Reading Through 2021 16: Daredevil: The Devil in Cell Block D, by Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark

Daredevil: The Devil in Cell Block D, by Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark

2006

Someone was asking me about Daredevil runs the other day, about Frank Miller vs other folks' runs, and I surprisingly had lots of opinions. Daredevil is not a favorite character of mine, but I've read a lot because so many writers do inspired work with the character. Maybe it's the legacy, maybe it's how unlike most superheroes he is, but regardless, there are a lot of good books.

The storyline is The Devil In Cell Block D, so the trade is called...

I think this is my favorite run. Not even the whole of Brubaker's run, which I never quite completed, but this specific collection. When this came out, I had stopped reading Marvel comics for ten years. I had been reading online that they had improved a lot since I gave up on them in the '90s, but it was Ed Brubaker's name who got me to try them out. Brubaker had been a C-list indie comic artist in the '90s, and I was really curious how he was as an A-list mainstream writer. And at his high points, he was pretty incredible. 

I still read some relatively new Marvel work 15 years later, so he was a good re-introduction to it.

This storyline was directly following Brian Michael Bendis' run, which I only read a few years ago, and wasn't required to understand this story despite the shake up in status quo. The hook is immediate: Matt Murdock is in jail, after having been arrested for being the vigilante Daredevil. He claims innocence, but the feds are sure it's a front. As a blind man, Murdock should be in protective custody, but the feds want Daredevil in general pop.

So gritty! This is how Kingpin is introduced to the book. Do you need prior knowledge of him to get a feel for the character?

Right from the start, it's all character, playing out what would so and so do in each situation. There are a number of characters at play: Daredevil, his nemesis Kingpin, his friend and lawyer Foggy, his friend and reporter Ben Urich, and new to me at the time, investigator Dakota North, the warden, and the fed in charge. All have their own motives and moral system, and Brubaker just lets them play out against each other. Each of the six issues, he adds a little something to the mix to ratchet up the tension. One issue has the extremely restrained assassin Bullseye, who is told he will have access to nothing, not even a spork, and effectively becomes Chekov's Bullseye. Another sees the Punisher turn himself in just so he can go to prison and see what's up there. I don't think I've ever liked the Punisher as much as in this book.

Daredevil's powers are used to illustrate what a coldblooded tough guy Kingpin and Punisher are in one scene. 

The storytelling is so organic that it all comes together to a crescendo, however it's not like strings are being pulled by the writer to get there. It's more like kindling is placed on a slow burning fire that starts to rage.

The art is great too. I don't know Michael Lark except that he's done a few things with Brubaker. He fits into the mold of artists like Steve Epting and Sean Philips, both folks who've done a lot with Brubaker.  Does he use photo reference? Most definitely, but there doesn't seem to be tracing going on. It's weighted in reality, but with an artistic looseness. There are definitely points where the backgrounds are photos dropped in and computer edited, it just doesn't bother me as part of the whole though.

I laughed to see Patton Oswalt and Brian Posehn cameo as lowlife thugs 

At the time I first read it, I was quite into the grittier HBO shows like Oz and Sopranos, which were dark and violent, but could also be humorous, and were very clearly character-based. That's what Brubaker was able to do with Daredevil. I love Brubaker's other work, like Criminal or the Fade Out, but those are more novelistic, concise stories with endings. With Daredevil, it was written in arcs, and was just trying to make you turn the page, much like a TV show wants to get you thirsty for the next week's episode.  Brubaker, at this point in time, was just so good at what he was doing (probably he is still, I just haven't read anything new from him in a few years).

Michael Lark on the left, David Finch on the right. Finch, to my mind, was in the "everything wrong with comics" boat in the '00s. Seriously hard to look at work.

The nature of Marvel publishing is that it's disposable, in that they perpetually want to focus on the new and the now, but they also want to make old comics accessible in increasingly expensive packages (Marvel is thinking about the bottom line more now than ever since they became 1% of Disney's business). So stories like this are pretty lost. It's probably ten years out of print. You have to find it used or in digital. Until Disney adapts it for something and it's repackaged as a classic. But it's a good read regardless.