Reading Through 2021 62: Daredevil Epic Collection 15: Last Rites, by Ann Nocenti, D.G. Chichester, and Lee Weeks

Daredevil Epic Collection 15: Last Rites, by Ann Nocenti, D.G. Chichester, and Lee Weeks

1990-1992, collected in 2020

Holy, this was a lot of book. 

The cover is the original cover of issue 300, not recolored!

I'm a fan of the Marvel Epic Collections, they are dense collections offering a snapshot of their time period. Unlike themed collections which collect a single storyline, this is all the Daredevil that was being published in the featured time period. Probably more than any Epic I've read, this was an unfocused book. It covers the transition between Ann Nocenti and D.G. Chichester as writer of the book, and is divided by an annual with a third writer, Gregory Wright. As a result, even though I'm reviewing one book, it feels like I'm reviewing three.

Before picking this up, I was already a fan of Nocenti's DD run. The incentive to read this was to finish reading her run, as I'd fallen off when it came out in the 90's. I've never read anything by Wright to my memory, though if he was working at Marvel in the late 80's to early 90's, I must have. Chichester I only know from the Midnight Suns comics line of the time, which I never read more than an issue of. And I know he was writer when Daredevil got his "realistic" black armor in the 90's, so I never really gave him a chance at the time, and haven't given him much thought in the decades since. With these Epic Collections coming out, I've heard people say they have affection for his run, so I went into this with an open mind.

This feels subversive today! If Cap complained that America was cutting social programs in an issue today, it would be the next right-wing Twitter cryathon. "Is this what they're indoctrinating kids with now?!"

Ann Nocenti's Daredevil has it's problems, but I love it. She wore her feelings on her sleeve, and the editor, Ralph Macchio, must have just not cared at all or been extremely sympathetic. Since the stories make sense, the spelling is correct, there's a fight or two every issue, let her talk about how white collar crime is way worse than the petty crime that takes up newspaper ink! Every time people online today complain about politics in comics, the appropriate reply (if I had time to talk to a brick wall) is: not being "political" is a form of being political, and comics have always been political. Ann Nocenti made some of the most political mainstream comics of the time.

For a scene written by a white person that was mostly read by white kids, it's good? This sort of thing was not on the Cosby Show

As an adult reader, a lot of it is heavy-handed, but when I was a 15 year old reader, I was dense, and I needed something this clearly stated to get through. Sometimes it is just soapboxing, but in other places she weaves it in to the story naturally. One of her best characters, Bullet, is a bad guy, an enforcer, but he's also a single father unequipped to raise his son. His son rarely leaves their apartment, and constantly worries about the bombs dropping in a new world war. That sunk in to me as a kid at the time, and their portrayal in this collection was similarly sympathetic. I still remember a lot of the comics I read in the 80's, and often it was the hamfisted morality they espoused that set me on the path I went down in life. I was impressionable when it came to comics.

Even the drug lords tire of the war on drugs

Unfortunately, the bulk of Nocenti's stories here aren't great. In her main arc, Daredevil returns to New York and immediately gets amnesia for reasons I couldn't understand. I flipped back and forth to get what I was missing, and couldn't find it. Fine, I'll go along with the story anyway. So Bulleye steals Daredevil's costume and goes out into the city as him to ruin his reputation. Meanwhile Daredevil, now using his father's name Jack Murdock, becomes a blind boxer and boxes at a massively hyped match at Madison Square Gardens. That's character breaking stuff. Whenever he goes back to the status quo, there are still newspaper articles and photos of him using his own last name boxing blind. How could he ever have a secret identity again? It's weird. 

The story ends with DD wearing Bullseye's costume and beating up "Daredevil", while the two of them have trouble remembering which person they really are. The ingredients of a good story are there, but it's underbaked. The penciler who replaced John Romita JR on the series, Lee Weeks, can't carry it with his art either. I'm not a Weeks fanboy as I don't have much of his work, but what I'd seen was fairly good. The stuff here is not very strong. And it was inked by the excellent Al Williamson, who did such an incredible job with JRJR's run. I was not feeling great about the rest of the collection.

From Weeks' first issue on Daredevil. It's very 80's Marvel

Then the book takes a break for the 1991 annual. In the 80's, annuals were delightful issues where the writer got to play and make something special, often with artists who didn't do the monthly series. By the 90's, the Marvel editors had decided they could sell more through crossovers, and they were usually uninspired rush jobs with a bunch of filler backup stories, and that's what this was. It was pretty bad.

What editor thought these three characters could support a four series crossover? "It's like those G.I. Joes the kids like."

I don't know who Gregory Wright was, but I feel like he hated his job, or he thought he was writing for kids so he didn't have to try. It's lazy, and while there was a ton of places I got irritated with it, there was only one part that was written even a little interesting.

Hey, crooked cop! Don't take your bribe on the crowded street five meters away from New York's greatest reporter

One of the bad guys created for this story, the Crippler, is not a good character at all. He's Punisher, but he likes making criminals suffer, not just killing them. But, in his origin, we see that before he was a psycho vigilante, he was a cop and a marine, and then he joined Hydra. 

That is throwing some shade on authority figures, and I doubt that would be allowed in a post-9/11 mainstream comic.

The Crippler was too much of a bad boy for Baron Strucker

Still, that annual has little redeeming value beyond a Mike Mignola cover.

"And then, Baron Strucker stands up and cackles maniacally." Take that, Frank Miller

Thankfully, Marvel decided not to publish the other three connected annuals in this collection as they have in some other Epic Collections. I'm figuring the villains were the connecting tissue and DD doesn't appear in them. Moving on.

We then start D.G. Chichester's run, with Lee Weeks carrying over from Nocenti's. The first few issues have some stunt casting. The first story has Punisher, and the next has Ghost Rider. The Punisher story features Tombstone (mainly a Spectacular Spider-Man villain) and Taskmaster (who I only knew from Gruenwald's Captain America run back then), and it was nice. A new writer injects some fresh blood into the stories, and both villains are appropriately down to earth for DD to fight. The two villains are trying to take down criminal targets meant to get them into a fraternity of criminals. It's alluded to more than explained, and it seems to be the ninja organization the Hand, but it's never really clear, and the whole "street level criminals are killing targets to get into a mysterious organization" just disappears. Maybe it's picked up again in the next book, but it's just as likely he had an idea, then decided it wasn't very interesting. I didn't think it was that interesting anyway.

At the end of Nocenti's run, she starts seeding a subplot where Kingpin wants some legitimate business. Chichester picks it up and makes it the center of the last eight issues of the book, culminating in the four part Last Rites storyline. And the book starts getting good.

Weeks' art a year into his run is much better

Weeks' art gets better from issue to issue, and Al Williamson seems to get more in sync with it. The JRJR work was very much rooted in line, and Weeks' work is rooted in shadow. Williamson starts using a brush more liberally on clothes and backgrounds. There are still the odd janky faces in the book, but on the whole it looks good. Drawing 22 pages a month is a great way for a young artist to get in shape, and you can see it here.

The Kingpin story is good too, with a bit of Marvel goofiness on the side. He decides to buy a TV station to influence the public. Because he is a crime lord, he needs legit investors to avoid the FCC, and is duped into opening his bank accounts by Baron Strucker in a Texan costume (white Colonel Sanders suit and goatee with a white cowboy hat) and a Foghorn Leghorn accent ("I say, I say"). The Nazi super-criminal was able to fool the Kingpin into thinking he was a Texas business man. Don't think about it too much.

Long story short, Hydra and everyone who hates Kingpin go after him at once, and DD piles on to make sure he hits rock bottom. The DD in this is kind of malicious. It's a bit out of character, but at this point in DD's history, DD barely knows who he is.

He said it! He said it!

The best story in this, as in, I had to stop and wonder about what I'd just read, was the taking down of Typhoid Mary. Mary is Kingpin's enforcer, but she's sleeping with him too. Kingpin pines over his wife Vanessa, who wants nothing to do with him. He's receptive to Typhoid Mary on a physical level, but he has no love for her. You can feel some pity for her, despite being a villain.

Daredevil, as Matt Murdock, tries to rekindle his relationship with Karen Page, but she isn't receptive. She likes him, she probably loves him, but knows a relationship with him would destroy her. Cut from that to Typhoid Mary taking out some low level mafiosos. Matt/DD has a history with Mary, so rather than fight her, he decides to do things differently.

Weeks and Williamson earned their pay on this page. Did it need captions?

He takes her to a hotel, sleeps with her ("sleep" is such a weak word, Daredevil bangs), then sneaks out while she's sleeping. He then forges her name on a psychiatric admission form, calls the cops and has her locked up in a psych ward.

The issue ends with Matt crying on the floor of a bathroom next to a dirty toilet.

That's crazy. I don't know if it's a sign that Matt is full of vengeance, foreshadowing the his cruelty to the Kingpin. Maybe? But it's not normal for a super-hero. Just to reiterate: he was turned down by one ex, he then slept with another mentally ill ex-girlfriend, forged her signature, then had her admitted to a psychiatric ward. It's not what the hero would do. 

That's why I like it. It's what a person might do, and Matt Murdock is not a flawless hero. He's got issues.

I think I want to read some more of Chichester's run.