Blindly Following A Old Trope… In A Good Way: Daredevil #25 Review

Editor’s Note: Amateur. You carry your spoilers like a blind man. Leaves you vulnerable in seven ways.

Mark Waid’s run on Daredevil has been pretty universally solid, with a few missteps along the way – whether we needed another “drive Matt Murdock insane” story like we got a few months ago is an open question, and that whole “throw Foggy out a high window… as a faint to have some schmo with a scalpel kill him in front of witnesses” plan probably could have used an extra day or two on the drawing board. But in general, those moments are outnumbered by good, and sometimes great, moments and stories.

But then there are times when Waid just fucking outdoes himself. I’m not sure how into this whole greater Unknown Mastermind With A Master Plan To Break Matt Murdock greater storyline I am – again, it’s something that’s been done by at least three Daredevil writers I can think of off the top of my head – but the particular story of Daredevil #25, with this particular antagonist, has a progression and an arc and a final twist reveal that is simply magnificent.

Don’t get me wrong, the antagonist himself is only okay – every writer of superhero comics ever has at least toyed with the idea of a villain who is the evil version of the hero (Bizarro / Owl-Man / Kaine / Sinestro / Faith anyone?) – but that final twist reveal? Man, that’s enough to forgive going to that villain well.

Questionable Mental States: Daredevil #21 Review

Editor’s Note: Kingpin left me with ten spoilers in my pocket. I found a comics Web site that makes change.

Whether purposefully or accidentally, Marvel and writer Mark Waid have put themselves into a difficult position by putting the first chronological appearance of The Superior Spider-Man – that is, whoever Spider-Man will wind up being after the events of next week’s The Amazing Spider-Man #700 – into this week’s Daredevil #21.

Because with all the hype and anticipation surrounding what will happen with Spider-Man (as an example: once we published an article about the leak to the Internet of the ending to The Amazing Spider-Man #700, our Web traffic doubled… and we didn’t even publish the actual spoilers), what he does and how he acts in Daredevil #21 will be almost as important to readers as the story about Ol’ Hornhead. It’s kinda like casting the Octomom or John Wayne Bobbit in a porno flick; you’ll get a lot of rubberneckers not watching the thing for its intended purpose.

So even though Spider-Man’s appearance in Daredevil #21 makes complete and total sense with regards to the greater story – not only the story of some still unknown party trying to drive Matt nuts, but of Matt’s conscious decision to lighten up that goes back to Waid’s earliest issues – his appearance here, before the resolution of the current arc in Spider-Man’s home title, means the issue (not the story; there is a distinction there) has a massive, nearly crippling distraction that I doubt Waid originally intended. It makes the reading of this individual issue, during this particular point in pre-Amazing Spider-Man #700 time, an almost schizophrenic experience, where what Spider-Man does and says in two pages is almost, if not more, important to the comic reader than the actual Daredevil story in the preceding 18 pages.

So I’m gonna review it that way: in two parts.

If It Bleeds, It Leads: Daredevil: End of Days #1 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: He is Daredevil, The Man Without Fear! Of Spoilers!

One of the main reasons cited for the runaway success of Mark Waid’s run on Daredevil (Eisner awards for Best Writer, Best Continuing Series and Best Single Issue tend to be indicative that You Done Good) is that Waid depicts Murdock as a more positive character than he has been since Frank Miller revamped him in the 80s. Waid successfully broke from the years-long general formula for a good Daredevil story, which was to throw some terrible hardship at Murdock and watch him go nuts for a while.

That, however is Mark Waid. Daredevil: End of Days is written by Brian Michael Bendis, who wrote Daredevil from 2001 to 2006, and who put Daredevil through trials like revealing his secret identity, accusing him of murder, and having him marry a woman who goes violently insane and requires commitment… and not the good kind where people throw you a party and give you salad spinners, but rather the kind where the jackets tie in the back and the big blue pills don’t give you a boner.

So will Bendis’s take on this supposed final Daredevil story embrace the Waid’s more positive take on the character? Sure! Provided you get a warm fuzzy feeling over seeing the title character murdered in the street in broad daylight on page four! But that’s okay, because this Daredevil comic book isn’t really about Daredevil!

Depressed and confused? Don’t worry; stick with me and we’ll work through this. And it is generally a comic book worth working through.

Comforting Hallucinations: Daredevil #18 Review

First of all, no matter how you feel about Daredevil #18, you’ve gotta admit: that is one hell of a cover. If the goal of a comic book cover is to get someone not already predisposed to the book to buy it (and that is the goal of a cover, no matter what the prevailing wisdom of “What can I get for the original art on the collector’s market” might say), then this one by Paolo Rivera  succeeds. If you’re in a comic store and you see this cover and you’re not interested? Just ask the guy at the counter if you can use his bathroom, because clearly you didn’t go into the comic store because you like comics.

Trouble is, you put a cover like that on a comic book, particularly when the cover is hyping that the creative team just won an Eisner Award for making Daredevil the best continuing series of the year, and you are writing a check that the book itself had better Goddamned cash. So does the story, by writer Mark Waid with interior art by Chris Samnee, deliver the goods?

In general, yes it does. This issue continues Waid’s examination of Matt Murdock’s long relationship with, shall we say, “stress-related personality issues.” It was a trait that dominated the character for so long that Waid has been almost required to address – if you’re gonna decide that a character has simply decided to be less intense and crazy, you almost have to put him in a situation where he would once, well, go bugfuck nuts to see if he can stay less intense and crazy. And Waid is doing that, in a methodical and well-built way… with a couple of nitpicks. Because Matt Murdock might have decided to be less apeshit crazy, but I have promised no such thing.

Good Long-Term Plans And Crappy Short-Term Ones: Daredevil #17 Review

Daredevil has consistently been one of the best comics you can get since Mark Waid took over the writing last year, and it has been that way at least partially because Waid made a conscious choice to turn the character away from the noir darkness that has defined it since Frank Miller’s run in the 80s. There was a long run on this book where the writers seemed to make a conscious choice that God hated Matt Murdock, and Matt Murdock would respond to this divine hatred with the grace and aplomb of a gutshot bath salts addict with terminal neurologically-based vertigo.

In the last issue, Waid moved straight past the noir-influenced obstacles of bitchy, damaged hot girls and random betrayals straight into pulp: someone dug up his dad and put his remains in Murdock’s desk for Murdock’s partner Foggy to find. Foggy, predictably, flipped out and kicked Matt out of the law firm… which until recently would be the trigger mechanism for the writer to have Daredevil become homeless, or excessively violent, or to bang Typhoid Mary in Peter Parker’s house while Captain America pounds on the door to serve a subpoena.

In Daredevil #17, however, Waid zigs where everyone else would zag, delivering a flashback story that ultimately reinforces Daredevil’s new, more upbeat attitude and personality in a believable and organic way… albeit being kind of a goofy story with some real holes in it.

Them Bones: Daredevil #10 Review

If you’d told me even five years ago that I would enjoy a Daredevil comic wherein Daredevil battles a giant underground Sarlacc monster and gets into an acrobatic battle with the Mole Man – of all people – I would call you either a deluded scumbag, a shameless huckster or D. G. Chichester… all of which amount to almost the same thing, but I don’t want to digress this early.

My point is that, despite the innate ridiculousness, for an old comic reader raised on Miller, Nocenti and Bendis, of the plot of a Daredevil story like this one, it is in reality a spectacular comic book with great action, stellar art and actual humanity behind both the hero and the villain. This issue is akin to Hamlet’s soliloquy to Yorick’s skull on the nature of death and mourning, only with groin kicking… which actually might get me out to watch some Shakespere. Simply put: this comic is the good shit.

The Quintuple Macguffin: Daredevil #6 Review

This review probably isn’t going to be very long because there’s just not all that much to say about Daredevil #6, or the book in general since Mark Waid took over writing duties from Andy Diggle a few months back. This is an excellent comic, and you should be buying it. This is one of the rare comics where you really need to nitpick to find fault… and make no mistake, I will do that, because baldfaced cheerleading for a comic book just isn’t funny. Unless you’re watching someone else doing it. Preferably at a convention. While he or she is wearing an authentic Spider-Man costume. Assuming Peter Parker had been given the proportionate strength and speed of a very, very obese spider. But already, I digress.

Let’s start with the villain. Bruiser is a new creation by Waid and artist Marcos Martin, with a simple premise: he dresses like a wrestler, he wants to fight The Hulk, and he’s working his way up “The Ranks” of superhumans until he’s earned his shot. That is all we know and all we need to know; he exists to give Daredevil someone new and cool to fight, which is damn refreshing after years of story arcs where old familiar villains with axes to grind spend issue upon issue planning to psychologically destroy Matt Murdock. There have been times when I’ve put down a Daredevil issue and said, “Jesus, would you and Kingpin just fuck and get it over with, already?”

A Whole New 52-Less World

It is Wednesday, and as it has since the inception of this publication almost three months ago…

…this means the end of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives broadcast day.

Which feels like business as usual, but… something is missing… Oh right! There’s not a single issue of DC Comics’s New 52 in the take this week! That explains why my local comic store owner, who knows me by name and asks me to stop asking whoever’s milling around the Archie comics rack if they “wanna see the Old 5-2″, looked at my take this week and only said, “Bomb Queen? No refunds if the pages stick together, Rob. And no, I won’t shake your hand. Or anything else.”

It’s gonna be a weird week with almost no DC books to review, but check it out: we’ve got a new Mark Waid and Marcos Martin issue of Daredevil, Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Rizzo’s Spaceman #2, Neal Adams art and script on Batman: Odyssey, Jonathan Hickman’s followup to FF #600, and a new Angel & Faith from Buffy Season 9!

This is going to be an interesting week; without the new DC books, we’ll have a chance to review some different stuff, and without that New 52 pressure (And since a series of head and chest colds here at the Home Office are starting to dissipate), we should be able to get a new episode of the Podcast in the can.

But before any of that, we need to read the new stuff. So see you tomorrow, suckers!

Blind Ambition: Daredevil #4 Review

I like to make the occasional joke about Frank Miller, as I am known to do about anyone who seems to be taking seriously their own bullshit, but the fact of the matter is that the man is one the most lauded comic creators of the 1980s for a reason. Just look at the resume: The Dark Knight Returns. Batman: Year One. Ronin. the Wolverine miniseries with Chris Claremont.

And then there’s Daredevil. Say what you want about Miller’s 21st century penchant for drawing two detailed red dirigibles crashing into each other and then sketching a woman’s nose and eyes above them, but Frank Miller changed the face of Daredevil from a second-tier Spider-Man knockoff into a classic of noir storytelling, which cast a long shadow over the way the character was written and drawn for 25 years.

So when I heard that Mark Waid was going to take over the character with a renumbered #1 issue (But Marvel doesn’t do reboots! Also, their poop smells like ROSES!) and make the character lighter and less tortured, I considered dropping my subscription… but considering I was already considering dropping the book thanks to the disappointing Shadowland event (Daredevil’s a ninja! A possessed ninja! Who raises the dead! Hey, where you going?), I decided to give it a day in court (Lawyer pun not intended).

And I’m glad I did, because it turns out that Waid’s Daredevil is one hell of a book. And issue #4 is the best one yet.

Don’t You Forget About Me: New Avengers #16 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains spoilers. How many spoilers? Well, I’m going to include a scan of 9/10th of the last page of the fucking story. The only way to more effectively ruin a climax involves a Donkey Punch. You are warned.

I would like to start by saying, clearly and unambiguously, that I liked New Avengers #16. The story is excellent, the art is spectacular, and the action is almost unrelenting. This is a good comic book. Are we clear?

Good.

Because now I am going to rank it out for a little while.