Brikar

Any of the comic readers around here dig "Daredevil"? My only exposure to the character had been, thus far, the Ben Affleck movie which I was pretty "meh" on until the superior "director's cut" came around. Recently, I decided to see if I could dig any of the comics.

I started with Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's excellent "Daredevil: Yellow" (after having thoroughly enjoyed the team's "Spider-Man: Blue" and "Hulk: Gray" and utterly loving "Batman: The Long Halloween"). "Yellow," of course, made me want to further understand the context of what I was reading, and my search brought me to Kevin Smith's "Guardian Devil"...

...which was excellent. Instead of buying the softcover trade, I opted for the hardcover, which was a better bargain, and ended up with both "Guardian Devil" and "Parts of a Whole" by David Mack.

And I really dug it. The characters were interesting, and I really dug the plots, which both pitted Daredevil in pretty funky and interesting situations that had real personal meaning for him. In the first, Daredevil finds himself taking care of an infant whose mother claims is a messiah. But an old man visits Matt Murdock and claims the opposite, that the infant is, in fact, the anti-Christ, and that the longer the child is in Matt's care, the worse Matt's life will get. And it get's pretty bad before it gets worse.

I liked Kevin Smith's movies; I'm eagerly awaiting "Clerks II" (despite how unnecessary it seems), but I was worried that he wouldn't have the chops for a real superhero story. He definitely nailed it on this one. And the final revelation of the villain, and his ultimate fate, definitely worked really well.

In "Parts of a Hole", Kingpin pits a deaf assassin with the ability to mimic any movement she sees with 100% accuracy.

Loving Volume 1, I went ahead and got Volume 2, where Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev take over the creative chores on the series. At first, I didn't really dig Maleev's artwork. But after a while, I realized it was a perfect match for Bendis dark, gritty noir-style writing. Bendis mostly eschews the standard superheroics for a story that's more about political maneuvering in the criminal world than it is about eye-lasers or mutants or any of that other junk that can bog down other comics at times. It's great fun, and by the end of Volume 2, Daredevil's world has been turned utterly upside down.

And now I've just gone and ordered Volumes 3 and 4.

So has anyone else read this series? Thoughts? Comments? Rants?

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Bean

I haven't read anything recent to be sure, and what I have read was only glimpses of some of the older stuff. I couldn't get into it. In fact, I don't think I've ever even finished a full issue.

I AM really getting into Marvels Civil War series. I've read one or two side issues like the Spiderman thatmix into the story, and I'm loving it. I don't think the Marvel universe is ever gonna be able to "reset" this series, so it looks like change is a comin..

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Arik

I never really could get into Daredevil. Of course, I'm not much of a Marvel fan.

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