made me realize that I didn’t actually know Jessica Jones’ comic origin - even after watching the original Netflix series. Looking it up, I found her “first appearance” story to be pretty amusing.
One of Marvel’s clever continuity rewrites placed Jessica Jones into Peter Parker’s earliest high school years, establishing that she attended Midtown High with him and quietly knew him before either became heroes. Because Amazing Spider-Man #4 takes place during that same early school-era timeline, some fans jokingly refer to it as her “first appearance by retcon.” In other words, she was later said to have been present during the events of that issue - even though the character had not yet been created.
Her true first published appearance is Alias #1 (2001), but since I own ASM #4 I’m going to go ahead and claim that one. After all - who am I to argue with Marvel? :-)
