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.

Cognitive Dissonance: Mark Waid on Digital Comics

Sometimes people ask me why Amanda, Trebuchet, Pixiestyx, Lance and I bother to run a comics Web site when not only is there no money in it, but when it takes so much Goddamned time on top of our day jobs that actually pay for the comics (and liquor) it takes on a daily basis to endure said day jobs.

Until recently, I could only briefly stop and consider how I might possibly articulate my 35+ year relationship with comics, shrug my shoulders and thell them to fuck off and mind their business. However, now I can refer them to this recent video by legendary comics writer Mark Waid, who describes what it was like to be a comics fan growing up in the pre and nascent direct market world.

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.