Jules Hauser: When the Detective Becomes the Problem

Jules Hauser: When the Detective Becomes the Problem Jules gets one of the better introductions in Goddess Inc. She's working undercover, lets a man think he's getting what he paid for, and then pulls a gun and arrests him. Her fellow officers are standing around commenting on how intimidating she is. A moment later her phone rings, and she answers her father like this is an ordinary evening at work. Except her father is Zeus, living as Gregor Brontios, and the family problem he's calling about is Venus trying to overturn the arrangement that lets the gods live among humans. The detective work suits Jules. She can move through the city, investigate people and go after somebody without announcing that the Olympians are involved. That makes her more interesting to me than simply putting another divine character in armor and giving her an energy blast. We actually get to see the life she's built here before it starts coming apart. Venus is involved in that life in an especially nasty way. Jules is married to Clayton, who has a history with Venus. When he rejects Venus, she tears his heart out. The next issue follows that with the heart in a jar. She isn't satisfied with taking him away. She turns the killing into something the people left behind have to confront. Jules' response is where the book stops being a straightforward story about a detective going after a murderer. She takes a sniper rifle to a rooftop overlooking Venus's fashion show and tries to kill her. Venus is tackled out of the shot, and a model is hit instead. An innocent person pays for the decision Jules made. It also creates a very public crime scene, which is a problem for a family supposed to be keeping its existence quiet. Sage has to help handle the fallout through the city government. Their argument afterward is pretty revealing. Jules is angry that Sage described the shooting so harshly in public. Sage points out that Jules botched the shot and left her to clean up the mess. Jules' reassurance is that she covered her tracks. That's what they're arguing about while a woman has been shot at a fashion show. I don't think the grief makes that scene easier to excuse. It makes it easier to understand how Jules got there. Venus has done something monstrous to her husband, and Jules wants her dead. But she has also crossed from investigating a killing to carrying out an assassination that hurts somebody else. Being the person with a badge doesn't prevent her from becoming a danger to the people around her. There are quieter moments that keep this from being only anger and gunfire. After the failed attack, she goes home, showers, drinks wine and burns a photograph of herself with Clayton. That doesn't look like somebody who has gotten closure. She's still trying to deal with what happened while the rest of the family keeps moving toward a war. And the family itself isn't safe ground. Her twin brother Landon has sided with Venus. By the final confrontation, Jules has to fight him too. She tells him she doesn't want to hurt him, but that doesn't make him step aside. The person she is trying to reach and the person she has to stop are the same person. When she finally gets her chance to confront Venus directly, she brings up the murdered girls, her father and Clayton. Venus answers by twisting the knife about Clayton loving her instead. Even at the end, after Zeus defeats Venus, Jules wants her heart ripped out. Zeus chooses a different punishment. Jules survives, but the book doesn't pretend that survival has restored the life she had at the beginning. Her husband is gone, her brother has betrayed the family, and her own attempt at revenge has hurt somebody who wasn't responsible for any of it. That's a much messier character than the confident detective who gets out of the car in the first issue, and I think that's the part worth spending time on.