The female lead of Up In Smoke, Down In Flames, is embarking on a promotional tour. Principal photography has wrapped on the film, and she’s anxious to start making all those appearances that will let people know that the film is coming out. She’s going to have some difficulty in issue #6 of The Amazing Mary Jane. Having cleared from work on the film, Mary Jane is given new momentum by writer Leah Williams in an issue brought to the page by the art team of Carlos Gomez, Zé Carlos, and Annapaola Martello. 

The movie has wrapped. The way these things go, she might have to go back for ADR, but for the time being, she’s off promoting the show in New York. The show in question Reilly Redding’s Ellen-style talk show. Granted...she IS promoting a Cage McKnight film that McKnight didn’t actually direct. So things are going to get complicated when McKnight actually shows-up to help promote the movie. Things are going to get that much more complicated when a strange figure shows-up in a Japanese Oni mask. Complications are stretched to a dangerous degree when Mary Jane sees the masked figure kill someone on set. 

An issue that is based almost entirely on a single TV talk show appearance is kind of a bold move for Williams. Still, it pays off in an entertaining chapter that further illuminates some of the traits that make Mary Jane such an interesting character to center a series around. Mary Jane’s resourcefulness, poise, and quick-thinking make her a natural for a story about a very human hero lost in a world of super-humans. In a rather taut, little drama, Williams is showing exactly the kind of resourcefulness of her main character in finding ways to keep Mary Jane very earthbound without compromising the action needed to maintain a solid action series. 

The art team has a big challenge on its hands with this issue. The issue opens with nearly a dozen pages of talk-show. An easy way to approach this might be to simply center the panels on Mary Jane. She’s beautiful. She’s wearing an eye-catching dress. It would be all too easy to simply allow MJ to guide the page. To their credit, the art team keeps the action going beyond the appeal of Mary Jane herself to ratchet-up tension in and around the edges. A level of danger is maintained throughout much of the issue that launches MJ into a completely new setting at the issue’s end. 

The series has spent nearly its entire first half year trying to find the right rhythm. A nearly issue-length talk show is rarely attempted. There WAS that oddly memorable time back in 1984 when the Avengers appeared on Late Night with David Letterman for almost the full-length of issue #239, but it wasn’t handled nearly as cleverly as it is here. Leah Williams shows a considerable talent for constructing a solidly entertaining story in an issue that is smartly rendered for the page.

Grade: A