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Spoilers abound, droogies. The pick of the week is Daredevil 82, featuring the new writer, Ed Brubaker, joined by his Gotham Central artist, Michael Lark. Both the story and art exceeded my expectations, which were already set pretty high. I had doubts about Matt Murdock being in jail, about why he wouldn't be given special treatment, and Brubaker answers all of them as part of the main story thread. He carries all of the plot threads and characters from Bendis' run and has Matt getting into even deeper shit now that he's in prison. A blind superhero with super-sensitive hearing and smell, stuck in a grimy jail cell, with Kingpin, Hammerhead, the Owl, and Tarantula as neighbors? That's my idea of hell. The artwork is superb. I wondered how Lark would draw Daredevil in a costume-only because I think he excels at drawing normal people and things like police\spy dramas-but he does an excellent job. I've always loved his artwork, but I've never seen it look better.
I'm not going to recap the plot, suffice to say if you like Daredevil, if you liked Bendis' run, or if you were a Sleeper fan, then this is a must-have comic. As for the spoiler, well, Marvel already spoiled it a few weeks ago. Foggy dies. We read this in the Marvel solicitations, and then Joe Quesada confirmed it in this Newsarama interview. I think it's to Brubaker and Lark's credit that I still found Daredevil #82 to have a powerful impact even though I knew what was coming. But if I hadn't known…I probably would have needed a stiff drink to recover. It's a shame that Quesada lessened the impact of such a great book.
When Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada took editorial control of Marvel Comics a few years ago, one of their first policy decisions was to clamp down on spoilers in the Previews solicitations. I thought this was an excellent idea. They went a little overboard at first, almost saying nothing in the blurbs, just showing the cover. Combined with the ban on overprinting and reordering, this made it hard for retailers to beef up their orders when a big event occurred. The excuse Quesada gave was that he wanted the retailers to order big on Daredevil 82, but they could have done it a bit differently. They could have just said that someone close to Daredevil dies-the first person I might have suspected was Milla, because no woman lives for long when they are around Matt.
Marvel is doing this trick again, with their upcoming one-shot, Death in the Family, featuring the Fantastic Four. They tell you in the solicitation that Sue Storm dies and it's not a hoax. In the latest Newsarama interview, Quesada not only confirms it's not a hoax, but they're gonna kill off two members of the F.F.! Mark Waid killed off the Thing and brought him back to life, but I enjoyed the heaven-trip and the nod to Kirby as God in the end. Quesada says these upcoming deaths are permanent, but unless you are killing H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot or Medusa (the Inhuman substitute for Sue Storm), death just seems like it's becoming cheap. I don't know. Call me crazy, but I just think these things are better off being surprises. I'll always remember reading Uncanny X-Men #137 and being floored when Jean Grey died for the first time. Or Daredevil #181 when Elektra died for the first time. Or the first time that I read the Bucky flashback when he tries to stop Baron Zemo's rocket. Big impact. And they all came back. Sheesh. OK, I really liked Resurrection Man--he died and came back to life in every issue. Nuff said.
External Links:
Quesada discusses Daredevil 82 on Joe Fridays 34
Quesada discusses Fantastic Four Death in the Family on Joe Fridays 38
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