RatCreature's Journal

I've now finished watching all thirteen episodes and I really enjoyed it. I think it adapted the comics very well and is true to them.

Admittedly it is probably not the right series if you dislike grimdark and violence, but then that is true for much of the Daredevil comics ever since there *were* modern grimdark superhero comics. After all it was Frank Miller who shaped much of the modern Daredevil, and in reverse he started his career with that title (or at least it's the first he's become really known for) and developed his style there. I actually like Miller's work on Daredevil (unlike his works from Sin City onwards at least), but well, this still was pretty much what started superheroes going grimdark in the first place, as Miller's run progressed.

However I actually like that noir take on superheroes unless it goes truly overboard and becomes the kind of grimdark that is just a parody of itself without realizing it. And the Netflix series is IMO quite far away from that point.

For one thing at least to me the characters were still likable. I loved how they handled Matt and Foggy's relationship, and enjoyed the flashbacks to their college time that we got to see. I appreciated that ( spoilers )

I also liked Karen Page and her dynamic with both Foggy and Matt. I liked the symmetry that all three of them did not just work together, but each also followed things up on their own. Obviously Matt as vigilante but also ( spoilers )

I also thought their take on Wilson Fisk was done really well, that balance that he first comes across as a sort of "white collar" criminal who doesn't need to get his own hands dirty, but in fact erupts into hands-on violence and killing rages, and is even strong enough to fight Daredevil directly. I also liked how they adapted Vanessa to be more open-eyed.

I thought the James Wesley character as Fisk's right hand man was a great addition, though that is partly because his interactions with Fisk pinged my service kink *hard*. ( spoilers )

I also liked most of the minor tie backs to the comics that I caught, though I probably missed many. ( spoilers )

As for hints of larger events to come ( spoilers )

Unlike some other comments I've seen, I don't have much trouble to fit this with the rest of the MCU, i.e. the issue that the Avengers existing in the same New York where ( spoilers )

Anyway, I had a lot of fun watching.

I post about Daredevil so rarely because I tend to wait for a couple of storylines to accumulate before reading, even though I collect the monthly issues.

( Now I've read DD #107-110: cruel & unusual, #111-115: Lady Bullseye, #116-120 (500): Return of the King )

caia_comica is hosting a Marvel universe kissing meme, and I've drawn a quick Spider-Man/Daredevil doodle for it.

Sorry about the deluge of Daredevil posts, but since I'm now caught up with the series that should die down again.

So now I've read The Secret Life of Foggy Nelson (issue #88), The Devil Takes A Ride (issues #89-93), Our Love Story (issue #94) and the first two parts of To The Devil, His Due (issues #95-96). I haven't been to my store recently to get #97 yet, which I think is out already, so please don't spoil me in comments.

( Since these are fairly recent, all comments on the story line are spoiler cut. )

Ages ago (well actually late 2004) I stopped reading Daredevil. The trigger was that #66 had so much idiotic babelfish translated "German" dialog that I just couldn't get through it -- I commented on that at the time -- and then I got the next issue, but still couldn't bring myself to read #66, and somehow that state of affairs continued.

Anyway, tonight I found myself in the mood for Daredevil, and soldiered through the awful fake-German even though it felt like being sporked in the brain, repeatedly, (and spelling "ass" as "@$$" in one bit of dialog came close second-- I mean seriously, WTF, Marvel? Is this the text version of breasts without nipples??).

BTW, if you don't speak any German, and don't mind the occasional spam email spelling, there is actually things to like in #66 and the whole Golden Age story (issues #66-70), like the way the different eras are set apart in the coloring style: The 1940s flashback is b/w, the flashback to early in Daredevils career is colored with a slightly exaggerated rastering effect of older comics, and the present day is colored regularly. I found that effect very neat. And while overall neither the "old crime boss seeks revenge" story nor the White Tiger stuff grabbed me, it was okay to read, and there were bits with Matt and Foggy that I liked a lot (like, Foggy: "Sorry I'm cramping your style with your stalkers." *hearts*)

The next story Decalogue (issues #71-75) is at first about people of Hell's Kitchen sharing their Daredevil stories. I really like the stark covers, especially the first in this series (probably not least for its somewhat blasphemous impression). Though I found the idea of some church support group to discuss Daredevil kind of odd. Also, while I usually like outsider POVs of the characters, getting just these glimpses of Daredevil, until the last issue anyway which had plenty of Matt in it, wasn't all that satisfying, even though the creepy guy in the support group definitely worked for me to build suspense. And actually the reveal was pretty cool and surprising ( cut for serious spoilers. )

Why is there so little Daredevil fanfic? I'm fairly sure I lamented this sad state of affairs before in my LJ, but absolute dearth of it is still stunning. Every couple of months I check around anew, hoping that there's been new stuff posted, but as usual my hopes are crushed. :( I don't get it. I can't be the only one who'd love some Daredevil emo-porn of any variety.

Somehow less intimidating than tackling the huge DC pile...

( Amazing Spider-Man #507, Daredevil #60, Excalibur #1 )

I started writing this on Sunday, right after I finished reading Daredevil: The Man Without Fear (by Frank Miller and John Romita Jr.) and Daredevil: Yellow (by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale), but then got sidetracked by some fanfic and a really pretty vid (in case anyone's interested it was a TS vid by Seah & Margie, called Black Cat, and can be found on this site). So the post got never finished on Sunday.

Anyway, Daredevil -- and, as an aside, how exactly did I get from "I don't really read superhero comics." to reading Spider-Man, then Nightwing, then following most of the fricking Bat-Family, and now Daredevil? I mean, I have read Superhero stuff from time to time before when I loved the artists, or it was a famous or groundbreaking comic in some way, but until recently I've never followed the characters for their story. At least so far I haven't fallen for the cosmic battles and spacemonster stuff, but mostly for crime (and freak) fighting heroes with moderate or no superpowers (okay it is arguable whether Spider-Man's power's can be described as "moderate" but at least it's balanced by him being a science geek with a ton of personal problems). That is at least still somewhat similar to my fondness for detective stories, mysteries, and the like. Not that my resolve to avoid the spacemonster genre is absolute or anything (case in point, I read Outsiders).

But back to Daredevil. Both TPBs are retellings of Daredevil's origin, or in case of Yellow more like a "Year One" thing with the origin and early events in Daredevil's career as superhero. Also I think Miller's might be the official retcon these days. Because I read both right after one another I couldn't avoid to look at them in comparison, even though I think that this is probably not the best way to think about them.

Overall I like Miller's version of Daredevil better than Loeb's, though I don't care much about the "adept" stuff, and him and Elektra being the only two somethings (sorry I don't know the Daredevil/Elektra stories Miller wrote yet, and this TPB isn't terribly specific about this mythic (?) stuff). Maybe it's just because by now I feel a definite overkill with characters who are born as special for some kind of battle. But other than that I liked this Matt very much, probably because I have a thing for angst and don't mind a heavy dose of tragic (melo-)drama. I like that Daredevil isn't a "nice" superhero and that his actions have sometimes dire consequences, but neither is he a maniac mowing criminals down with automatic weapons.

Yellow otoh has quite a bit more levity, and for all the somber "letter to a dead girlfriend" narration its Matt is much less tortured. This young Matt enjoys being Daredevil in a more "innocent" playful way -- in as much as you can say it is innocent to dress up in a devil costume and beat up criminals in the first place -- he has definitely less anger and rage. It's more like in classic superhero comics, there are wacky fights with costumed supervillains etc, and yet at the same time it is not really like that, despite the homage element, because the darker future is always there: Not just in Matt's narration and our knowledge of the future tragedies ahead, also in moments like when Matt watches the execution of his father's murderer. I liked that in Yellow Matt's father wasn't killed when Matt was a kid, it makes for some variation in the murdered parents origin story, that so many superheroes have, and is obviously part of why this Matt is "lighter."

I enjoyed the art in both books, but I have to say that especially John Romita Jr. has become a lot better since then. I thought some of the crosshatching looked quite unfortunate, but then I only like crosshatching when it's done really well and with good effect for the surfaces it's supposed to depict, and that is really hard to manage. And I like Tim Sale's Batman art better than his Daredevil, but that's mostly because I think it suits that universe better.

To finish my a bit disjointed comments, both books are definitely worth reading.

On the new Daredevil #51 by David Mack: I won't bother with a cut-tag -- my comments aren't really spoilery, as (unfortunately) nothing really happens in this issue.

So this issue brings back Echo, from David Mack's previous Daredevil story, Parts of a Hole. I think if she was a fanfiction character (and maybe even now), a lot of people would consider Echo to be Mary Sue. And while I do think that the fanfic honed sensitivity to "Mary Sue signs" sometimes ruins the enjoyment of original characters and storylines -- characters and stories that one wouldn't have disliked if one had never been exposed to all the fanfic related discussion and examples of the Mary Sue phenomenon -- Echo has quite a lot of the qualities of a classic Mary Sue. I mean, she has a tortured past, with a murdered parent (but OTOH that's pretty much the norm for every other character in superhero comic books), she's deaf, but compensates that disability almost completely with her gift to emulate and learn any skill perfectly through visual observation (but OTOH it is a superhero comic, so superpowers aren't unexpected), and she ends up in a romantic relationship with Matt (but OTOH it's more exceptional when a female secondary character doesn't end up as a love interest for Matt). All that wouldn't bother me much, if not for the unfortunate tendency that she ends up as the focus of the story in the traditional Mary Sue fashion. That did happen to some extent when she last appeared, yet I actually still ended up liking the character last time.

However -- oddly enough -- I'd still like to see Daredevil appear in a Daredevil comic book. You know, the blind lawyer guy in a devil costume, with a lot of Catholic guilt issues? Remember him? Yeah, I thought so, with him being the the title character and all. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but Echo remembering kissing Matt once or twice in her internal rambling didn't cut it for me in a Daredevil book. Also, nothing happened in this issue. It's all Echo's internal monologue, recapping what happened previously, only as it is solely from her perspective it's without most of the Daredevil stuff. Now, I hope that this will change the next issue, and that this one was simply a really long "previously in" segment, and that this will sort of be "redeemed" as the exposition part in the larger picture.

I mean, I still liked the comic, simply because it has David Mack's art, and I enjoy looking at his pages ever since I first saw a couple of them at a convention. Back then I had never read anything by him, or even heard of this guy, but in this exhibition there were a couple of Kabuki pages displayed, and as soon as I left the exhibition room I started to buy any Kabuki issues I could find, and got in line at the next of his signings. Actually, when I look at the art from a "comic perspective" I don't even think it's the best suited to tell a story, and usually I tend to dislike self-indulgent or collage styles for comics. But of course there are exceptions to every general preference, and even though David Mack's pages are not the easiest to read as a comic, I simply enjoy looking at them. And that's true for Daredevil #51 as well, no matter that it's,IMO, not his best work.

However that has nothing to do with this comic as a Daredevil issue. I suspect if you don't enjoy looking at David Mack pages simply because they're David Mack pages, you won't get much out of this issue.

I admit it, my aggravation was uninformed *hangs head in shame*, there seems to be indeed a step-mother, so the second character is Anna Nelson. Now I just wonder where she was when Foggy had all this trouble with the murder investigation. Also it would have been much clearer, since this is after all the first time she appears in the current series, if Matt had greeted her with a "Mrs. Nelson" or something like that. One should never underestimate the soap-opera-like complexity of family relations in comic books. (I hope I won't loose my membership card of comic book geekdom...) And I'll definitely do more thorough research before I complain about confusing characters in the future.

Okay, so I found this scan of a page from a Daredevil/Spider-Man x-over short story (from Daredevil Volume 2 #20). And it's just too slashy not to share, so I uploaded the page to my webspace for you to take a look. In the panel Daredevil and Spider-Man are sitting in a bar, Spider-Man has his arm around Daredevil, talks about tossing him, and another guy at the bar thinks: "That Daredevil -- wotta waste! If I looked like him I'd have a babe on each arm, instead of shmoozing with another superhero!"

( a scan of the page, about 160K )

Now I so want to read some Daredevil/Spider-Man buddy slash, where they both happen to be in some relationship woes at the same time and turn to each other for some uncomplicated buddy sex. Any recs? Anyone?