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Daredevil is one of the few interesting books that Marvel is still putting out. In the last couple of years on this book, Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev have taken some real chances with this character. They pretty much made the book about Matt Murdock, having him rarely even wear the Daredevil costume anymore. They outed his secret identity, forcing him to constantly publicly deny it to avoid legal trouble. They slowly turned him into a Godfather-like figure, surrounded by an entourage to shield him from the public and press and always depicted in dark, Coppola-lit settings that actually makes sense for a blind man. But now, they've really pushed the envelope. At the close of the last volume, Daredevil, fed up with his never ending struggle with the Kingpin and the crime underworld, soundly defeated his old enemy and proclaimed himself the new Kingpin of Hell's Kitchen. Now this is a cool idea. If you can't beat them, take them over.

But what that really means and what the implications of such a move are is where this volume disappoints. It starts out one year after Matt's proclamation and at first it deals with some of the nitty gritty of this new Kingpin business as I wanted it to. An offer to run for mayor, an intervention in Bryant Park from his superhero friends who fear he's gone too far.

Then, however, we get into the one area that Bendis and Maleev have never been that adept at. A big fight scene. When Murdock is ganged up on by a hundred Yakuza gangsters looking to knock him out of power, we get what should have been a frenetic, Kill Bill style beat down. Instead we have a number of pretty splash pages with endless narration that isn't even narrating the fight.

Of course I prefer there wasn't a big fight scene in this book (the politics of a good guy taking over the underworld is much more interesting) but if you're going to do it, make it good.

The other disappointment with this volume is that it moves towards a reset at the end. This book has always been moving forward, telling new kinds of Daredevil stories. Now, as they were in really new territory the creators begin to explain things away and reset the playing board back to the way it was.

B -

Posted at November 19, 2004 10:01 PM