wherein Liz reads Daredevil, part 3
Aug. 5th, 2015 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingI gave in and got a Marvel Unlimited subscription (at least for now; I will probably cancel it in September) and have been reading through Vol. 2 of Daredevil. I have thus far skipped the opening arc -- "Guardian Devil," by Kevin Smith and Joe Quesada -- both because the plot sounds frankly stupid and because Quesada's art creeps me out.
This means I picked up at issue 9, with the "Parts of a Hole" arc by David Mack and (ugh) Quesada. I am not entirely sure who was doing what there, because clearly Quesada was drawing a lot of the more traditional panels, but I am pretty sure Mack dictated most of the layouts. Anyway, it's an okay arc but nothing hugely memorable. Also, I do not think lipreading works the way Mack claims it does. The only way Maya Lopez's speech mimicking ability works is if she has some kind of low-level superpower. Then again, I think the 616 Marvel universe in general makes no sense unless you assume at least thirty percent of the population has slightly superhuman stamina/strength/speed and maybe a freebie impossible knack to boot -- there is really no other explanation for how people get superpowers instead of cancer from radioactive accidents, nor for how nominally unpowered heroes survive so many fights without six-month recovery periods -- so eh, whatever.
"Wake Up," aka Brian Michael Bendis's first arc (with Mack on art), is a fine Ben Urich story, but I think it would have worked better as a Ben Urich miniseries instead of an episode in Daredevil's ongoing adventures. The tone just feels slightly off to me.
The next arc, "Playing to the Camera" by Bob Gale with Phil Winslade and Dave Ross on art, has apparently never been collected. I am not sure why the omission. It's not an earthshaking story or anything, but it's perfectly entertaining and in retrospect is an interesting prelude to Matt's later legal woes, though so far as I can tell the villain behind the plot never reappears despite his ominous parting words. (Basically, Matt accepts a case suing Daredevil for property damages; for obvious reasons this gets complicated.)
Bendis is back as of issue 26 and remains the writer (with Alex Maleev as the artist) until issue 81, with a gap from issue 51 to 55 in which Mack returns for another Maya Lopez story, this time doing his own art. Bendis's run comprises 10 arcs: "Underboss," "Out," "Trial of the Century," "Lowlife," "Hardcore," "The King of Hell's Kitchen," "The Widow," "Golden Age," "Decalogue," and "The Murdock Papers."
I really liked "Underboss" through "Hardcore." They tell a coherent story (with one minor glitch; Jessica Jones just kind of appears with inadequate explanation) that very carefully builds narrative tension over twenty-five chapters, starting with the attempted assassination of Wilson Fisk, moving through the public revelation of Matt's identity as Daredevil, and culminating in Matt's terrible but also completely understandable choice to take over Fisk's former position as Kingpin in order to drive the mob out of Hell's Kitchen. I mentioned in a previous post that I had found one Bendis/Maleev TPB in my local library system, but was unable to make any emotional sense of it. That is because the TPB in question was "Hardcore," and the climax of a story generally doesn't make a lot of sense without the opening and middle! When put in context, it plays much differently.
Also, Alex Maleev's take on Matt Murdock is smoking hot. I am just saying. :D
After "Hardcore," though, I think Bendis was not quite sure what he wanted to do, and the subsequent arcs feel like aimless flailing. Each individual arc is still entertaining and usually internally coherent, but the over-arching narrative drive is lost. Bendis does try to create another super-arc, in the form of Matt's troubles with the FBI, but it doesn't pull together in the same way as his first super-arc; the beats are disconnected instead of aligned. Also, while "Hardcore" ends with Matt in a bad place, it still feels like a conditional win -- something he badly needed by that point -- whereas pretty much everything from that point onward is on a downward trajectory. This is not inherently a problem; tragedies can be excellent stories. But a downward trajectory combined with a loss of narrative drive is a problem. The story doesn't feel rewarding to read anymore.
I think this flailing also shows up in Bendis's failure to develop Milla Donovan's character past her initial appearances. She's around, she's clearly important to Matt, but she doesn't make an impression as a person. I got hardly any sense of her life outside her role as Matt's wife, and therefore hardly any sense of what drew him to her (or what drew her to him, for that matter). This negatively affects the emotional weight of various events, since one ends up on the outside watching Matt and Milla emote about each other, instead of feeling fear or longing with them.
Hmm. Some other thoughts.
I am not surprised Bendis's first super-arc focused a lot on the criminal underworld. That's what he did in his own original comics before he got hired by Marvel, after all. I think playing to his strengths was a good choice there. (Disclosure: I have not read Bendis's crime comics. I have, however, read "Fortune and Glory," his autobiographical comic about his misadventures trying to shop those comics to Hollywood. It's pretty funny, in a 'dear god how are these people REAL?' way.)
I very much like Bendis's sense of humor, and I think its gradual disappearance is another flaw in the latter half of his run.
I don't think the timeline in "Golden Age" holds up upon close examination. Bont takes over New York's criminal underworld sometime around 1940, give or take a few years. He's stated to be 93 in the present day, presumably the early 2000s. That makes sense. But if Matt is the one who put him away, thus opening the gate for Fisk to become the Kingpin, and Matt didn't become Daredevil until around his graduation from law school (which would be, I think, twenty-five-ish), and Matt is not yet forty years old, then Bont went to prison around 1990-1995 and had therefore been the Kingpin for fifty-five years. By inference, Fisk was only Kingpin for fifteen years at most, and probably not even that.
I mean, Bont's timeline works in terms of when the first Daredevil comics were published -- 1965-ish -- and that's clearly what the art style of those sections is meant to evoke, but if you think about it too hard it gets very silly.
"Decalogue" was weird and needed another editing pass. The purpose of that group meeting was never stated clearly enough, nor why the one woman stormed out with her child, nor much of anything, really. It was also oddly placed in the over-arching narrative. I think it would have made more sense directly after "The King of Hell's Kitchen," as an example of the mythology that accreted around Matt during his year as the Kingpin. That would then allow "The Widow" and "Golden Age" to build more naturally into "The Murdock Papers."
And then, of course, we switch to Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark for issues 82 through 120 (aka 500), the first three arcs of which -- "The Devil in Cell-Block D," "The Devil Takes a Ride," and "To the Devil His Due" -- I have already talked glancingly about elsewhere. I will revisit them in more detail once I've finished Brubaker's run, though for the moment I will say that I appreciate how seamlessly Brubaker picks up the threads Bendis left for him, and how he brought back the sense of narrative drive Bendis had lost. I did finally acquire the fourth Brubaker/Lark arc -- "Without Fear," collected as "Hell To Pay vol. 2" because Marvel hates coherent TPB titling and numbering systems -- from my library, but again, I will save a detailed response for later. (My initial reaction is that the writing and art are good, and I don't care because I am too busy being screamingly furious over what happens to Milla! To be fair, I suspect part of Brubaker's uncertainty over how to use her as a character goes back to Bendis's failure to adequately create her in the first place, but even so. He could have tried to flesh her out instead of shoving her out of the story altogether! *makes useless gestures of rage toward the universe at large*)
So that's where I stand at the moment. I'll pick up with issue 106 tomorrow.
This means I picked up at issue 9, with the "Parts of a Hole" arc by David Mack and (ugh) Quesada. I am not entirely sure who was doing what there, because clearly Quesada was drawing a lot of the more traditional panels, but I am pretty sure Mack dictated most of the layouts. Anyway, it's an okay arc but nothing hugely memorable. Also, I do not think lipreading works the way Mack claims it does. The only way Maya Lopez's speech mimicking ability works is if she has some kind of low-level superpower. Then again, I think the 616 Marvel universe in general makes no sense unless you assume at least thirty percent of the population has slightly superhuman stamina/strength/speed and maybe a freebie impossible knack to boot -- there is really no other explanation for how people get superpowers instead of cancer from radioactive accidents, nor for how nominally unpowered heroes survive so many fights without six-month recovery periods -- so eh, whatever.
"Wake Up," aka Brian Michael Bendis's first arc (with Mack on art), is a fine Ben Urich story, but I think it would have worked better as a Ben Urich miniseries instead of an episode in Daredevil's ongoing adventures. The tone just feels slightly off to me.
The next arc, "Playing to the Camera" by Bob Gale with Phil Winslade and Dave Ross on art, has apparently never been collected. I am not sure why the omission. It's not an earthshaking story or anything, but it's perfectly entertaining and in retrospect is an interesting prelude to Matt's later legal woes, though so far as I can tell the villain behind the plot never reappears despite his ominous parting words. (Basically, Matt accepts a case suing Daredevil for property damages; for obvious reasons this gets complicated.)
Bendis is back as of issue 26 and remains the writer (with Alex Maleev as the artist) until issue 81, with a gap from issue 51 to 55 in which Mack returns for another Maya Lopez story, this time doing his own art. Bendis's run comprises 10 arcs: "Underboss," "Out," "Trial of the Century," "Lowlife," "Hardcore," "The King of Hell's Kitchen," "The Widow," "Golden Age," "Decalogue," and "The Murdock Papers."
I really liked "Underboss" through "Hardcore." They tell a coherent story (with one minor glitch; Jessica Jones just kind of appears with inadequate explanation) that very carefully builds narrative tension over twenty-five chapters, starting with the attempted assassination of Wilson Fisk, moving through the public revelation of Matt's identity as Daredevil, and culminating in Matt's terrible but also completely understandable choice to take over Fisk's former position as Kingpin in order to drive the mob out of Hell's Kitchen. I mentioned in a previous post that I had found one Bendis/Maleev TPB in my local library system, but was unable to make any emotional sense of it. That is because the TPB in question was "Hardcore," and the climax of a story generally doesn't make a lot of sense without the opening and middle! When put in context, it plays much differently.
Also, Alex Maleev's take on Matt Murdock is smoking hot. I am just saying. :D
After "Hardcore," though, I think Bendis was not quite sure what he wanted to do, and the subsequent arcs feel like aimless flailing. Each individual arc is still entertaining and usually internally coherent, but the over-arching narrative drive is lost. Bendis does try to create another super-arc, in the form of Matt's troubles with the FBI, but it doesn't pull together in the same way as his first super-arc; the beats are disconnected instead of aligned. Also, while "Hardcore" ends with Matt in a bad place, it still feels like a conditional win -- something he badly needed by that point -- whereas pretty much everything from that point onward is on a downward trajectory. This is not inherently a problem; tragedies can be excellent stories. But a downward trajectory combined with a loss of narrative drive is a problem. The story doesn't feel rewarding to read anymore.
I think this flailing also shows up in Bendis's failure to develop Milla Donovan's character past her initial appearances. She's around, she's clearly important to Matt, but she doesn't make an impression as a person. I got hardly any sense of her life outside her role as Matt's wife, and therefore hardly any sense of what drew him to her (or what drew her to him, for that matter). This negatively affects the emotional weight of various events, since one ends up on the outside watching Matt and Milla emote about each other, instead of feeling fear or longing with them.
Hmm. Some other thoughts.
I am not surprised Bendis's first super-arc focused a lot on the criminal underworld. That's what he did in his own original comics before he got hired by Marvel, after all. I think playing to his strengths was a good choice there. (Disclosure: I have not read Bendis's crime comics. I have, however, read "Fortune and Glory," his autobiographical comic about his misadventures trying to shop those comics to Hollywood. It's pretty funny, in a 'dear god how are these people REAL?' way.)
I very much like Bendis's sense of humor, and I think its gradual disappearance is another flaw in the latter half of his run.
I don't think the timeline in "Golden Age" holds up upon close examination. Bont takes over New York's criminal underworld sometime around 1940, give or take a few years. He's stated to be 93 in the present day, presumably the early 2000s. That makes sense. But if Matt is the one who put him away, thus opening the gate for Fisk to become the Kingpin, and Matt didn't become Daredevil until around his graduation from law school (which would be, I think, twenty-five-ish), and Matt is not yet forty years old, then Bont went to prison around 1990-1995 and had therefore been the Kingpin for fifty-five years. By inference, Fisk was only Kingpin for fifteen years at most, and probably not even that.
I mean, Bont's timeline works in terms of when the first Daredevil comics were published -- 1965-ish -- and that's clearly what the art style of those sections is meant to evoke, but if you think about it too hard it gets very silly.
"Decalogue" was weird and needed another editing pass. The purpose of that group meeting was never stated clearly enough, nor why the one woman stormed out with her child, nor much of anything, really. It was also oddly placed in the over-arching narrative. I think it would have made more sense directly after "The King of Hell's Kitchen," as an example of the mythology that accreted around Matt during his year as the Kingpin. That would then allow "The Widow" and "Golden Age" to build more naturally into "The Murdock Papers."
And then, of course, we switch to Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark for issues 82 through 120 (aka 500), the first three arcs of which -- "The Devil in Cell-Block D," "The Devil Takes a Ride," and "To the Devil His Due" -- I have already talked glancingly about elsewhere. I will revisit them in more detail once I've finished Brubaker's run, though for the moment I will say that I appreciate how seamlessly Brubaker picks up the threads Bendis left for him, and how he brought back the sense of narrative drive Bendis had lost. I did finally acquire the fourth Brubaker/Lark arc -- "Without Fear," collected as "Hell To Pay vol. 2" because Marvel hates coherent TPB titling and numbering systems -- from my library, but again, I will save a detailed response for later. (My initial reaction is that the writing and art are good, and I don't care because I am too busy being screamingly furious over what happens to Milla! To be fair, I suspect part of Brubaker's uncertainty over how to use her as a character goes back to Bendis's failure to adequately create her in the first place, but even so. He could have tried to flesh her out instead of shoving her out of the story altogether! *makes useless gestures of rage toward the universe at large*)
So that's where I stand at the moment. I'll pick up with issue 106 tomorrow.
