The Issues of Brubaker's Run Christmas Carol

On the 1st issue of his run
Brubaker sent to me:

a Red-clad Vigilante

~~~

On the 2nd issue of his run
Brubaker sent to me:

Foggy getting Stabbed
and a Red-clad Vigilante

~~~

On the 8th issue of his run
Brubaker sent to me:

A new Matador
Foggy getting Stabbed
and a Red-clad Vigilante

~~~

On the 14th issue of his run
Brubaker sent to me:

Melvin going Nuts
A new Matador
Foggy getting Stabbed
and a Red-clad Vigilante

~~~

On the 18th issue of his run
Brubaker sent to me:

Mister Fear
Melvin going Nuts
A new Matador
Foggy getting Stabbed
and a Red-clad Vigilante

~~~

On the 19th issue of his run
Brubaker sent to me:

Many Artists Drawing
Mister Fear
Melvin going Nuts
A new Matador
Foggy getting Stabbed
and a Red-clad Vigilante

~~~

On the 21st issue of his run
Brubaker sent to me:

Ox and Wrecker Fighting
Many Artists Drawing
Mister Fear
Melvin going Nuts
A new Matador
Foggy getting Stabbed
and a Red-clad Vigilante

~~~

On the 24th issue of his run
Brubaker sent to me:

Milla beyond Saving
Ox and Wrecker Fighting
Many Artists Drawing
Mister Fear
Melvin going Nuts
A new Matador
Foggy getting Stabbed
and a Red-clad Vigilante

~~~

On the 28th issue of his run
Brubaker sent to me:

Crooked Feds Sniping
Milla beyond Saving
Ox and Wrecker Fighting
Many Artists Drawing
Mister Fear
Melvin going Nuts
A new Matador
Foggy getting Stabbed
and a Red-clad Vigilante

~~~

On the 30th issue of his run
Brubaker sent to me:

Dakota and Matt #*%ing
Crooked Feds Sniping
Milla beyond Saving
Ox and Wrecker Fighting
Many Artists Drawing
Mister Fear
Melvin going Nuts
A new Matador
Foggy getting Stabbed
and a Red-clad Vigilante

~~~

On the 31st issue of his run
Brubaker sent to me:

Master Izo Drinking
Dakota and Matt #*%ing
Crooked Feds Sniping
Milla beyond Saving
Ox and Wrecker Fighting
Many Artists Drawing
Mister Fear
Melvin going Nuts
A new Matador
Foggy getting Stabbed
and a Red-clad Vigilante

~~~

On the 32nd issue of his run
Brubaker sent to me:

Lady Bullseye Kicking
Master Izo Drinking
Dakota and Matt #*%ing
Crooked Feds Sniping
Milla beyond Saving
Ox and Wrecker Fighting
Many Artists Drawing
Mister Fear
Melvin going Nuts
A new Matador
Foggy getting Stabbed
and a Red-clad Vigilante.


Happy Holidays from F's Kitchen!

The Motivational Poster-Boy

I was about to add another "ordinary" entry, when it occurred to me that this blog has reached its 50th post. I thought that a moderately important milestone such as this deserved a little more than that, and so I decided to insert a post about one of the reasons why Daredevil is so important to me.

From this comic book - let the self-righteous cool guys laugh about it as much as they want - I get motivation. Whenever I don't get it directly, I try to indirectly find it, by relating to the main character.
I think that relating to a character such as Matt Murdock/Daredevil, is simplified (especially in the stories of these years) by the fact that the hero is constantly shown facing adversities.
It is just like our everyday lives. Yeah, I mean that. Let's put aside the shiny and cool view of the world that the internet commonly gives us. That one world made of funny pics and memes, of easy chicks, of permanent fun, where the biggest problem is to find the witty line to write on a comment thread or to get enough friends on myspace.
Let's put all that aside, at the cost of being labeled as party-poopers, and face it: everyday life is hard. Life is full of opportunities and encounters, certainly, but also of problems.
And sometimes it's nothing short of a succession of adversities. Just like Matt Murdock's life.

We could be tempted to say that it's like that for just about any superhero, or even any fictional character. It could be. But I think that with Daredevil, it all looks much less fake.
Every superhero is shown having problems, but somehow, often, we see the generic hero being done with it by the end of the storyarc, often without further consequences, often with the problem solved hastily with some Deus (or should I say Daemon?) ex machina, so that he can move into the next event/storyline.
Daredevil is not like that. His problems pile up on one another. His enemies are always there, planning his destruction. His past choices come back to haunt him, and there's never an event that can be said to fully close a circle.
This type of scenario is certainly more similar to the course of real life.
The problems never go away on their own. They eventually go away (and are subsequently followed by others showing up), but only if we fight our way through them.


But in order to do that - to have the strength to do that - you need motivation.
It can come in different forms. You can have your friends cheering you up. Giving you their support and confidence. Reassure you that you can make it through. That surely helps. But, at least in my case, at the end of the day you have to unlock that strength by yourself, from within. To that end, sometimes it's more effective something like what's shown in the panel above, of DD being ambushed by the Ox (from DD vol.2 #99, by Brubaker and Lark).

I found the wording used to translate that in Italian even more brutal, but also, for this reason, even more direct and cutting (my compliments to the adaptor, Giuseppe Guidi of Marvel Italia) :

- Non vali niente, Murdock!

Which retranslates as "you ain't worth anything, Murdock!".
A phrase like that, meant to scoff, can at times shake a person from apathy and discomfort better than any encouragement. When I first read that I remember being moved to the point that I would've died to add captions saying something like "What the *%&$ are you saying you moron, YOU are the one who's not worth anything and you're in for an enormous butt-kicking for having said that".

Sometimes, right after life hits you hard, so hard that you feel like you'll never have the strength to stand up again, much less to fight back, I can feel just like that. Like if some voice is mocking me, saying "you're not worth anything". And right after that, that small spark ignites, that pride that makes you reply "hell, no!", and thanks to which it becomes possible to get back up.
It's the "never give up" spirit so underlined by Frank Miller in his run, particularly in the Born Again storyarc, in which Matt's willpower allows him to fully get back on his feet from a state complete annihilation, despite his greatest enemy's efforts at keeping him down.


When I think about it, this is what I admire so much of Matt Murdock. His force of will. That iron will that has allowed him to rise from the ashes everytime. That willpower that can, by all means and purposes, be really considered what makes him a superhero, much more than his hypersenses, or his peak human condition. Again, Miller comes to mind. Heightened senses, fighting skills and acrobatics are just tools - he said in the mind-blowing "Roulette" story. To be a hero, the man who has them needs first to be inspired. In the fictional world he lives in, Matt's inspiration comes from his father, a man far from perfect or invincible, but whose lesson, of never giving up and always struggling to do what's right, he will never forget.
In the same way, in turn, I dare say that Daredevil's refusal to give up the fight despite how desperate the situation may be, and staying true to what he believes in, inspires me.


A small reflection now. The condition typical of the present-day Daredevil, with misfortunes coming upon the protagonist one after another, with the hero never having a moment of rest, his life seemingly perpetually on the verge of ruination, has reached by now a point where it has become somewhat iconic.
For this reason, comic book readers (or even writers) often come up with the conception that this "depressing, anguishing tone" of the book is what Daredevil fans actually expect from it (or even what they demand from it), and that all of it is a standard set by Miller (who redefined the character and all of that).

Both these conceptions, the way I see it, are erroneous.
While it is true that Miller redefined the character, and that he modified the tone to a darker, more serious one, the depressing, anguishing atmosphere and the heavy-handed "grim and gritty" "hard-boiled" tone of today's DD is a more recent redefinition, which can be entirely attributed to Brian Michael Bendis. That said, if such a tone is the definitive way to write Daredevil today, if it has been brought to its excess as of recent or not, is entirely debatable.
But, as a matter of fact, anyone could pick up some issues from Miller's run, compare their tone with that used in Bendis' and see that the difference in this regard is more than evident.

Regarding the fact that DD's most attached readers have actually come to like or even expect the fact that Matt's life is constantly put through hell, I consider that to be a misconception derived from a superficial look of it.
In my opinion, Daredevil fans don't like the fact that Matt's life is full of difficulties in itself. They instead like reading how, despite the many, enormous difficulties in his life, Matt is able to find the strength to take them all on, and how he refuses to give up, no matter how unescapable the situation may seem.

Troubles and adversities may come, as they do in real life. What really matters is the spirit with which the hero fights through them.
And whenever the author manages to convey that...


... it feels good.

Something totally random...

...
So, beware.
:p

At Potter's Costume Shop...

- Yeah. I mean, already half a month has passed without new posts. Well, 'xcept for that dumb debate on Brubaker thing...

- Hell if I know. Heard he was taking a test or something. Look, so far he's been posting.. how many on average? Four a month? Five?


- But now it's already December 20th! Also, last month there hasn't been any Centrif-

- Melvin.



- Don't sweat it. More posts will come soon.



- Pleasure to hear your voice, F.

Of Character Development and Chocolate Billy-clubs

Howdy, people.
This entry is intended as a reply to the debate started by Jon in his Me Geek, you Geek comic book blog and followed up by Christine in a dedicated post at The Other Murdock Papers. I thought that the idea of replying with a post in one's own blog was cool, so I copied it (in a way, it reminds me of the story mode of the game Starcraft, in which the story progressed with the changing of the point of view of the protagonists).

The object of the contention was the latest issue, DD #113, part three of the Lady Bullseye arc, in which, among other things, Matt meets and has a short fight with the new villainess for the first time. Jon's criticism, if I have gotten it right, is that there hasn't been enough DD in costume, in the preceeding issues and in this one, and that Daredevil gets portrayed as a "pansy", "getting his ass handed to him" by Lady Bullseye and getting saved only by the intervention of master Izo. I don't entirely agree with this, but I'll return to it later.
In a follow-up to this post, Jon continues by enumerating the rate of costume/action pages in the most recent issues, from #106 to #113 (all written by Brubaker, with the issues from #107 to #110 in cooperation with Rucka). Eight issues. We're talking about more than half a year worth of Daredevil stories, here.

Here's a passage from Christine's reply:

As I suspected, this DOES come down to a matter of taste. Good action that drives the story forward? By all means. Action scenes that take up page after page and eats up actual story progression and forces character development to take a back seat? No, thank you.

And here's another from a comment by Darediva to the first post:

Give me some good character introspection over asskicking in tights any day of the week. Well, maybe not on Saturday nights...

I'm aware that those I reported are just parts extrapolated from more integral replies (so bear with me), but what I wonder is, at the end of the day, does it come down to "action & costume time" versus "character development & introspection time"?
Also, are the two mutually exclusive?

The answer I gave myself to both of these questions after some reflection is no.
I don't really care about how much time the main character spends in or out of costume, or even how much time he spends fighting.
I do love a good fight scene, I think I do more than Darediva does, and probably more than Christine does. But what matters to me is what kind of fight scene.
What Matt does in it. If his abilities and his style are portrayed with consistency. If he's really shown for the amazing fighter he is. How the fight is coreographed.
Another important thing is how the reason behind his battle fits in the storyline.
In the light of all this, I do love when Matt fights to protect innocents. When he's shown as a great fighter, with a versatile style, mixing force, cunning and agility. As a fearsome opponent to face, hard to take down.
And, because of this, I don't like when he's shown to be fearsome only to flunkies or to the occasional street thug, or when he gets jobbed just because the plot requires so, with maybe a dumb excuse behind it ("oh, no! I can't focus when there's dog poo on the curb!"). I could do without these instances and the "action time" involved into it.

About the times when there's no action, the problem remains basically the same, only translated to the different situation.
What really matters remains what the main character does. Is he shown as the hero I recognize, admire, and even - I dare say - identify with?
I won't go into it, because it's pretty complex for me to explain (and I suspect, boring for you to listen) what kind of psychological representation I like of Matt/Daredevil. So I'll just provide two examples.

I liked a lot the "out of costume" moment when, in #110, Matt refused the reprimand Dakota's dad was unleashing on him and instead declared him how much he despised the corruption they were trying to keep covered and how he wouldn't have backed off from that fight for no reason. This moment, I enjoyed it better than any of the fight scenes in that storyline.

I dislike, instead, the general trend of having Matt insecure, troubled, and spending time to whine instead of acting.
I said it. That's what I don't like by now in Brubaker's run. Matt whines a lot. Whines instead of acting. And when he does act, often it's just "reacting" and thus playing right into the machiavellian games of his opponents, who are almost always shown to be one step ahead of him.
The sad thing is that this has affected pages of the recent storylines in a way that I don't enjoy them the way I hoped to.
Now, with the "Cruel and Unusual" storyarc, I don't know if it's because of some advice by Rucka, but I think that Brubaker has managed to regain some balance, in this sense.
As I said in Jon's first post, anyway, I'm still a little uncertain, as this may just be wishful thinking on my side. I used to believe a lot in Brubaker, back during "The Devil in Cell Block D". Eventually though, this honeymoon has rather abruptly ended, and now I'm sincerely afraid that Brubaker may pull off something that might again disappoint me.

We'll see. Some signs point toward Brubaker having regained the right grip again. For example, I don't agree on the fact that he "got his ass handed to him" by Lady Bullseye. I was afraid (see what I mean?) that the new villainess, being a debutting character, would have mopped the floor with DD, as a cheap way by the author to build her some credibility. Instead, Brubaker manages to make her a credible threat while at the same time showing that our hero is entirely capable of taking her on (a part of Matt believed he could take both her and four ninjas, before master Izo came and deprived him of all the fun).

So, this is what I think. Feel free to say yours - for this big comic book blog crossover ;) - in the comments below.

New Avengers #1, or Out of Costume Goodness

Gather 'round, DD lovers, for I have a great story to tell you about, featuring our favourite superhero, in his civilian identity of blind lawyer Matt Murdock. There's a sprinkle of Foggy Nelson goodness in it, too, and I'm sure some will appreciate that.
The above panels are from the first issue of New Avengers, by Brian Michael Bendis.
The chronological setting is right after Avengers: Disassembled, the disastrous event that lead to the dismantling of the group of Earth's Mightiest Heroes.
That's right. It is hard to believe, seeing as how nowadays we have something like five or six different flavors of Avengers (Mighty Avengers, Young, New, Secret, Dark, diet, with almonds etc.), but at that time there were no more Avengers in the Marvel Universe. The story narrates how, by fate or chance, a new team of Avengers spontaneously formed itself during a time of crisis.
At that time, Bendis was in the apex of his run in Daredevil, with Matt having unmasked after beating the daylights out of Kingpin and with the FBI on his tail incessantly seeking proof to his activity as the red-clad vigilante.
New Avengers #1 is set just in those times. Along with his friend and partner Foggy Nelson, and with Luke Cage working as a bodyguard for them, Matt arrives by helicopter to the Raft, a maximum security installation designed to hold the most dangerous supervillains. He's welcomed by the woman who will be their guide through that dantesque hell: Jessica Drew, aka Spider-Woman.

Under a request by Mr Fantastic, Nelson & Murdock are there to confer with Robert Reynolds, a superhuman said to have confessed to the murder of his own wife.

After having convinced a rather scared Foggy to get out of the helicopter, and after the proper introductions are made, Jessica leads the three of them to the sub-basement.

All the while, Foggy expresses his perplexities about him being dragged there, in a claustrophobic facility crawling with dozens of murderous individuals, and in general about the opportunity of locking up all of said individuals in the same place.
Jessica Drew tries to reassure him that everything is under control (yeah, and we all know how it always goes in fiction whenever "everything is under control"). She also lets a comment slip about Matt's outing by the tabloids, to which Matt adamantly restates that he's not Daredevil. Nice to see that Bendis is consistent with what he's writing in other books (mostly because not always he does that).

So, the quartet reaches sub-basement 7, which is possibly even creepier and more claustrophobic than the rest of the place, and they are joined by two SHIELD redshirts.

The Fogster complains some more, and Jessica reassures him again, saying that there are three superheroes there with him besides the SHIELD agents stationed there, implying again that she doesn't buy that Matt is not DD. I wonder if she is doing that on purpose, to tease Matt, or if she's just desperately searching for a way to make Foggy's incessant whining stop. Then there's a blackout.

A total blackout in the maximum security prison. Crawling with supervillans. With them in the sub-basement.

As if it wasn't enough, the corridor is rocked by the shockwave of an explosion occurring elsewhere.

Faced with such a critical situation, Matt keeps his cool and orders Foggy to stay behind Luke's unbreakable hide, while he goes to check Reynolds' cell. Reynolds, he recalls having being told by Reed Richards, is one of the most powerful beings on the planet, and he's supposed to be a good guy. Matt asks him to help them get out of there. Unfortunately for them, Reynolds appears to be distraught and apathetic to the point that he doesn't listen to him, or even care about whatever is happening outside of his cell...

The tension keeps rising, and the dialogues become more concitated. The most panicked of all is of course fun-loving "Foggy" Nelson, who goes all "I told you so" on the others, especially on Matt, whom he irrationally blames of having forced him to come to that place.

- Please, get me out of here before something... ...insane...

And there he is behind him. The K2 of insanity. The in-continuity answer to a careless fanboysh question like "lol ppl what if teh Venom symbiote bonded with a dude wh's already a bloodthirsty psycho?!?".
Cletus Kasady. The nightmare known as Carnage.

He pops out behind poor Foggy as the others watch (or sense, in Matt's case) in horror. Matt thinks fast and shoves Foggy out of the way right before Carnage unleashes in a sudden madness of tentacles, fangs, spikes, superstrength, spider-sense immunity and freaky-colored speech baloons. Bendis also provides a handy B&W freeze frame for a quick reference on who he is and what he does (a useful device for such a setting, I must say. It certainly beats having the characters on scene introducing the newcomers with improbable lines, as happens often).

Matt pushes Foggy inside the relative safety of Reynolds' cell. Foggy can only watch in anguish while his partner closes the door, warns him not to open it for any reason, and gets hit by one of Carnage's flailing appendages.
The three plain-clothed heroes are barely managing to contain Carnage, as an inhumanly muscular figure emerges from behind Matt.

Tall, bare-chested, its facial traits stretched in a grotesque grin. And he knows Matt Murdock, apparently.

Matt welcomes the newcomer with a well placed rising double kick, to which the monster retaliates with a hammering of a punch to his face. Attentive readers may already have recognized the guy as Mister Hyde, a semi-regular foe to Daredevil.
Matt takes him on on his own, leaving Cage and Jessica to deal with Carnage. In the meantime, in the darkness of the cell, we have Foggy's defining moment for this issue:

Hearing the sounds of the battle coming from the corridor, Foggy begs Robert Reynolds to get out of his alienation and help his friends to face those impossible odds. Can the words of a simple man like him reach his mind and convince him to return being the hero they said he was? Who knows? Matt Murdock surely doesn't know, and he has more pressing troubles to deal with, namely avoiding the one punch Mr Hyde needs to turn him into paste.

- You put me here, Murdock!!
- Actually, Zabo, you put you here... ...but I see that you might not be in the mindset to see it that way!

Classy.

The dialogue between the two here is consistent with how Bendis has already depicted Hyde in Daredevil in an issue set before this one. In that circumstance, too, Mr Hyde was irrationally blaming Murdock for having constantly beaten him in the past and sent to prison, like if it was Matt who told him to inject himself with some hormonal filth to become an oversized freak and go play the superbaddie.

Those unfamiliar with Daredevil might also wonder how can Matt have Mr Hyde - a guy who has traded punches with guns like Thor and Hulk - in his rogue gallery, considering that he doesn't have superstrength and all. Well...

...he usually does fine by going the classical way: kicking him in the head as hard as he can.
The artist, David Finch, does a good work with representing the agitation of the scene. His style of portraying characters "good looking" also fits in nicely. For example, as you can see above, Spider-Woman is drawn to look like one of those impossibly attractive multiracial fashion models (you know, half Vietnamese, half Swedish, half Czech etc.).
Anyway, the sound effect was actually them getting reinforcements: Foggy's words have managed to touch Robert Reynolds, who emerges from the cell as The Sentry, grabs Carnage, flies him to space and rips him in half. It's the only deus-ex-machina they get, however, because he doesn't re-enter until the end of all that mess.

No longer occupied with the symbiote, Luke Cage easily takes Mr Hyde out.
But the group still has to find a way out of there. And a quick one also, because the place is filling with... is that water? Foggy wonders if they're sinking...

I love how, despite these dire situations coming one after the other, far from being panicked or even frightened Luke Cage goes simply "Aw, crap..." and Matt just looks irritated. Anyway, our heroes manage to swim out of there before Hydro-Man can drown them, with Foggy grabbed and flown to safety by Spider-Woman (that lucky son of a...).

The heroes emerge on the main deck, where hell has broken loose and Spider-man and Captain America are already fending off against a multitude of inmates (most of them superpowered). They join the dances. While fighting, Matt notices how Spidey has lost his mask, and promptly points out how that's a "bad career move". Bonus points to Bendis for the "dry humor + DD continuity reference" combo.

So, the five of them fight against the horde of psycho supervillains (is that the Mandrill in the left foreground?), and we have our Matt Murdock displaying the best of his agility and physical prowess, as he somersaults over the heads of the multitude, kicking bad guy after bad guy.

Of the group of superheroes there, he's theoretically the weakest. He cannot fly or shoot electricity like Spider-Woman. He doesn't have unbreakable skin like Luke Cage. He doesn't have Peter Parker's spider-powers. He's the only one, besides Cap, who doesn't have superhuman strength. And unlike Cap, he's bare-handed, without his usual billy-clubs.


He has powers of his own, certainly. But you'd think that in such a pandemonium, they're probably an hindrance more than anything else. Bendis could have Matt being disabled by an overloading of his supersenses, or even toss up some caption or some dialogue reminding us about this factor. He doesn't. Readers are left to imagine for themselves just how tough a time Matt is having, unarmed and underpowered, in all that mess. All of this, and yet there he is. Giving it all. Fighting with no less tenacity than his other companions. An amazing display of heroism.

In short, Matt Murdock, outside his own book, comes out as pretty hardcore.

The good guys, later joined by Iron-Man, manage to defeat the rampaging inmates and contain the breakout. Afterwards, inspired by what has transpired, Cap will offer all of the heroes who have been brought together in this incident to join a new group of Avengers. He will also invite Daredevil (who will coolly reject the invitation), but that is another story.

Speaking of the Devil...

Actual conversation between three DD fans in a chatroom:

...

(Talking about the solicitations for Daredevil #116, mentioning Kingpin's "old enemies" returning)

[Francesco] maybe, whatshisname there
[Darediva] A good chance to invent someone new.
[Francesco] guy who looked like Maleev with yellow shades...
[Darediva] he's dead
[Francesco] oh yeah
[Francesco] he crushed his head like a watermelon
[Darediva] yep
[Francesco] forgot
[Francesco] poor fellow we've also forgot his name
[jumonji] lol
[Darediva] Sammy Silke
[Francesco] oh yeah
[Francesco] now, _that's_ gay
[Darediva] lol
[jumonji] I love you Bendisesque dialogue right there
[Francesco] you do?
[jumonji] yeah? you?
[Francesco] you love our Bendisesque dialogue?
[Darediva] lol
[jumonji] yeah, right there, above Sammy Silke
[Francesco] she loves our Bendisesque dialogue, heh.
[jumonji] right there in the dialogue
[Francesco] lol
[jumonji] I mean, it's BEndis, right?
[jumonji] yeah
[Darediva] yup
[jumonji] totally Bendis
[jumonji] that's what I'm saying

...

Preposterous Plot Points #9 - "Ah, what the hell. I'll just make another private mass..."

Uh, so this priest walks into his apartment...

...no, wait. Let's start from the beginning.

Daredevil has just been kicked off a rooftop and into the dumpster right below by a fat yakuza gangster. I am not making this up. In fact he is in pretty bad shape and with a flu that is messing up his radar and heightened senses. We could say that he got trashed, but the pun would be horrible. Vowing to get revenge on the fatso as soon as he has recovered some strength (and, hopefully, stopped dripping from his nose), he decides to do as his cinematographic counterpart and go to seek shelter in a nearby empty church.

Not content to just sit on one of the empty benches, he goes to hide inside the confessional. In particular, he goes to occupy the priest's compartment.
Just like that. As if nothing was.
Last time I dared to try something like that in a church I was five years old. You'd think this would stop people from saying that Daredevil is a devout catholic, but trust me, it doesn't.
Luckily, no one comes by. Imagine if a old lady with a heart condition went there, kneeled at that confessional, started making her penance, believing her parson to be at the other side of the grille, only to discover afterwards that she had been telling her sins to a figure clad like Belzeebub.
Anyway, DD passes out. He wakes up later, to the words of what sounds like a honest-to-god confession.

As soon as his ears perceive the last words, he bursts out of the confessional. But whoever was there the moment before, has disappeared.
Wow. That was quick.
Either Hell's Kitchen is being colonized by a sect of catholic ninjas who disappear right after confessing (and without even waiting for the priest's absolution), or fatigue and flu have brought our hero's reaction time to equal that of a stoned frat boy.

This mystery settles in an angle of his mind, as our hero goes on with his life. Two days after that, he's in his office, checking recent suicide cases with his private eye, Dakota North. They find out that a woman has committed suicided several days before, by slitting her wrists, in her apartment at the Biltmore. A bell rings in Matt's head.
That night, as Daredevil, he goes to investigate.

I must confess that, being a non native English speaker, I was puzzled when I read "condo" at first. What could a "million dollar condo" be? A uber-elastic, hyper-durable, state-of-the-art contraceptive? No, turns out it's just a short for condominium. You learn something new every day.

His heightened sense of smell detects traces of wax lingering in the air. The type used in church candles, specifically. As he ponders about that, he's surprised by the noise of the apartment door being opened.
He, Daredevil, the hero with heightened hearing, whose purpose consists in having an uncanny awareness of everything surrounding him, is surprised by a sudden sound coming from the corridor right there. Not even hand ninjas can sneak up on him, he can even discern heartbeats, and yet he didn't hear any approaching sound, no breathing, no fumbling for the keys, not even footsteps. I call BS on that.
I forgot to say it in the beginning of this post, but just from this particular here you could tell that this story is written by Brubaker (script is by Ande Parks). DD's hypersenses here, in fact, seem to be working with the intensity required by the plot. Had Bendis been the writer, we would've had DD not only sensing the incoming person as soon as he reached the staircase, but also knowing what he had had for breakfast that morning by the time he had reached the third floor.

Oh, and there's the "Catholic guilt" thing.
I'll explain it for those who don't know. Catholic guilt is how "chic" pop culture labels guilt when it's coming from a catholic person.
Any ordinary guy could feel sorry about, who knows... having robbed a bank, or having ruined another person's life, or having stolen a lollypop from a little girl... et cetera. But if it's a person who is known to be catholic to do that, then it's Catholic guilt. Also, the more a person is implied to be a practicing catholic - the priest Matt heard before in the confessional, in this case - the more gusto the non-catholic takes in calling "catholic guilt" an ordinary feeling of remorse coming from this person.
It's one of those expressions that makes you feel oh-so-knowledgeable of how the modern world goes whenever you use it in a message board or in the plot of a crime drama tv series.

Not really defending any religion here (I'm an atheist), but I think it's a rather trite cliché, besides being utterly senseless.

Apart from the use of that expression in Matt's thoughts, a major development of the story is centered on the priest's incomprehensible behaviour. Basically, he had hired Little Loco, a young, filthy gang leader from the latinoamerican slums of the city, to brutally slay the lady living in his aparment and have it look like a suicide so that he could earn millions by selling it at increased price. After that, feeling guilty, he goes there, to celebrate private masses at night. Not once, but twice.

So, this man is an assassin (legally), is greedy, unscrupulous, willing to make deals with the most despicable criminals in the city, and then he feels the need to make midnight masses to atone for it.
Isn't that a little contradictory?
I also love how DD goes into "threaten with gritted teeth"-mode* without knowing anything of it all. As far as he could tell, the priest could've been feeling genuinely guilty for what was a mere suicide and was celebrating a mass out of this sense of guilt, or even just out of compassion for the soul of the suicide woman. That is certain a simpler (and more logical) explanation than jumping to the conclusion that the guy was the instigator.
Heck, he could've just interrogated him and detect if he was lying.
All this act with the "hypocrite catholic priest" was also ultimately unnecessary for the purpose of having DD find the killer. Matt could've picked dozens of clues or other traces thanks to his heightened senses in that crime scene, and those could've lead him to Little Loco just the same.
But apparently the idea of the "hypocrite-catholic-priest" as instigator was too alluring not to be used as a plot point.

In conclusion, notice also how, before leaving, DD ties up the hapless priest with some blankets.

Why on earth did he do that? Usually you tie up baddies so that the police can take them away when they come. But in this case, the priest wasn't doing anything of evidently illegal. He was entering an apartment of his property!





* Now I want extra points for the cacophonic alliteration.

1000th visitor!

We're interrupting the hiatus to inform readers of this blog that we have reached the goal of a thousand visitors!
Currently, this blog gets an average of 15 visitors a day, most of whom reach it through google images. Regular visitors, especially those who reach the site directly from its url, are a little more sporadic.
By a weird coincidence, the 1000th visitor (since I put up the sitemeter actually, so it's not really the 1000th, but still) is one of the few regular visitors I have.
Details at sitemeter say he/she is located in Jonesboro, Arkansas and that he/she reached this site on Nov 3 2008 at 1:15:55, directly from its url. I wonder who may this person be.

No wonder, actually. I'm pretty sure I know this person. This is quite a nice coincidence.
You win a hug and a pat on the shoulder. :)


See you around and keep checking this blog.

F

Daredevil's Centrific Feats #4 - Deflecting Bullets

The above image is taken from the last part of "Daredevil: The Man Without Fear", a book that every true Daredevil fan should have in his/her collection. This book, in my opinion, truly proves that Frank Miller has been the best Daredevil writer of all time. I will surely return to this miniseries in another entry with a more complete analysis. For now I'll just content with a comment on a breathtaking scene of this book, which incidentally features a fantastic feat by our sightless crusader.

This one feat will probably make some realism-purists turn their nose up, but it's still a good one. And by the way, who said that everything in a comic book should be realistic?
Oh, also, since this is arguably the climatic scene of the whole miniseries, and I'd really hate to spoil it for those who haven't read it, if you still haven't read Miller's "The Man Without Fear" (which you should) and don't want to be spoilered, don't read below the line.

__________________________________________________________

Along with dozens of other children, a little girl friend of Matt, Mickey, is being held captive by a group of children enslavers employed and controlled by the Kingpin. Leading them is Larks, Kingpin's right-hand man.
Larks is a fearsome killer. A ruthless assassin to whom killing is - as described by the writer's voice-over - "as natural as breathing".
Matt breaks into the enslavers' hideout, decided to put an end to their business once and for all. He causes a massive explosion and takes out hordes of thugs armed to the teeth. Sensing that the situation has gotten irreversibly f***ed up, Larks decides to exit the stage, but he takes Mickey with him. His first mistake.

- He's going to stop you! He's going to get you!
- Shut up.
- Matt's got magic powers! I saw!

Oh, we know, little girl. Trust me, we know he does.

Regaining his bearings after the assault, Matt focuses his senses to track Mickey and her captor, but he inadvertantly runs into the police, drawn in there in numbers by all the ruckus he has created. In the space of a few rushing panels, he's ganged up by a dozen cops, handcuffed and thrown in the back of a squad car to be hauled away.

He loses track of Mickey, but still, Mickey doesn't lose faith in him:

Uh, well, not exactly what I was thinking about with this post but sure, why not. After all, the car not starting is Matt's job (he had cut the wires before).
This anyway, delays Larks' escape only for a little bit, just for the time needed to stop a cab and put a bullet in between the unlucky driver's eyes.

Be it the incessantly pouring rain, the agitation of the moment or the creeping fear that, yes, he might well be hounded by a relentless devil with magic powers, Larks finds himself crashing his cab against a police car.
Quickly, he takes Mickey and goes hiding in a nearby abandoned warehouse.

As if in answer to Mickey's invocations, Matt has come. Standing by the door, he orders Larks to let the girl go.

Larks, it has been said, is one of the worst criminals around. Kingpin's trustee. A man for whom killing is like breathing. And, as he reminds aloud, he's the one with the gun. His opponent is simply a blindfolded fellow in a jumpsuit, armed with only a truncheon.

Yet, why it looks like it is he, the one who is afraid?
What's so scary about this man? Who is he? Why is he so adamant in stating that he doesn't want to kill him? Could he actually be capable of doing that?

Too many questions. And whenever confronted with that, people like Larks always go by the shortest answer: pulling the trigger.

He has just gotten a gunshot wound and is not even flinching (I love the sound effect of the silenced gun, in this particular sequence, btw). He calmly repeats his terms of negotiation.
Larks is probably not even listening to him, fear grows within him as he shoots again at that enigmatic nightmare ...

...who swings the baton and deflects the bullet meant for his chest, sending it back to Larks' feet. Beads of cold sweat form on Larks' face. Just who the hell is he facing?


- Call me Daredevil.

"Daredevil". For the first time, in the origin story told here by Miller, Matt refers to himself as Daredevil. A great part of the entire miniseries revolves around what this nickname means to him. It is a memory from the past, of the time when he was teased and beaten by schoolyard bullies, a memory of humiliations, of repressed anger towards injustice.
Bullies teasing the bookworm, bullies blackmailing a has-been boxer, bullies taking advantage of a poor family of father and son. Bullies believing they can take everything they want because they have the muscles, because they have the money, because they have power, because they are "the guy who's got the gun". Larks shoots once more:

...

And it's one time too much. Matt deflects the bullet again, the already damaged baton shatters, and the bullet is deviated again. This time it finds its mark right the middle of Larks' forehead. He drops to the ground, in a pool of blood. Mickey and the other children are saved, and an important branch of Kingpin's organization has been destroyed. The legend of Daredevil has just begun.

A final word on this centrific feat. I know it's really hard to justify by going with just the strict definition of Daredevil's powers and abilities. His radar substitutes his vision, but how can it - even combined with his other abilities, and possibly with the special training given to him by Stick - be so accurate to define the trajectory of a bullet, and isolate in his mind the right instant to swing for it not only to be hit, but also to be sent back and hit a precise spot? Impossible.
It's already difficult to believe that he can sense the gunner's finger moving to pull the trigger, or even his muscles tensing before doing it, but to say that knowing the instant the shot is fired is enough to do that is a whole bigger stretch.
We could nitpick it, sure. As much as we want.

Or we could simply be like Mickey in this story. Like a little girl believing that Matt, her hero, has magic powers. As someone said, magic doesn't need to be explained. And I believe that maybe there's some magic involved, whenever a page from a comic book can move and inspire us, the way these ones did to me.