Reading Through 2021 78: Daredevil by Bendis and Maleev, vol 3

Daredevil by Bendis and Maleev, vol 3

2010

I re-read vol 1, I re-read vol 2, it was only a matter of time before I re-read volume 3.

I like that they went with the yellow and red for the cover 

Just up front, I'll get it out of the way: I still get tired of the photo references Maleev uses, and his two-page spreads still aren't very good, for reasons I wrote about in my write-ups of the first two books. Those problems are here, but less so. Maleev cuts and pastes his own art far less (noticeably) in this volume than in the first two, and there seem to be fewer spreads that disturbed the reading experience. That's good!

In this book, we get a lot more graphic experimentation, and that's very good!

The 70's flashback uses yellowed paper and dot-coloring, but strangely chose not to let the letterer in on that fact

The book has three arcs. The first of which has a gangster from before Kingpin's time escape from jail and go looking for revenge on Daredevil as a last hurrah. The story uses two flashback structures to support the story, one in a 1970s style period, and the other in a 1940's style period. This is the Marvel elastic time scale, so I think readers can handle the idea that Daredevil has been fighting since the 70s yet is always 30 years old. The 70s style is a faux-era recreation, and Maleev chooses not to ape Marvel's house style at the time, but is more traditional in his panel layouts, which use a grid without bleeds, and in his action dynamics. Where he often uses a "held camera" view for action, he has a more dynamic perspective, reflecting the comic art of the era. 

Colorist Dave Stewart, who was exceptional throughout the book, has a nice newsprint palette to match the action.

That's the 21st century Maleev action scene

The 1940's flashbacks are in black and white, and graphically closer to the modern setting, but feel a lot more like illustrations than Maleev's usual work. Maleev lets the tools show their texture. I like this all very much. I just haven't read much Maleev outside of Daredevil, so I don't know what kind of artist he really is, but when he's loose, it's the style of realism that I can appreciate.

That is not Daredevil

The story itself is solid. The antagonist first appears and leaves the book here, so the arc would be considered a detour from Bendis' overarching narrative, but it was a good detour.

The second arc, Decalogue, is also a detour, about self-help group for people who have had run-ins with Daredevil. They meet in the basement of a church. It's a nice, smaller story with a not very interesting villain. In the early issues, It reminded me of Twelve Angry Men, as each person tells their story of Daredevil and how differently they perceive him depending on their life experience.

The story has panels, the flashback has a looser and scratchier vibe

Maleev again pushes himself to do some stylistic differences, and with the help of Stewart's colors, really nails the tone. Each person's flashback has a slightly tweaked color scheme and rendering style. Maleev isn't able to switch styles like a chameleon, but he does the job well enough.

Great colors on this page, a great noir pic of Daredevil

The final arc is the capture of Daredevil, leading into Ed Brubaker's excellent run. This story works nicely as a capper to Bendis' run. The only issues I had with it were some of the characterizations and some stylistic choices that I chocked up to being typical of the time it was made.

Not feeling this

Ben Urich gets so mad at Kingpin, he promises to kill him, and I just don't get that. It didn't feel like Urich had been brought to his breaking point. That's a quibble, because Urich has been one of my favorite things in the whole run so far.

Maria Hill is Bendis' character, so he would know how to portray her, but I just found the leader of the largest, deepest government military agency showing her cleavage off to be so embarrassing. I'm not crazy about the Black Widow showing it off either, but with BW, there's an argument that her sexuality is a strategic asset. For Maria Hill though... I was trying to think of what was out at the time, and around the year 2000, mainstream comics were still capitalizing on sexuality heavily, so this probably didn't read as strange at all. In the year 2021, reading this comic that wants so much to be "realistic", Hill's uniform stuck out like a sore thumb.

FBI guy, whose name I've forgotten, is such a transparently douchey character. Bendis and Maleev must have had fun thinking up ways to make him more hatable. His main goal is to put Daredevil away, and never has much of a motive other than he doesn't like how Daredevil does things. It's never about the law or doing good.

Elektra's another character whose costume doesn't work that well in "realistic" comics

Confession: I've never read the original Elektra Daredevil run, or pretty much anything with Elektra that was published before 2000. I don't find her interesting at all, and the portrayals of her after coming back from the dead haven't made me interested in knowing what she was about originally. Those Miller/Janson books are a blind spot I wouldn't mind filling, but I haven't liked Frank Miller in 20 years, so it's hard to make an effort with it either.

Anyway, I think Bendis' Japanese without subtitles is a pretty silly remnant of the era. When I was a kid, language was simply translated in brackets. These days, they usually have the foreign language in the balloon, with English in a translation box. But some time around this era, just having untranslated language was the thing to do.

What's she saying?

"It's me. Come to the Night Hospital at Rockaway and 91st." "What?" "Yes! Now! Bring the damn bag!"

She uses a neutral imperative to come, but then an impolite imperative to bring the bag. And bag is written bag instead of baggu or kaban. So I imagine she slipped into an English accent to say bag, while the rest is in Japanese. Hey, I do that all the time when I have a word I don't usually use in Japanese. But not on a beginner word like bag.

Long story short, I think I liked it better when they just used translation brackets, unless the whole point is to alienate the reader. 

Ultimate Punisher shanks an inmate. He's much more unhinged than the 616 version

The book also has some odds and ends from Bendis' Daredevil years in the form of an issue of What if? and three issues of the Ultimate Universe' Marvel Team Up.  

The What if? asks What if Karen Page had lived? I had no interest in this, as I mainly know Karen through Born Again, and she was either not in, or dead in all the other Daredevil I've read. Micheal Lark is on art, but he'd do far better work in the next Brubaker run.

The MTU issues feature Bill Sienkiewicz on art, and are worth a read just for that. It's not his best or most exciting work, but his bad work is better than many artists' good work. It ties together Punisher, Daredevil, and Spider-Man.

Not going to lie, this doesn't work for me at all

Punisher escapes jail, Daredevil goes to catch him, Spider-Man gets in the way. It's nothing special in the writing, but the pleasure in MTU was in seeing characters you like crossover, not in getting coherent stories.

At the end of this Bendis run, I'm glad I read it in the first place, if a decade after most people did, and I'm glad I re-read it this year, because I only remembered half of it.  It's good, easy to read book that has solid characterization over all. At times, Daredevil is a guest star in his own book, but that just means the supporting cast is getting a lot of room to tell their stories too.

I can't imagine having this on the bookstore rack next to, say, Chuck Austen's Uncanny X-Men, to choose a punching bag few would defend. Coming out as The Sopranos and other better-written cable television flourished, it must have seemed like a mini-revolution for mainstream comics. As those TV shows wrote for the season, Bendis definitely was writing for the trade. Single issues may seem slight, but work very well within their arc. 

It doesn't feel revolutionary now with all the made-for-trades comics out now, but it's still a good read.

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.

Reading Through 2021 41: Daredevil by Bendis and Maleev, vol 2

Daredevil by Bendis and Maleev, vol 2

2010

I read volume 1 for the first time in years last month, and, with caveats, I liked it a lot. I plan to finish off the third volume this spring. It's a series worth reading or rereading.

This volume is much like the first volume, but it is more. It is more confident, more loose, more Bendis. Brian Michael Bendis is a really interesting writer to me, not always for the books he makes, but his approach to writing and his enthusiasm for working in comics. He's not someone obsessed with a golden age of comics, but he still stays true to the characters, in my experience with his work. With volume one, he did a noir, mafia-heavy take on Daredevil, and it was a good read, but in this collection, he gets into one of the key character traits of Daredevil/Matt Murdock: he's horny, often for unstable women. 

Milla's main character trait is that Daredevil turns her on

Milla Donovan is a good addition to the book, and Bendis writes her character. She's saved by Daredevil at the start of the book, and as a blind woman, she instinctively feels his face. Upon meeting him as Matt Murdock, she knows he's Daredevil because she's not relying on her eyes. Bendis gives her reason to find Matt attractive, and within a dozen issues, they are married. The only weakness here for me is that in the story, Matt is called out as having a nervous breakdown and marrying her for those reasons, but the the story doesn't criticize her at all. She's a woman who chooses to chase after a guy who goes out superheroing and decide to marry him, then has buyers remorse. That's not healthy. It's passionate and understandable, but it's not healthy.

This is such a good scene, but the clip art quality just jumps out

The book also gives Daredevil a leading role. In the first book, he was a background character in the first arc, and most of the second arc featured him as Matt. Here, he has a lot to do in costume. This book shows the ramifications of the Kingpin being removed from New York and the vacuum that pulls in wannabe crime lords like the Owl, Jigsaw and the yakuza. Bendis introduces MGH, mutant growth hormone, a party drug that makes you mildly super powered for a short time. They don't go into detail about it, but it sounds like when Viagra was going around as a super-sex party drug that let functioning people last for hours. it's a good concept, which Bendis runs with into his X-Men run, but it's not something explored very deeply. 

One of the major plots is that Daredevil decides to take over Hell's Kitchen, declaring himself the new Kingpin. It's explored somewhat, as other street level heroes like Luke Cage and Spider-Man take issue with him pushing crime in their direction as opposed to stopping it, but it's a storyline that seems to fizzle out. The last storyline of the book is a Black Widow arc which doesn't address it at all. I just read it and can't remember how it ends.

I also wonder about Daredevil wanting the drugs and the "whores" out of his neighborhood. Of course crack and heroin are damaging to communities, but is he is going after dime bag dealers too? As for "whores", er, sex workers, again, I think Daredevil could spend his time making things safer for them rather than going after them. It's one of the difficulties of writing a crime comic in the 21st century while applying the values of the 20th century.

This is a double page spread, to be read across two pages

The following two pages are single page spreads. See that bar in the center? That's how you know. You have to pay attention to that bar in the middle

The art by Maleev still frustrates me. In the course of the book, I can enjoy the tone and the coloring, but he does a lot which yanks me out of the experience. Number one is reusing the same pics over and over. His individual images are fine; seeing them across a few pages makes the image effectively dead. It's not cinematic. It's not dramatic. It's a still image. He can't even be bothered to adjust a hand or add a blink. 

He does a lot of double page spreads which aren't obviously double page spreads. Multiple times, I read down a page before realizing I was supposed to be reading across the page. If you aren't using long, widescreen panels, why make it a double page spread? I'm curious to see what he is doing now. Is he still doing stuff like this in his work? Because it's poor comics making. 

"Aaiiee!!"

Generally, he gets away with his photo reference. It doesn't disturb the book too much. Sometimes though, it makes pages pretty sterile. A character like Typhoid Mary, who is meant to be sinister and sexy, comes across like an office lady playing dress up. His version of her was definitely the worst offender. Maleev's best villain work is with the Owl, who appears reliably angry and unstable across his short arc.

Now that's a face which tells a story (art by JR JR)

Like with volume one, Maleev's art doesn't break the book for me. He can create mood really well, and he is doing clear storytelling. There are just a lot of moments where I have to stop when reading and wonder why a page passed editorial (answer: Marvel was recovering from bankruptcy and didn't know who it was, so they were willing to try anything, and people were excited by Maleev's art).

Other notes: Bendis tries to use some Japanese, and I'm sure that it reads to most people like it does when I see Spanish used in a comic: simply like foreign writing. As a Japanese speaker, it's a little cringe. English people like Japanese stuff. I get it, I moved to Japan 20 years ago. I like Japanese stuff too.

”Stupid"

I noted it in volume one, all the Maleev issues there were in caps, and the final guest drawn arc was in lower-case. Here, the book is all in lower-case.  The Bendis age of comics has arrived!

Reading Through 2021 25: Daredevil by Bendis and Maleev, vol 1

Daredevil by Bendis and Maleev, vol 1

2010

Alright, let me get this out of the way first: I don't hate Brian Michael Bendis. To the extent that I follow mainstream talk, I'm aware that whenever his name comes up, a lot of people are compelled to explain why he's terrible, and it's a pretty boring thing for Internet folks to insist on sharing with the world over and over again. He must have really hurt their feelings somewhere. My thoughts on him are this: he writes dialogue well, works well with artists, and is good at coming up with novel concepts. I've mainly read his Daredevil, Ultimate Spider-Man and X-Men, and it seems that his thing on books is shaking them up with outsider thinking. This isn't like John Byrne, who would come into a book with a "I always thought this was so stupid, so I'm going to fix it," mentality, but rather, "what if..." It means that his books tend to have a very fresh vibe. Once the novelty wears off, that's another story. But this book is mostly novelty.

I've just been talking about DD recently, and it made me feel like going back to see what this was like. I read it one time, probably around 2012, when Bendis came on to the X-Men. I liked it enough to pick up all three collections, but I also had a number of issues with them. I didn't love them. This book collects a four issue arc drawn by David Mack, a twelve issue arc drawn by Alex Maleev, and a three issue arc drawn by Manuel Gutierrez and Terry Dodson. In this collection, the "What if..." hook is "What if Dardevil's identity was made public?" And it was a great hook for the run.

Years later, some of the old problems remain, but others have disappeared. Right off the bat, I have to say it's a good read. The strength is in the storytelling.  The story is decent, but Bendis uses time jumps to let story beats play against each other and make a decent story into a very compelling one. The main arc, about a douche mafia guy named Sammy Silke trying to make his way to the top of Kingpin's empire, is really compelling. Silke is a disposable character, and in my first read though of it, I was confused that he was made to be a main character, then just gets removed, but it really works on the reread. Daredevil's life is going to go to hell, and it's not because of his arch-enemies, it's not because of his own hubris, but because of some lowlife has oversized ambitions that make Daredevil a convenient target. It wasn't the storyline I was expecting when I first read it, but knowing how it went, it all works really well. Silke is like a two-season supporting character on the Sopranos, who makes a mess for the main characters, but was never intended to become a feature player.

This is a pretty good-looking sequence. Daredevil is surprisingly not in the book that much. Matt Murdock probably has twice the page space, but it's not a big problem. 

Maleev has generally good pacing, and a good atmosphere for the book. It's gritty. Sometimes the coloring wore me down, but I liked it more than I didn't. But it did bother me just like it did when I first read it: there is way too much panel repetition and photo use in the book. Every few pages, I'd swear under my breath seeing the same photo background repeated, seeing the same faces used multiple times. This technique of repeating panels, I can accept it here and there to show a stunned character beat, but that's not what this is. This is like in the Flintstones when they repeated the backgrounds over and over to save the animators time and money. It sucks, it's boring, and I can't believe it has become an acceptable technique on mainstream books. 

A car that might simply be a stock image with a Photoshop filter, the guy on the left has two faces drawn, the guy on the right has three, plus two illustrations of the hand on the wheel. I don't know why this makes me so irritated.

It's not that I need the artist to draw every little thing on the page, but noticing how much they aren't drawing sure yanks me out of the narrative. And when the artist draws every little thing, I respect them as an artist. What Maleev does here is making comics, but I don't know that I have any interest in him as an artist.I've seen sketches he's done, so I know he can draw, but he doesn't interest me as an artist based on this Daredevil work.

When this was coming out, comics were at the point that they were already being collected and analyzed to death, and Maleev cut so many corners art-wise. Compare that to the work of previous generations, who expected the art to disappear the month after it came out, yet they drew every damn page.

I'm not a fan of David Mack either. He's super talented, but I just don't like his comic work. He slaps so much noise on the page. I know for some people it looks like art, but it ends up being filler to me. It's artsy as opposed to art. I just wasn't into the art here. I liked the story itself though!

This book did not have Mazzuchelli power going on.

Mack is quite happy to use the exact identical pic over. If folks liked it once, they'll like it twice, right?  Only the most obsessive nerds would even notice, anyway.

The other thing I noticed is that between Maleev's arc and the fill-in by Gutierrez, the text balloons switched to lower-case, a famous feature of Bendis-era Marvel. Will that carry over to book two? I think I want to read the whole run again, so I'll see when I squeeze it into my reading list in a month or two! I might rant about the quality of the art in this run, but it is still very readable stuff and very enjoyable overall, and at the end of the day, that's what's most important to me in a Marvel book. I know I've seen way worse art in a Marvel book and still loved it.

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.