Daredevil: Without Fear (issues #100-105)

[ratcreature]

Well, at least Milla isn't dead, so that is something, but really the girlfriend storyline is kind of overdone with Daredevil.

I freely admit that part of why I like Daredevil is that its genre, besides superhero crime fighting, is more often than not what would be called "whump" in fanfic parlance: He just gets hurt over and over again, both physically and psychologically, and there is plenty of angst and so on. So I'm not really objecting that he seems to never get a break, but did it have to be by hurting his wife again and taking her out of the picture? Out of sight in a mental hospital with violent delusions is not really what I wished for Milla. I like her character.

Also a central key to the plot, that Matt apparently could work through this gas in a few hours, but for everyone else the effects are apparently forever, well, that didn't make a lot of sense to me. My best guess is that we are to assume that somehow his immunity is tied to his senses making him more resistant because he's more aware, iirc it was something like that with Lily Lucca's body chemistry, but still. I didn't find that very satisfying.

Cranston worked well as a really creepy villain for me though. Even though his prison guard date rape setup at the end sort of squicked me.

Comments

[girlwithoutfear.livejournal.com]

I liked Milla, too, and really hate that she's been pigeon-holed into the lost love category of Matt's life. Seems to be no woman that can hold onto the Man Without Fear without dire consequence.

At least, the next arc promises to put Matt back in the courtroom some, so it might not be so grim for a short while. We know there will always be the whump factor.

[ratcreature]

Some variety in the whump would be nice though. I mean, they have done the "villains attack girlfriend/wife and/or Matt's friends" over and over again. I'm not good at inventing plots, but there have to be more creative options to torture Matt, if not totally new then at least something that hasn't been done in a while. Say a villain messing with his super senses so that he has to deal with being a regular blind person for a while and can't fall back on Daredevil to live out his rage, doesn't know whether his sonar will ever be back, that would be plenty angsty, for example without killing or injuring his loved ones.

[ofcatsandwomen.livejournal.com]

I honestly think that Milla will be back at some point, and that she's not actually being written out of the book in any way (though I could be wrong, of course). I loved #105, and thought it was one of the best single issues of Daredevil I have ever read, but I don't agree with those who say that Matt has to be in a tortured state of mind constantly for his stories to work, and I'm sorry to see Milla essentially gone from the pages of Daredevil.

When it comes to why Matt could work his way through the gas, I don't think of this as a plot hole at all (and I don't think it has anything to do with his senses). Mr Fear's gas - the one that he sprays people with - is closer to what it's always been with the effects being transient. Cranston now has a much bigger arsenal of drugs to play around with however, so what Milla and Melvin have been exposed to is a different drug. The perfume that is in Lily's system is yet another drug. I think Brubaker even commented at some point that the difference between the "old" Cranston and the new one was that he now has a more weapons in his aresenal.

About your suggestion of a way to torture Matt by taking his senses away, I think that could be an interesting story (heck you could even have him suffer some kind of head trauma to cause that effect), but I don't think we'll ever see it. In part because no writer has even bothered to explore the extent to which his blindness affects him even with his heightened senses (which it would in some fairly obvious ways that are never addressed or acknowledged). I simply don't think most writers would know how to write it and all the "must see the costume at any cost" readers would be bored. I think Brubaker, in theory, could handle it though. He's that good, IMHO.

Generally really looking forward to the court room arc coming up. I loved Without Fear, but I'm ready to see some more lawyering! :)

[ratcreature]

Huh, I thought it was the same gas (though different from the one in Lily's system), and that the reason Matt hoped Milla would recover was that he overcame the gas' effects, but I could have read that wrong.

I agree that Daredevil doesn't really explore Matt's blindness, but I'd like if it did. It's true that when dealing with disabilities as major plot point there's plenty of room to put their foot in the mouth for writers, but I think from a critical viewpoint having a blind character and then quickly negate almost all practical consequences through the superpowers gained at the same time, isn't really better or unproblematic in the first place.

[ofcatsandwomen.livejournal.com]

I would like that too (re: the blindness), and I'm sure it could be done well, that is not as a major plot point, but as something incidental that is sprinkled throughout the book in places where it's relevant. For me it's always been kind of a logical fallacy on the parts of (most) writers to always pretend as if his other senses fully compensate when good ol' common sense tells us that this simply cannot be (although there are many fans who scoff at the idea that Matt is in any way disabled...). I fully acknowledge that his radar sense makes him less than totally blind, but the idea that a complete lack of color vision, for instance, would not effectively be a pretty severe visual impairment is really strange to me. On the other hand, I really like how Brubaker deals with this issue. Well, he doesn't actually deal with it in any obvious way, but he's not in complete denial like some writers have been.