The Man Without Fear, Daredevil, isn’t the only patron of Hell’s Kitchen as Jessica Jones is quickly learning that the New York neighborhood is immune to worldwide threats from the likes of Thanos. Hell’s Kitchen has served as the quiet little cornerstone of the Marvel Universe ever since the Daredevil character first debuted in 1964. Other locals like Jessica Jones and Luke Cage do their part to protect the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, but the threats of Hell’s Kitchen are typically street-level, for the most part.
Not to undermine the likes of Kingpin, Bullseye, or The Purple Man who all terrorize Hell’s Kitchen on a regular basis. While their crimes are heinous in their own right, they aren’t the same kind of worldwide threats that demand The Avengers’ attention in the way Thanos would. Villains like Thanos typically affect the entire world in their attacks, yet somehow, Hell’s Kitchen either winds up never mentioned or completely safe from what should be such a worldwide attack. Even Tigra notices how Hell’s Kitchen always seems to wind up unscathed from worldwide carnage whenever someone like Thanos targets the planet earth.
Tigra theorizes this out loud over coffee in the opening pages of The Variants #2 by Gail Simone and Phil Noto where she tells Jessica Jones that for some unexplainable reason, Hell’s Kitchen always seems to be, as she puts it, “safe” from attacks from Marvel’s biggest antagonists like Thanos, Ultron, and Dormammu. “Who’s gonna hurt you, the damn Stilt-Man?” Tigra adds that she can’t explain it, but there’s “something concealed” about Hell’s Kitchen that makes it immune to bigger threats.
This early into the series, it’s unclear what exactly that “something” is to explain it all – maybe Hell’s Kitchen truly is a blind spot, maybe it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things – but the conversation comes at an awfully convenient time. Jessica is in the middle of her own multiverse storyline. The multiverse’s inclusion in any story is usually treated to be a worldwide (even intergalactic) threat in the Marvel Universe.
The realization puts into perspective just how undervalued Hell’s Kitchen is. Despite its significant history and despite housing elite heroes like Daredevil and Jessica Jones, it seems to be overlooked even by baddies plotting world domination. It can be argued that Hell’s Kitchen gets forgotten in the grand scheme of things by not only Marvel’s key characters but writers and readers as well. However, placing a new multiverse storyline in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen has the potential to re-shape how everyone thinks about the place and re-evaluate its importance. It looks like Daredevil and Jessica Jones’ home isn’t as immune to Thanos-level threats as it long appeared.