Daredevil - Page 1

"Though attorney Matt Murdock is blind, his other senses function with superhuman sharpness -- his radar sense guides him over every obstacle! He stalks the streets, a red-garbed foe of evil..."

Daredevil: Vol 2 2003 (HC) pgs.

Written by Brian Michael Bendis. Illustrated by Alex Maleev.
Colours: Matt Hollingsworth. Letters: RS and Wes Abbott.

Reprinting: Daredevil (2nd series) #26-37

Additional notes: intro by Mark Steven Johnson (writer/director of the Daredevil movie); interview with Bendis; sketch gallery; look at the colouring process; etc.

Rating: * * (out of 5)

Number of readings: 1

This prestige, hardcover book collects two Daredevil story arcs (the first seguing into the second). Both have been collected in their own, soft cover TPBs and, as such, are reviewed there as Underboss and Out. I'll admit, despite the acclaim writer Bendis has been getting, I was underwhelmed by the whole saga -- though a second reading might mute my disappointment. The collection features an introduction by Mark Steven Johnson (the guy behind the Daredevil movie). Reading his gushing intro telling us how brilliant Bendis is, one might consider my dismissive review as suspect...until one actually sees the movie (O.K., the movie wasn't that bad, but it calls into questions his credentials as an expert on thoughtful storytelling).

For those trying to decide between this and the TPBs -- this has additional bits like intros and afterwards, and a sketch gallery. But the Out TPB contains another three issues, comprising another story line. So, take you're pick.

Cover price: $48.00 CDN./ $29.99 USA

Daredevil: Born Again 1987 (SC TPB) 176 pgs.

Written by Frank Miller. Illustrated by David Mazzucchelli.
Colours: Christine Scheele, Richmond Lewis, Max Scheele. Letters: Joe Rosen. Editor: Ralph Macchio.

Reprinting: Daredevil (1st series) #227-233 (1986) - with covers

Rating: * * * * 1/2 (out of five)

Number of readings: 2

Capping off Frank Miller's return to Daredevil -- the character that catapulted him to stardom in the late '70s/early '80s -- was this final, seven issue story line in which the criminal ganglord, the Kingpin, learns D.D.'s secret identity, and destroys his life from the shadows, before he finally re-emerges...reborn.

I've commented before about how different readings of a story can leave you with different impressions (sometimes they don't, of course -- but sometimes they do). I first read this a few months ago and wrote a review, but decided against posting it until I'd read it again. After re-reading the story, I re-read my initial review, too. Interestingly enough, in many respects what my original review said is still valid, but, on a second reading, seems unduly negative.

You see, though I initially thought it was good, it seemed overrated. Re-reading it, I liked it a lot more.

Maybe I expected too much the first time through. A survey I once read placed this story line ahead of the Watchmen (and just behind Batman: The Dark Knight) in popularity; Gerard Jones, in the Comic Book Heroes (1997 ed.), called it "the best-crafted storytelling (Miller) ever did".

Born Again is ambitious and involved. Karen Page, Matt Murdock's former lover who left him way back in the '70s to become an actress (even appearing in a few Ghost Rider comics from that period) is now a junkie and porn actress who sells Matt's secret identity for a heroin fix. The Kingpin acts on that knowledge, working in secret to have Matt disbarred, his life and home destroyed. Matt, already on the verge of a nervous breakdown thanks to previous events in his life (which makes this not quite as self-contained as one might like) goes over the deep end, becoming a derelict. The Kingpin orders everyone who knows the secret killed...forcing Karen to flee for her life to the very man she betrayed...Matt.

The themes are big and powerful. Spiritual decay and redemption, vendettas and forgiveness, urban corruption and human decency. In fact, the main focus of this story line is the Decline of Western Civilization. The Kingpin is not just lord of crime, but lord of the city, who has his fingers into everyone and everything. In Miller's dark world, anyone can be bought or blackmailed or manipulated.

Just so we don't lose track of these things, the chapter titles are rife with religious imagery: "Purgatory", "Saved", etc. Born Again is at once wholly unlike most comic book superhero stories, and entirely grounded in the idiom. Murdock spends much of the saga out of costume, and the story follows the various, normal, supporting characters, seeming more like an urban drama or a crime novel...but the themes of redemption and rebirth, where the fundamental decency of the achingly guileless Foggy Nelson and the flawed nobility of the decidedly non-macho Ben Urich are given equal weight as any costumed hero -- well that's pure comic book philosophy. At least, the best of superhero comics.

Early scenes depicting Matt's paranoia work well, Miller putting us in his unravelling mind the way he can better than almost anyone, and a lot of the ensemble of characters are well-drawn. The complex plotting, with various threads seeming independent of each other, then suddenly veering together, is unusually strong and complex for Miller (particularly chapter five). More often he's better at mood and character than with the nuts and bolts of plot.

It's a rich, engrossing, adult saga with memorable scenes and characterizations, hanging on the theme that the city's gone to hell, as much in need of redemption as Daredevil himself. "Look at all these people. They don't care a bit!" charges supporting character Glori O'Breen of the pedestrians who've watched an attempted mugging.

The art by David Mazzuccelli is also starkly effective, crisp and gritty, at once beautiful and ugly. Over these issues it evolves from competent comic book work to the strikingly effective simple realism he would employ in Batman: Year One. Along the way he employs a heavier inking style in spots, perhaps to evoke the Miller/Klaus Janson work from the early '80s. Interestingly, in my initial review I'm more critical of Mazzuccelli's work, but the second time through I have little to say that's negative.

So why was I less enthusiastic the first time through?

Well, admittedly, the seams start to show as things progress. The fundamental character arc is Daredevil's emotional breakdown, then his re-birth...but that re-birth is a bit wishy-washy. It's not clear what pulls him together. In a way, there's a feeling that Miller was taking his religious metaphors too literally, hinting almost at divine intervention. But that doesn't wash in the mainly gritty realism of this saga.

We wait a big chunk of the book for the reunion of Karen Page and Matt -- when the good woman trapped inside the junkie tells the good man trapped inside the derelict how she betrayed him. But when it comes...it happens off camera! It's as if Miller chickened out, unsure how to write such an emotionally challenging scene. And a sub-plot involving a nun presents more questions than it answers.

In spots, Miller falls into the trap that a lot of modern "serious" comic writers fall into: he set out to write a great story, an important story, and the human players are reduced at times to cyphers, the emotion a bit aloof. The human scenes seem less important than the thematic ones. And that's just wrong.

Miller's themes expand in the conclusion when the Kingpin calls in a government sanctioned psychotic super-soldier, Nuke, to kill Daredevil (and blow up half of Hell's Kitchen). The idea of urban decay expands to include social and governmental decay, with the pill-popping, super-patriotic Nuke symbolizing just how badly the American Dream has gone awry. The Kingpin comments that he has merely transported war from the jungles of South America to Manhattan -- in other words, the kind of nasty little "foreign" wars one watches blasely on TV have come home to roost.

For contrast, Miller brings Captain America into the story, pitting the icon of a nobler age against his twisted, contemporary version. There's actually a bit of a parallel with Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight, with Cap and the Avengers in the Superman role, briefly seeming stooges to the System. But Daredevil is suddenly shunted a bit to the side -- reduced to co-starring status in his ownn climax! And although we can respond to the symbolism in the Captain America/Nuke contrast, even Miller seems vaguely aware how silly the concept is. The '40s was not some dream age of integrity and kindness and heroism, and hinging his otherwise serious dissertation on such a blatantly hokey and cliched falsehood hurt things. Not badly, it's true, but when the character/human drama scenes seem to have been short changed in favour of the big ideas, and then the big ideas end up being a little hollow, well, it causes things to stumble a little.

For such a largely non-action driven saga, the climax should've been character-oriented (the reconciliation with Karen, perhaps) rather than a lot of shooting and fighting and broadly drawn "symbols".

There are other technical flaws, like Daredevil's sole victory over the Kingpin being destroying his public image, when there was little indication the public saw him as anything but a gangster to begin with, or a minor slip-up like Daredevil seeming unsurprised by Karen Page's re-entry into his life. Presumably after threading her through four issues, Miller forgot that Daredevil, as a character, was unaware that she had been returned to the cast. As well, Miller's text captions veer kind of erratically from third person to first person in ways that seem more like mistakes than artistic expression. And some have objected to the narrative idea of turning Karen Page into a junkie-porn star as being misogynistic.

Daredevil: Born Again doesn't quite deliver an ending to match its build up, and there's a sense that Miller may have bit off more than he could chew. But once you accept that, this is an engrossing, rewarding epic and seemed to herald a new direction in Daredevil's life, reinventing him as a defender of the inner city.

Cover price: $23.75 CDN./$16.95 USA. 

Daredevil and the Punisher: Child's Play  1987 (SC TPB) 50 pgs.

Written by Frank Miller and Roger McKenzie. Art by Frank Miller. Inks by Klaus Janson.
Original colours: Klaus Janson. Letters: Joe Rosen. Editor: Denny O'Neil.

Reprinting:  Daredevil (1st series) #183 & 184 - plus part of #182, and without the final pages from 184 (which led into 185) (1982)

Additional notes: various commentaries; covers

Rating: * * * (out of five)

Number of readings: a few times over the years

When a little girl O.D.s on Angel Dust and her equally young brother is charged with the subsequent murder of one of the dealers who supplied her, D.D. sets out to figure out who really killed the dealer. Things get complicated when the homicidal vigilante, the Punisher, shows up.

Daredevil/Punisher: Child's Play is a mix of strengths and weaknesses. The story is a little more complicated and plot-driven than I associate with Miller's work at the time, and passages like "Darkness doesn't descend on Hell's Kitchen. It spews up from shadowed doorways and back alleys and fire-gutted tenements..." are a reminder of a time when comic books had literary aspirations, rather than the more cinematic-style popular today. The story has grown up elements of mystery and whodunnit, too -- no guessing the identity of the killer because he wears a colourful costume and calls himself "Dr. Evil, Master of Mischief" or some such moniker.

Conversely, the first part (co-written by Roger McKenzie) isn't as pithy or stylish as Miller can be on his own, and some of the anti-drug dialogue is overdone (the key to preaching is not to be obvious about it). And the plot gets a bit muddled, even illogical in spots.

And if you find yourself giggling through TV's The Practice, or re-runs of L.A. Law, over how loosely they follow the rules of law, comic books are often worse. Comic companies should seriously consider having legal advisors on retainer so that lawyer-heroes Daredevil and the She-Hulk, or even just general crime-oriented comics like Batman, can have a semblance of veracity when it comes to court room scenes.

Selling this as a team-up between Daredevil and the Punisher is a bit awkward -- Punny is just a supporting character (the inclusion of eight pages from Daredevil #182, as a kind of solo prologue showing the Punisher break out of prison, was maybe included to boost his presence). As well, even though Miller was part of the wave of comic folks in the '80s emphasizing violence (often gratuitously) -- heck, he was at the vanguard -- and much of his recent stuff has been prretty extreme, here the brutal Punisher is clearly portrayed as a bad guy. There's none of the old "let's agree to disagree" stuff that Spider-Man sometimes indulged in.

And maybe that becomes even more disturbing. Since the Punisher subsequently became tres populaire (at least for a time), does that mean his fans will still interpret this as Punny-as-hero as he shoots boys who've surrendered and beats a man almost to death? That's clearly what Marvel wants you to think. The TPB contains no less than three editorials (by Ralph Macchio, Mike Baron, and Ann Nocenti) which, to varying degrees, try and push the idea that the Punisher is pretty cool in his own right -- almost as if to combat the material in the story itself. That's no fault of Miller and McKenzie, if their intention is being misconstrued, but it's troubling nonetheless.

The editorials also push the idea of how gritty and provocative the drug story was. Which may or may not be true. I first read these issues after they were published, but long before the TPB collection was released, and I don't recall thinking it was particularly unusual. That's not a criticism, just an observation.

Daredevil/Punisher: Child's Play isn't, maybe, classic Miller/Daredevil, but it's certainly O.K.

Original cover price: $6.50 CDN./$4.95 USA.

Daredevil: Gang War 2003 (SC TPB) 114 pages

Written and drawn by Frank Miller. Inked by Klaus Janson.
Colours: Gylnis Wein. Letters: Joe Rosen. Editor: Denny O'Neil.

Reprinting: Daredevil (1st series) #169-172, 180 (1981-1982)

Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of five)

Number of readings: 2

Although Frank Miller's run on Daredevil has become regarded as something of a classic, and began Miller's rise to the heights of popular and critical acclaim in comics, and his entire run has eventually been collected in a series of Daredevil Visionaries TPBs, for a long time I think this was the only TPB reprinting some of his Daredevil issues.

It proves a surprisingly seminal arc, as it involves DD caught up in a mob war that's threatening to explode into the streets. Not in itself a particularly unusual plot for comics, or for DD. Nor is the fact that the Kingpin is at the heart of it -- except that it turns out this is the introduction of the Kingpin into Daredevil's world (the Kingpin has been such an intrinsic part of DD comics for the last 25 years that it's a shock when you realize they had never met previously). Long time comics readers know the Kingpin began as a Spider-Man villain in the 1960s. Apparently by this point, he'd been written out of the Spider-Man comics, having quit a life of crime. Clearly Miller (or editor Denny O'Neil, or someone) felt he was too good a character to bench permanently, so appropriated him for Daredevil.

The story has the current mob bosses fearing the Kingpin will turn states evidence, so they kidnap his wife, Vanessa, in order to lure him back to New York to be killed. But the Kingpin isn't easily trapped, and the gang war begins, with DD in the middle, and everyone eager to get their hands on the Kingpin's files which implicate his old cronies. There's also a secondary sub-plot/arc, involving DD's recurring arch foe, the assassin Bullseye. The first issue here is unrelated to the mob war story, but has DD battling Bullseye and, reluctantly, saving his life -- at the time wondering how he'll feel if/when Bullseye kills again, knowing he is, in a sense, partially responsible. Bullseye then gets embroiled in the gang war, too, building to a showdown between Bullseye and DD, giving the arc a secondary narrative/emotional climax. Which is just as well, because in a sense, the story arc is meant to act as an introduction of the Kingpin into the series, meaning, the ending can otherwise be a bit weak, not really delivering a satisfying climax as the Kingpin, in essence, triumphs, being ensconced once more as kingpin of crime.

At times, Daredevil came seem like one of the players -- not the undisputed star. The story reminded me a bit of Underboss from years later, also about a gang war between the Kingpin and his lieutenants, and where DD seemed more like a side player than the star. But this version is better -- there are more twists and turns, more threads that weave about (from the search for the Kingpin's files, to Bullseye), and with Daredevil definitely more prominent in the action.

The final issue jumps ahead a bit, but wraps up a dangling thread from the main arc, involving the fate of Vanessa -- although, by that point, other plot threads have been introduced, so the story wraps up a sub-plot that has no meaning in this context, and leaves other things dangling. Still, it probably made sense to include it.

Ironically, an aspect of these issues that can leave you mixed...is Miller himself. In a few years, Miller would be cranking out some undisputed classic comics...even as in recent years, he seems to have become a polarizing figure even among his one time fans (some still love his work, others find it vapid self-indulgence). But these issues are near the beginning of his careers as a writer/artist, and it lacks some of the style and sophistication he would acquire. One can even detect more than a little influence of editor Denny O'Neil in the writing, for better and for worse, O'Neil no doubt mentoring the still fledgling talent. And having become more familiar with Will Eisner's The Spirit as I have in recent years, one can clearly see Eisner's influence, too (Miller being an acknowledged fan of Eisner). Both in the eclectic angles and panel composition, and also in the humour. One thinks of Miller's DD as the definition of grim n' gritty, but there's also a lot of humour and light-heartedness (which in addition to being a reflection of Eisner's the Spirit, also echoes some of DD's own earlier stories). Unfortunately, a lot of the humour is pretty obvious and unsubtle -- cutesy more than genuinely funny.

And though Miller began as an artist, the art is problematic (perhaps particularly with Janson's heavy, crude inks). Miller's style is rather Spartan and seeming hasty, backgrounds roughly sketched in, the proportions of objects not carefully considered (cars that look more like the size of bumper buggies) and the faces and figures likewise a bit...hastily scrawled. There are spots where Miller shows he knows how to draw, where musculature is realistically depicted and shaded...but a lot of time, people move in weird, herky, jerky ways. You can see Eisner's influence in the composition...but not in the attention to detail. In a way, one can't help wondering how the art would've looked if Miller had simply storyboarded...but got another, more accomplished artist to actually draw the finished art.

It seems strange to knock Miller's art, or writing, given that he is, well, Miller, The Living Legend. But what's the point of writing a review...if I don't express my honest, visceral opinion?

Still, I've read this a couple of times, and each time my reaction is similar -- despite noticing the flaws in writing and art, I find I forgive them more as the chapters progress, the story interesting -- and fun -- enough to keep your attention. And by the final issue here, you can see more of the "classic" Miller. On one hand, it reflects Miller's far more simpler writing style, being a very minimalist "plot", but also demonstrates better grasp of his composition and storyboarding, the Eisner influence still there, but with more of Miller's own personality imposed on it.

Ultimately, if you come to this for the Miller of Batman: Year One, or Daredevil: Born Again, you'll be a tad disappointed at the simplicity of the characterization, the lack of subtlety to the scenes and dialogue. You can recognize Miller here, but this is still a Miller finding his way. But, with that being said, and despite my criticisms...this also emerges as an enjoyable enough arc, briskly paced, with twists and turns. Not Miller or Daredevil at their best, but they don't have to be at their best to still be enjoyable.

Cover price: ____.

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