"F's Kitchen"

"Ass" ...Kitchen

2010-02-16T14:27:00.000-08:00

So, in the end, what managed to awake this blog from lethargy was not a sudden burst of dedication, or the request of friends, or a renewed passion for hornhead, but, more trivially...

"El Culo".

That's right. Today is again the "Big Culo Day". El gran dìa de culo comiquero promoted by fellow spanish-speaking blogger Jotace. A special thank you goes to my friend Gloria for reminding me of this important event.

Without further ado, here are the images "backed" this year by F's kitchen (all rigourously belonging to DD-related characters, and all from female characters since this blogger is a straight guy). We start with the newest player in DD's current stories, Lady Bullseye (by Michael Lark):

Nice costume. Kudos to Marko Djurdjevic for having created it. Next, a piece from the virtuoso of comic book female buttocks, Alex Maleev, again with his Black Widow:

And last but not least, the recently "back-from-being-a-skrull" - and as accessoriated as ever - Elektra, showing off a gluteus maximus so solid that it almost appears to be made of marble (art from Dark Reign Elektra #5, by the ever formidable Clay Mann) as she finishes off her opponent:

That's all folks! Happy Big Culo Day to all!

Lol-DD Noir

2009-06-22T13:19:00.001-07:00

Word Baloon challange!

2009-05-29T02:47:00.000-07:00

Christine at The Other Murdock Papers has launched a word baloon contest with panels ripped from Daredevil issues.
Obviously I couldn't back off from this, especially not when I have my old pal Lol-DD at my side :p.

So... here is my contribution:

Ambush Fail

2009-05-11T15:22:00.000-07:00

Ninja fact #322: when attempting to blindside someone, or take him by surprise anyhow, you shouldn't yell at the top of your lungs.

This makes you wonder how Lord Hirochi (seen here attacking Master Izo, in DD II #115) managed to climb the ladder to become leader of one of the Hand's most prominent factions, if he's so incompetent. I'd blame it on the usual favoritisms.

The ambush.

2009-05-03T06:44:00.001-07:00

Lady Bullseye's Powers and Abilities.

2009-04-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

According to the statistics of trusty Sitemeter, one of the recurring sets of search keywords that make people reach this blog these days is "Lady Bullseye". More than once, the search tags also include "powers and abilities" and the like.
Here's a list of the skills this new character has been shown to have so far:

- Peak physical condition -

From the very first panels in which she appeared - featuring her leaping across the rooftops of New York City with seemingly effortless grace - it was evident that Lady Bullseye is extremely agile and acrobatic.

- Hand-to-hand combat expert -

The above sequence shows the first encounter between Daredevil and the new villainess. She is clearly more than a match for our hero, in close combat. Her fighting style appears to be mostly agility-based.
An interesting note is that she's capable of going toe to toe with a fighter like Daredevil while maintaining a completely relaxed state, with her pulse rate remaining constant. Our hero even comments on how, rather than fighting, it seemed like she was performing a Yoga routine.

- Uncanny aim -

Seeing as how she took the name and insignia of Bullseye - the bad guy who never misses - it doesn't come as a surprise that Lady Bullseye would have been good at throwing weapons.
Truth to be told, she hasn't been seen using this ability that much, so far, and so it is unclear if she's as good as Bullseye at it. Certainly, if one is capable of nailing a human torso from yards of distance using a weapon not normally used for throwing (as shown in the above panel, in which a ninja is killed by a kodachi thrown by Lady Bullseye, in order to prevent him from spilling too much on the Hand's plans), then his/her aim must be quite good.

- Master of disguise -

As part of Lord Hirochi's plan, Lady Bullseye faced Matt Murdock under the guise of legal representative of his parents-in-law (who, behind the scenes, had been instigated to claim the custody of their daughter for themselves).
When they met in their civilian clothes for the first time, even with his heightened senses, Matt wasn't certain to be in front of his new adversary. Lady Bullseye's acting capabilities were so good that she was even able to alter her pulse rate.
Disguising oneself is in itself a pretty good ability in a ninja's arsenal. But being able to also fool Daredevil's heightened senses with a disguise is something truly remarkable.

- Proficient with eastern weapons -

Lady Bullseye favors particularly weapons such as kodachi (in the splendid image above she's shown removing - in a brutal yet coreographical way - two of those from Wilson's Fisk brawny figure), katana...

... and the traditional throwing stars (shuriken).

- Trained assassin -

The sequence above is taken from a flashback telling Lady Bullseye's origins. At that time, she was one of many teenage sex slaves, by chance freed by Bullseye in a raid against some Yakuzas. While escaping, she kills a wounded gangster by slashing his throat with a key.
The ease with which she killed the unlucky dude with such an ordinary object makes me wonder if her ninja training predates her decision to become Lady Bullseye, or if it's all just natural talent.
What is certain is that...

... her ability to slay unlucky dudes as if they were an afterthought didn't diminish with time.

- Professional Lawyer -

As was anticipated by Ed Brubaker (one of her creators), Lady Bullseye has a civilian identity. In it, she's Maki Matsumoto, lawyer for the Werner and Brock law firm. The fact that she's associate to a legitimate law firm is proof enough to say that she has the curriculum needed to be a professional lawyer.

A little identity crisis

2009-04-03T03:48:00.000-07:00

(note: originally, this was to be posted two days ago, with a fake label saying "the adventures of lol-Fist")

For those who missed it...

2009-04-02T04:59:00.000-07:00

...here's how F's Kitchen looked like yesterday:

(April fools :p)

Iron Fist guest starring outside his book

2009-04-01T06:40:00.001-07:00

The following images are taken from Daredevil vol.2 #60, in which Danny - along with Luke and Spidey - helps out his ally Daredevil to wipe out a gang of Yakuzas.

Our hero looks pretty neat here (art is by Alex Maleev), and despite the spotlight obviously belonging to the titular character, he also manages to prove the formidable martial artist he is.

Women. Can't Live Without Them...

2009-03-31T14:24:00.000-07:00

As I told in the recap of the latest storyarc in my previous entry, Matt and Dakota's fugacious affair has been discovered by Milla's parents, thanks to the machinations of the Hand and to a private eye they hired to keep tabs (not to mention Matt's negligency in not properly closing the curtains of his bedroom windows when it would've been most opportune).

Be as it may, right after the deed, Matt was pretty tortured over the fact of having betrayed his wife (who, bears repeating, is currently in an insane asylum after having been driven crazy by one of Matt's enemies). Dakota tried to calm him down, in her own peculiar way:

So they temporarily resolve to try and forget about it and carry on with their lives. Until the Donovans show up at their office with the photos, that is.
At that point, it all became much more complicated to digest for the pretty private eye, who ran away without saying a word, leaving Matt and the others to try and figure out what to do. Here's what I would've said if I were Matt when, later, he tried to call her and got her answering machine:

(Disclaimer: the image below has been altered for the purpose of parody)

"Lady Bullseye": The Aftermath.

2009-03-28T16:08:00.000-07:00

Man.

...we didst not see that coming!

Confronted with the sudden and unexpected offer of having all of his current problems "solved" (according to the Hand's twisted logic) and becoming one of the Hand's leaders, our boy Matt Murdock refused! And with what a determination!
(I wasn't certainly referring to Brubaker's DD being able to land a hit on an A-list Villain again)

...yet...

Hell hath no fury like a sociopathic asian villainess with eastern martial arts training who gets no as an answer!

And so, Lady Bullseye leaves Daredevil with the promise of returning soon and making his life even worse!
(which, by the way, shouldn't be that much of a big deal by now for one with a personal history such as that of Matt Murdock, but still...)

The ninja organization, led by Lord Hirochi, has in fact temporarily withdrawn their agents, to travel to Europe and enact another part of their as of yet undisclosed plans...

Did I mention that, through their dark rituals, the nefarious Hand have managed to bring on their side the dreaded "Salt & Pepper" duo of Black Tarantula and White Tiger? The two ex allies of Matt are now as evil as they can be, subservient to the perverted will of Hirochi and with totally awesome glowing red eyes.

Plus, they now hate Matt and everything he stands for.

Not all hope is lost, however! Izo, ancient master of martial arts (and mentor of Matt's mentor), whose ninja-hacking skills are only surpassed by his obnoxiousness and love for anything that contains alcohol, is on the hero's side. His cunning and wisdom will certainly prove to be unvaluable to face the coming onslaught of the Hand.

At the same time, Matt had to make another suffered resolve. As part of Hand's plan to forcedly remove his problems, his wife's parents threatened to legally request the relieving of Milla's custody from him. Adding weight to this threat, they also revealed Matt they were in possession of compromising photos attesting his one-time tryst with his friend and P.I. Dakota North.

The decision was hard to make, but in the end Matt resolved to fight in court to maintain the custody of his wife. His trusted friend and associate Foggy Nelson, despite having advised him against this decision (arguing that at this point it could have been the best solution for Milla), will stand by his side on this front of the battle.

And so, the chapter introducing Lady Bullseye concludes with an open ending, nothing clearly foreseeable and several questions yet to be answered. The story will continue with the next five -part arc, titled "Return of the King". It will end with the 500th issue of Daredevil and will feature Wilson Fisk, the once Kingpin, returning to NY from his exile in Europe.

The hand is dealt.

Hindsight is always 20/20...

2009-03-23T07:43:00.000-07:00

"Looking" At Things.

2009-03-22T16:56:00.000-07:00

This one would probably fit better as an entry to Christine's "Seeing Things" series (though probably for reasons different from the one I'm going to address), but anyway, the following is a detail from a preview page to the upcoming Wolverine: First Class issue, which is going to feature Daredevil and Elektra as guest stars:

Nice visual representation of Matt's radar sense there, but there's a considerable oddity right in that page. And no, I'm not referring to the abstruse combination of color and design of his sunglasses.

...

...why on Earth is Matt tilting is head as if he was looking up in the first panel? He cannot "look" at anything, he's totally blind! There's no reason for him to do that.
As for how his radar sense can detect ninjas that way... I'm leaving that to someone else to comment :p

All of it is mine now!

2009-02-28T09:12:00.000-08:00

Previously, in the adventures of Lol-DD...
...

...and so it was when, one night, our hero burst into a typography office in Catalunya...

Lol-DD on a black Lamborghini

2009-02-28T09:11:00.000-08:00

DD - Dangerous Derrières

2009-02-16T10:23:00.000-08:00

Hola! I'm proud to announce that this year, F's Kitchen participates to the great kermesse declared every year this time of the year by Spanish comic book blogger Jotace: the Big Culo Day!

...

Which means, the Gran Day of Comic Book cu... no. the Great Dìa of Comic Book Ar.. hmm. no. The Big Ass of comique...
Aw, forget about it. Let us speak through images and asses, which are universal languages:

There are certain things you just can't go wrong with. One is Ed Benes drawing women's butts. Another is a good "framed between her legs" shot. And so, for starters, we have Daredevil's femme fatale par excellence:

I wouldn't want to be that ninja. Or maybe yes?
In any case, when you manage to take your eyes off such a fine example of Greek gluteus maximus, check out this Russian one, by Alex Maleev:

Black and explosive. Just the way I like it. I can't possibly imagine anything bett-

(...and the electric tape. All wrapped by it. Wow...)

That's all folks. Feliz Big Culo day to all! I hope you all survived through this entry ;) .

Thought no one would ever do this, huh?

2009-02-03T09:49:00.000-08:00

Daredevil's Centrific Feats #5 - Die Hard

2009-01-31T13:30:00.000-08:00

Some time ago, I was discussing with a friend the movie Spider-Man 2. The one featuring Doctor Octopus as main villain. In particular, we were agreeing on how nice the special effects were on that one, and how good the scenographers have been in conveying the feeling that...

... being hit by a flailing metallic tentacle gotta hurt a lot.

The above image is taken from DD vol.1 #165, penciled by Frank Miller and written by Miller himself in co-operation with Roger McKenzie. If memory serves, it is also the first issue with Miller as writer. I know this friend of mine really enjoyed this issue.
In it, Daredevil, at a pier, bursts into some smugglers, interrupting the operation of unloading of some crates containing adamantium. The thugs (who are the standard Miller-age goons type, i.e.: talkative lowlifes in undershirts, armed with chains and brass knuckles) fight back, but they are no match for Daredevil.
Suddenly, Otto Octavius appears. He takes DD by surprise, at the same time getting rid of the last thugs standing. Don't ask me how an overweight professor with long, heavy metallic appendages incorporated on him can possibly sneak up on a superhero who's got heightened senses and a radar working on 360 degrees, but he does.
With the intent of claiming that adamantium for himself, he battles DD, and after a brief struggle, he manages to seize him with two of those metallic arms of his. Instead of crushing his foe and calling it a night, he decides to drown him by holding him under the water, so that he can have the chance to go into "egocentric supervillain speech"-mode in the meantime.

There seems to be no hope for our hero. Even Spider-man, who has superhuman strength, can't normally break free from the hold of Doc Ock's tentacles.
Miller aptly accompanies this claustrophobic scene with a sequence of cluttered panels.
Knowing that there's no way to break that hold, our hero goes limp, and rations the oxygen in his lungs.

Whole minutes pass. The villain, certain that DD has drowned by then, lets go of his grip and goes away, having eliminated what to him was only a temporary nuisance.

Daredevil floats in the cold waters of the river, motionless. Hours later, he's found by a police squad. His body is totally inert. They believe him dead.
They are about to call the morgue, when, all of a sudden, he resuscitates. Shocked, an officer sees him getting up and invites him to take it easy, but the scarlet swashbuckler is already rushing away, already on the tracks of his enemy.
Running away, billy-club half extracted, ready to swing across the city. As if he had gotten up not from a near-death experience, but from a ten minute-nap.

At that sight, the astonished police lieutenant can only comment:

- The underworld calls him Daredevil. Now I know why.

Elsewhere, Octopus is in his hideout, stirring a cup of coffee (holding cup and teaspoon with his artificial arms, no less. Nice touch by Miller here). He has abducted Matt's then gilfriend, the rich heiress Heather Glenn, and, after having concluded another of his bloated talk-ins, he announces his intention to kill her.

His expression changes all of a sudden when the lights go off. Another nuisance to his brilliant plans. Undoubtedly a minor electronic malfunction.
Undoubtedly. And yet, what's that silhouette coming down on him?

"...I hold her some more while she sleeps"

2009-01-15T14:59:00.000-08:00

"And for the first time in a long, long time... I pray."

Meanwhile, at a bar in Hell's Kitchen...

2009-01-12T05:44:00.000-08:00

(I'm being a little busy right now, so I've arranged with lol-DD to keep you company. Thanks to Alice for the inspiration on this one!)

He even neglected fastening his seatbelt...

2009-01-06T09:33:00.000-08:00

The Issues of Brubaker's Run Christmas Carol

2008-12-28T01:56:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-23T13:04:00.000-08:00

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...

2008-12-22T06:30:00.000-08:00

...
So, beware.
:p

At Potter's Costume Shop...

2008-12-20T03:33:00.000-08:00

- 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

2008-12-13T08:51:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-30T05:30:00.000-08:00

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...

2008-11-17T13:42:00.000-08:00

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..."

2008-11-06T03:31:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-11-03T03:19:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-23T09:30:00.000-07:00

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.

Preposterous Plot Points #8 - "Dinner and a movie is overrated..."

2008-10-11T09:06:00.000-07:00

Here we are again. This time, this installment won't take place on the regular series, but on a miniseries. Specifically Daredevil: Yellow, issue #3, by the creative team of writer Jeph Loeb and artist Tim Sale.
For those who don't know, this mini is a rewriting of the early days, narrated from Matt's point of view as he tries to cope with the recent death of Karen by recalling those days: his father's death, the beginning of his quest as a yellow-costumed Daredevil, the two of them meeting for the first time, the forming of the Nelson & Murdock law firm.
One of the themes of this miniseries is the love triangle forming between Matt, Karen and Foggy. Both the young lawyers were in fact profoundly attracted by the pretty, gentle, blonde-haired secretary. Those DD fans who've read the early issues surely remember how Stan Lee made a mawkish, tiring soap-opera of this love triangle. I suggest those who didn't to read the funny commentaries made by Chris in her blog.
Jeph Loeb ensured to make the budding love story between the protagonists as much as mawkish as that of the silver age, with some extra forced melancholic introspection on Matt's side thrown in for good measure. Before we go to the plot point object of this entry, here's an example of it:

The context: the Fantastic Four have come to the N&M law firm to recruit our protagonists' legal assistance and have just left. Foggy is overjoyed, because they're their first clients. Karen then says:

"Please, don't make fun of Mr Murdock, I think we should be very proud of what he did today"

To which Matt's V.O. comments:

"I forgot as about the FF and what they thought. On that day, I mattered to you"

Oh, geez. Last time I got gooey gooey like that to such a slight praise coming from a woman, I was in secondary school. This is even more exaggerate if we consider that what Matt did of so heroic was just saying something like "uhm, okay" to Mr Fantastic's request of assistance. What's coming next? They'll make him a statue for pushing the right button in the elevator?

Be as it may, Foggy invites Matt and Karen to celebrate in his and Matt's "old college watering hole".

So, Foggy invites the girl he wants to impress in a hole of a place that stinks of cigarette smoke and has society rejects like an old woman who growls and a hobo referred to as "the mad poet" as regular customers. Matt mentioning the urinal in his description doesn't help improving the general image we get of the place, either.
"Well, come on" you'd say "the place doesn't really matter - after all it's a place from their past - what's important is to enjoy oneself, be at ease with friendly people and in good company, right?".
Of course. In fact, what does Foggy do to put his female friend at ease while they're waiting for Matt?

He brings her to the back of the place, to enjoy the company of shady individuals gathered there to play billiards, and instead of dedicating his attentions to her, he relegates her to sit isolated and out of place on a stool, and bets with the rascals on a game of 8-ball. Look at how happy he looks there, stubby in one hand, cue in the other while he's putting his friends in a rather embarassing situation.
"there's nothing bad in a having game of pool at a bar" you may say "it might be a way of passing time".
I bet it is, especially with gentlemen like these:

Foggy's behaviour, lines and facial expressions here remind me of how Loeb didn't get his character at all. Here, and in the whole story, he comes out as an unreliable simpleton, the stereotyped slow and naive friend who serves as a foil to the handsome, wise, cool protagonist. I'm sorry for Loeb, but although his appearence may lead to label him as such a character, Foggy has never been like that. Not even in the early years of DD, in which, if memory serves, the only really foolish thing he ever did was posing as Daredevil in order to impress Karen. But apart from that single episode, in the regular series the Fogster has always been shown to be a serious, reliable person, not the "Donald Duck-esque" caricature we're fed here.
Oh, and you'd think that, presented with a situation like this - with the simple young girl uneasy and out of place, things looking to get ugly, your friend taking unreasonable decisions (maybe already a little drunk) - the one friend who's supposed to be wiser would take the situation into his hands, convince everyone to go in a decent place and, later on, give the other friend a good scolding for the poor showing he made.
Think again:

Is there any need I tell you how the game of pool goes? Matt-the-blind breaks, pockets a couple of balls with the breakshot and then proceeds sinking the remaining balls one by one, ending with the black. How obvious.
And how far-fetched. Not exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from a person who seeks to appear like an ordinary blind man to help conceal his secret identity. And, besides that, Matt has never been the type to either show off or to respond to taunts coming from a bunch of scoundrels.

Strangely enough - but at the same time conveniently enough for this coup-de-theatre to fit into the plot - Foggy doesn't ask himself too many questions on how his blind friend can be a pool wizard. As many fanfiction writers surely know, one of the difficulties of writing stories set in Matt's past consists in the fact that his identity and powers were still a secret to his closest friends, and so there's this always present discrepancy between how his friends see him (as a friend with a disability) and how he really is (a blind man with superpowers that allow him to do things entirely out of the ordinary).
In here, Loeb takes this complexity and throws it all out of the window with great nonchalance. After all, in this miniseries, Foggy is a simpleton who invites a timid girl and his blind friend in a stinkhole of bar to gamble with lowlifes, and Karen is a pretty airhead whose only function in the scene is to hold the main character's jacket while he deals with the baddies and to stare in amazement at his display of coolness.

It is not clear if they leave right after the game or if they actually spend sometime in the bar and have something as they were supposed to do initially. It would be weird if they didn't, but no hint in this sense is given. The scene cuts to them outside, preparing to leave for their homes. Foggy (coherently with the dickery he's showed beforehand, if nothing else) privately asks Matt if he minds if he takes Karen home in a taxi. Matt agrees, telling them that he feels like going home on his own.

As the taxi is about to leave, Karen worries about Matt being on his own:

But it doesn't matter. Matt is the tough guy of the situation here. What really matters is that the poor sweet thingy has hiccups. One more chance to impress her! And what better way of ~~boring the crap out of a lady~~impressing a lady than telling her a good old granny's remedy to make hiccups go away? On a side note, I don't know if doing all that crap he suggests actually works, but I bet that in the time needed to grab a knife, take a lemon, cut a wedge of lemon and go to your neighbor's to ask him if he has some Worcestershire sauce to lend you, it is very likely that the hiccups has gone away on its own.

Well, after that, Matt is left alone in the deserted street in front of the café. I still think it was quite stinky (and out of character) of Foggy to leave his blind friend alone in a street of New York, by night, just so that he could stay alone with the pretty girl.

"Well, maybe they've already done so in the past" you might think "and Foggy is confident that really, Matt is a rather independent person despite his blindness, and that he won't have any trouble to get home on his own".
Think again:

Yeah. The lowlifes Foggy has had them meet before have waited outside to ambush them and get their revenge. Who could've thought of that?
Obviously Matt, not being your ordinary blind man, has no problems in defending himself. This leads to another scene with a number of absurdities, but it's better to stop here and leave it for a future entry because the flux of preposterous in this mini is practically continuous.

'Nuff Said Month Aftermath

2008-10-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

A-hem.
And so it is finished. End of the " 'Nuff Said" month.

Well, uh... what else to say?
(wow, I'm just realizing that one of the effects of this month has been that my blog writing skills have got a little rusty)

(Hmm. A lot rusty, actually)

It has been a fun and interesting diversion. A different way of blogging about Daredevil. I didn't exactly have an idea of what to do with it when I decided to start it. It would've been something on the line of Marvel's 'nuff said month event of february 2002, in which I would've regrouped together some blog entry ideas for which scarce if no text at all was needed, and most of the intended message was told through the pictures and their succession.

Trying to fit the usual monthly updates to series of posts like Preposterous Plot Points and Centrific Feats would've been a bit of a challange, but luckily I already had in mind the right idea for a "silent" Preposterous Plot Point (after all, when you have a splash page of a fattened DD in a tiny motorbike wearing a clownesque Kendo outfit, there's not really much to say to point out it is preposterous), and a centrific feat that needed no comments was not hard to find at all.
In the end, not all of the entries have been merely of the "pics sans text" type, but all of them, in a way or another, were related to silence or to situations where words were not needed.

I must admit that one of the reasons why I decided to start this 30 days spanning event was my desire to emulate a blogger much appreciated by me: Dave Campbell of the now defunct Dave's Longbox comic book blog (fans of that blog have maybe noticed how I try to imitate his style of blogging, sometimes). In that blog, Dave used to have themed events quite often, even if his used to be themed weeks (the relevant content week, the Kobra week, the Star Trek week, the nostalgia week...), not months. Knowing that I'm barely able to post something once per week, however, I was almost forced to make it a month-long event, so that I could fit enough entries in it without altering the usual pace too much.
In this sense, the results have been much satisfactory, seeing as how this has been my most prolific month in terms of number of posts.

I know I'm getting tediously cocky, so I'll cut the self-referring and get on to some reflections.

First off, it's not by chance that all of the contents have been extracted from the DD of the 2ks. And, certainly, it would've been impossible to make a 'nuff said month of the silver/bronze age DD, seeing as how there was never a moment of quietness in those days! Really, even when there was nothing to say, the writer just couldn't help putting a caption saying "you'll all agree that this panel doesn't need comments!" or "look at the masterful work of "gentleman" Gene in this sequence, true believer!".
It doesn't surprise me that most of the inspiration for entries came especially from the Bendis-Maleev run. That duo knew all too well how to tell a story through visuals rather than words. Bendis, particularly, was very good at scripting textless scenes, always making sure that all the ingredients were there to craft a scene that could astonish and impress the reader (as can be seen in the script sample put in appendix to issue #23 of vol.II, which is the issue the panels accompanying this entry are from).
While Bendis certainly had limits that I would never dream of denying, in his tenure as writer of Daredevil he has been a very good scenographer, capable like few other writers to pull awesome scenes out of the top hat, such as the one described here.

Another thing I noticed is how powerful images are to deliver a message. It is particularly true in a book like the modern day Daredevil, where introspection plays a very relevant role. And certainly, it must be said that sometimes adding words to a scene that doesn't need them simply "ruins the magic". Sometimes, a writer can really give more to the reader, in terms of emotions, if he refrains to explicitate what the character is thinking with a succession of invasive caption boxes, and just let the artist's skill and the reader's imagination do the job.

By adding an unnecessary caption, the reader is confined to the role of mere spectator, whereas, with just the right sequence of images you can instead capture him and involve him directly, and on a deeper level, in the story. About this, Brubaker and Rucka and the last entry of the month come to mind. How fantastic was it to see DD disable the crooked FBIs with no captions interrupting the flow of the action, and that would've made it all look like a sort of recap of what was actually happening? Also, how wonderful it was, in that last panel, ending silently, but with a protagonist finally smiling after so much sufferings?

There's a little downside to all of this, however. It, lies in the fact that, when there isn't enough text, the risk that the images fail to deliver the right message is always present. Sometimes there are concepts that just need to be made explicit. More than one person, for example, was perplexed that I said "I miss Bendis" in one of these entries. If it weren't for the fact that the plan was to reduce textual commentary to minimum, I would've specified that a certain kind of moments, a certain way of surprising the reader with an awesome scene coming out of the blue was the reason why I thought Bendis was to be missed. I thought that the sequence posted could've explained that completely, but apparently it didn't, and my comment was interpreted by many as an apology of Bendis' faults. Too bad. I guess you can't win them all.
Anyway, also because of that, in some of the future entries I'm going to expand on several of the themes that have been only slightly touched during this month.

And with this rather prolix reflection, the otherwise silent "'Nuff said month" concludes.

.
.
.
Aw, it's just not like me to end like that, is it?

There. That's more like it. ;)

Little Things

2008-10-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

From DD(II) #110

~~~~~~~~~~

- ... thanks for making me stand and fight.
- ...
- ...
- ... you're welcome.

~~~~~~~~~~

Note: For more details on this issue, check out this review at The Other Murdock Papers.

Angst

2008-10-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

~~~~~~~~~~

Daredevil's centrific feats #3 - "Never mind..."

2008-09-27T06:45:00.000-07:00

From DD(II) #78:

F@#%, yeah.

(damn, I miss Bendis. I really do)

How many words would it take?

2008-09-25T03:59:00.001-07:00

~~~~~~~~~~

.
.
.

Reunion

2008-09-20T14:32:00.000-07:00

~~~~~

Unnamed, silent opponents...

2008-09-18T13:19:00.000-07:00

Unnamed, silent opponents.

'Nuff said.

Preposterous Plot Points #7 - "Samurai Daredevil. Overweight. On toy bike."

2008-09-10T04:42:00.000-07:00

- Santerians did one hell of a number on me. Perhaps is time for me to rethink things...?
... just a little.

...

Later that night...

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

Lady Bullseye

2008-09-08T10:11:00.000-07:00

A deadly lotus flower...

...salutes a new dawn.

... like a freshly cracked fig... [H. Hesse]

...on the prowl in New York City...

F's Kitchen presents... the 'Nuff said month!

2008-09-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

- What, 'Nuff said month? What's that?

- 'Nuff said!

- Maybe it has to do with the experiment of the same name Marvel did sometime in the year 2002, when they published comics without dialogue in them, Like DD #28 vol.2?

- 'Nuff said!

- So there isn't gonna be anything written in the blog entries for a month? Or will the text be reduced to_

- 'Nuff said!

- But what will be of the series of posts like DD's centrific feats, or Prepos_
*clocks the person asking in the head with a billy-club and keeps hitting him several times when he's down*
- 'Nuff. Said.

No! My reflexes are slowed down, again!

2008-09-05T02:06:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine has recently thought of me and sent me this piccy (from DD vol.1 #111):

She knows how I love when old hornhead's abilities get shamelessly debased like that*.
How cute.

Anyway, I got to admit that I found this panel funny, with the way DD flees from his clownesque foe (the Silver Samurai, here in his first appearence). Also, he says he's "half dead from fatigue" and yet, look at him: dashing like that in a way that would put Usain Bolt to shame.
How does DD get out of this outrageous situation? Simple, he gets saved by Shanna O'Hara, who intervenes and stomps samurai-guy with the help of her... um... cats.

I've always known that it pays to have female friends who have cats.

* to be honest, I had this coming for the time when I posted a pic featuring DD using his radar like X-ray vision and saying "my senses more than compensate for my blindness" :p.

Daredevil's Centrific Feats #2 - Tricking the Grandmaster

2008-08-31T03:09:00.000-07:00

This centrific feat takes place in Giant Size Defenders #3. In it, Daredevil is chosen to participate in a game along with the superhero group of the Defenders, a game in which the fate of the Earth hangs in balance.

And the very moment he decides in his heart to partecipate, following a request from his ex-foe Nighthawk, he's teleported to a strange dimension. He's now a pawn in a game between the elder of the universe known as the Grandmaster, a nearly omnipotent being obsessed with games, and the Prime Mover, an artificial intelligence created by Doctor Doom, who achieved self-awareness and evolved into a godlike-intelligent being capable of calculating the most complex probabilities without any chance of error.

Responding to a challange to a game sent by the Prime Mover across the space, the Grandmaster accepted, and agreed to grant the Prime Mover the power to enslave Earth if he were to lose.
The game would've consisted in a battle between a team of six champions picked by each competitor. The Gamemaster chose the group of the Defenders - composed by Hulk, Doctor Strange, Namor, Nighthawk and the Valkyrie - plus Daredevil.

In particular, this is how the contest would've functioned, as told by the Grandmaster himself to his pawns in his pre-match pep talk:

"Each player [...] will divide his squad into teams of two. Each duo of pawns will be placed upon one of the team worlds we have created [...] to face a team from the opposite side"

among other things, he adds:

"Neither you nor his men will be at any advantage due to the environment. All will find the play areas equally hostile"

...

Nice. Apart from the fact that Daredevil, teamed with Namor (Valkyrie was already taken, sorry) ends up in a hellish world, hot, rocky and freckled with loud geysers exploding with sulphuric jets of vapor.
"equally hostile" my a$%.

His direct adversary is an amorphous jelly with tentacles, a sort of poor man's Shuma Gorath, who, also thanks to the noise and the heat disorienting his senses, makes short work of him.

Shortly after, Namor, also weakened by the heat and the lack of moisture in that atmosphere, gets beaten to death by a sort of abominable lizard-guy. The round is lost, but thanks to the remaining good guys winning their battles, victory goes to team Grandmaster.

As you can see by the pic above, the hyper-intelligent machine reacts in a manner akin to that of a 9 year-old who loses a game of checkers.
The Grandmaster has won, and so Earth is now safe, right? Not so much:

Confronted with the perspective of eternal slavery under the Grandmaster, the heroes fling themselves at him like one man. But however heroic, their effort is futile. The Grandmaster blows them all away by just thinking about it.
... except for Daredevil who wisely decided not to partecipate to the collective attack. This makes the Elder of the Universe curious:

Daredevil here does a thing he's usually very good at (certainly better than other more powerful heroes): playing smart.
Having understood the obsession of the Grandmaster for games, he challanges him to another one:

I love how DD here lays on the line the Earth "and the moon in addition" while managing to keep such a serious face. But it's not like he has much to lose, at that point. Will the Grandmaster accept?
A transition of panel that seems to last forever, and then...

"The Grandmaster nods"

Still, the Grandmaster is puzzled as to what sort of game is DD proposing. Daredevil snatches a disc-like piece from the ruined carcass of the Prime Mover and explains the game to his adversary:

Yes. Daredevil has just bet the Earth - and the moon, in addition - in a game of heads or tails. The Grandmaster, intrigued by the novelty and the simplicity of the game, invites him to proceed. Still unsure if his unearthly interlocutor has figured out the trick or not, Daredevil flips the disc in the air.

...

The side DD had called comes up! Humanity is safe. Notice how the Grandmaster takes it with truly admirable sportsmanship, of the kind you seldom see in comic book villains. Really, seems that he couldn't care less about losing a planet that was already his. Oh, and, Doc Strange, you can look now. DD has just saved Earth.

Still a little envious that Daredevil has been the one who saved the day, and not he, the Sorcerer Supreme with the fancy cape and the trés chic spotty gloves, Strange scolds our hero, asking him if it wasn't a little risky to bet the fate of Earth on a fifty-fifty chance. He's probably forgetting that Earth was already lost to begin with and that his alternative plan was "let's suicide-attack the omnipotent guy".

Daredevil reassures that there was no risk at all, and makes his exit, without explaining them the reason. Which is revealed by his thought baloon in the last panel, for those who still didn't get it: he has used his heightened sense of touch to flip the disc so that it would've come up with the side he chose.

Neat.

Preposterous Plot Points #6 - "I'll dress DD in clothes like mine, too!"

2008-08-18T03:10:00.000-07:00

This update to the Preposterous Plot Points series can be considered a direct sequel to the very first entry of the series (sequels seem to be all this big thing nowadays, so I'm adapting), the one regarding the Ox and his stratagem of carrying a spare set of his own clothes so that in the event he meets and takes out a superhero he can dress him with those clothes and somehow frame him for any damage he had caused.

Well, despite the absurdity of it, it worked well the first time, with the cops hauling an unconscious DD, wearing oversized everyday clothes over his own outfit, to the cell of the police station.
In issue #56 of the first volume, Daredevil is in the countryside of Vermont, following the trail of his beloved Karen, when he runs into a supervillain of all respect: a figure with a grotesque mask, riding on the back of a skeletal steed, with his body covered by bandages and glowing intensely with radiation.
The phantasmatic figure calls himself "Death's Head" and greets our hero with a standard gloating villain speech and with a huge fireball, in the attempt to intimidate him from meddling with his plans.
On their second encounter, they fight each other. Daredevil battles the monstrous foe, managing to evade the bolts as best as he can while trying to get close enough to attack, but eventually gets too fatigued to keep the pace:

I don't know why the heck Death's Head here decides to stop using fireballs, pull out a bola and hit DD with that instead. If you ask me, fireballs at close range are clearly superior than an attack with a bludgeoning object. But maybe Roy Thomas had in mind of making the new villain use an exotic weapon like a bola and that was his only chance to stuff it into the issue.
By the way, someone should've told him that bolas don't work that way. Then again, that's actually a "glowing bola", we are told. I don't know how being glowing makes it any special. Maybe they work differently than regular bolas. Who knows.

Yet, senseless as it is, that simple panel with Death's Head striking DD with a weapon that shouldn't be used that way for some reason cracks me up. Maybe it's the words with which Death's Head accompanies the blow:

"Winded already, my friend? Let by glowing bola ease your misery!"

In order to say a phrase like that, either you're completely insane, or completely badass (to the point that you don't care if you sound ridiculous).
Instead of burning the unconscious DD to a crisp and be done with that, the baddie puts in action the Ox's stratagem. He pulls out of nowhere bandages and a mask identical to the one he's wearing. He doesn't use his own mask, it's actually another identical one he was inexplicably carrying with him. I know of motorcyclists who bring with them a spare helmet in case they have to carry a passenger, but this is ridiculous. Especially because we're later told that the mask the guy is wearing is an ancient Aztec artifact. So either he had found another identical one, or he had made a copy of it just for such an instance.

The vestition lasts a couple of panels. I figure that tying up someone like a mummy would require slightly more time, but maybe this villain is particularly experienced in doing it. Apart from that, you gotta love the panel where DD is put the spare mask on his head. It looks like he's conscious and about to give a thumb up, as to say "Okay, I'm ready".
The plan of Death's Head, while sharing similarities with the one used by the Ox, is slightly more sophisticated (or if we want, more idiotic): basically, he's setting DD up for a "suicide by cop". A police patrol in fact, lured by the lights and the noise of the battle, has approached the scene. After having tied up his hands with more bandages, Death's Head puts DD on the saddle of his ghastly horse and sends the horse gallopping towards the policemen, so that they, believing him to be the bad guy, would shoot him.

... I know, don't ask me. I would've just burned him with fireball at point blank. But I'm an engineer, not a supervillain, so what do I know?

A little test. What would you do if you were in such a situation, with a ghostly figure gleaming of an unreal light charging towards you on the back of a skeletal horse, threatening you with a voice that sounds "like something from the grave"?

1) I crap my pants and get out of there as fast as I can;
2) I crap my pants and pass out;
3) I stay there and prepare to shoot the approaching figure with my firearm, discussing with my partner on where it's best to aim in these cases.

Answer 3) is clearly the most unlikely, and yet Death's Head's plan is based entirely on the chance that the cops follow that one course of action. The author is clearly on his side, here, and so the policemen do exactly that.

In any case, the issue ends with a cliffhanger. Will the officers shoot our hero, granting him a most shameful end after he has been knocked unconscious with a glowing bola and then dressed up for halloween? Find out next issue!
And, in the following issue, we find out that the policemen's bullets just graze our unlucky hero, but the horse he's riding doesn't stop. It leaps over the police car and keeps prancing wildly along the countryside, with Daredevil still on its back.

Yeeee-haaaaw!
After a while DD manages to free himself from the ropes and get off the restless horse. However, he falls badly and injures his shoulder. The cops, who have been pursuing him all the while (without ceasing to shoot at him, of course), reach him and, seeing him wounded, remove his mask. And, to their surprise, they see...

...that the individual who had charged towards them before wears a Daredevil mask under the Aztec mask, and so they gratuituously assume that he's in fact Daredevil and not anybody else wearing a Daredevil mask, and that they should not do anything to him since Daredevil is a good guy and all.
I wonder what's the standard procedure that police agents in the Marvel universe were supposed to follow whenever they found a person wearing a superhero costume under another disguise. When it was with the Ox, they hauled him into a cell without thinking about it twice. In this case here, they let him get away with it, despite the situation being highly suspicious.
Certainly, if I were a supervillain and learned of this episode here, I'd start committing my crimes while wearing a good guy's mask under the one of my own costume. Can you imagine that?

"No, officer, there has been a misunderstanding! Don't you see the mask? I'm Iron Fist, I'm just keeping an eye on the villains, in incognito! Say, could you give me a lift to 387 Park Avenue?"

Team-ups ain't what they used to be...

2008-08-14T11:30:00.000-07:00

As most comic book readers probably know by now, in the wake of the events occurred in the One More Day storyarc, Spider-man's continuity has been radically altered.
I'll summarize it for those who don't know. Joe Quesada, current Marvel EiC, believing that Spider-man being a married man was aging the character, and thus scaring away potential new, younger readers from the related books, decided that the marriage was to somehow be erased from Spider-man's past history.
They did so by having Peter Parker and his wife Mary Jane Watson strike a deal with Mephisto (a powerful demonic entity of the Marvel Universe), in exchange for the life of Aunt May, who at that time was on the brink of death after having being shot by a sniper sent to kill Peter.

Along with the erasing of the marriage, the new "younger readers-friendly" Spider-man was given, in the same package, a number of other significant continuity changes.
Among these changes, in particular, there was this one:

Absolutely no one knows that Peter Parker is Spider-man. Not Daredevil, not the Avengers, not anyone. His identity is truly secret, although some people seem to recall that Spidey unmasked himself during civil war, no one quite remembers whose face was under the mask.

...

If you're about to ask, yes. That is retarded. Accepting this and the rest of the continuity implies a significant number of ramificated absurdities and contradictions. But apart from that, why on earth did they feel to introduce this change also? Was Spidey's revelation of his secret identity aging the character as well, like the marriage?
No, it was more likely because, after the big fat event of Spidey's outing (which gave Marvel an enormous mediatic visibility and made sales sky-rocket), they realized that mess had deprived Spidey of a huge chunk of his character and they didn't know what the heck they could do with him anymore. Sure, initially they had him go hunt for the instigator of the sniping, back in his black costume because he had become all angsty (or better yet, to reflect the look of the contemporary Spider-man 3 movie, and attract new readers), but what else could he do after that? Nothing, unless the status quo was to be dramatically (and irreversibly) altered.

Daredevil didn't have this luxury. He didn't have the same visibility when he unmasked, relatively recently, and didn't get a similar plenary indulgence after the party was over. In fact, Matt Murdock's life is still a mess in large part because of his outing, and he's still paying the price for it. But I digress.

All these gratuitous changes to the character's continuity have pretty much had the effect of a reset button. Spider-man started his Brand New Day as a hard luck hero, young, pennyless, with a fixation on mantaining his identity a secret, with a new supporting cast and a new set of bad guys (in addition to the existing ones). Plus, he got to somehow fit in the continuity of the other characters - like Daredevil or the New Avengers - as if nothing had happened. With DD this was particularly weird, because there is really no way to concile their past mutual history - rich with encounters both in and out of costume, team-ups, shared adventures - with the fact that Daredevil doesn't know who Spider-man is (especially considering he has heightened senses).

In addition to this, the all new continuity (I'm struggling not to use the term "new status quo" they have used, because, as anyone who understands some Latin knows, it is an oxymoron) sort of gave the authors the illusion that they could, for the moment, write any Spidey story they wanted without putting much attention to the details. This lead to the poorly written Spider-Man/Matt Murdock interaction seen in Amazing Spider-Man #566, by Guggenheim with art by Phil Jimenez and others.

In this story, a villain captures Peter Parker's roommate, believing him to be Spider-man, and takes him away after having forced him to wear the Spider-Man costume, which she had stolen right before. Peter has to do something about it, but needs another costume to conceal his identity before getting into action.
Instead of just putting a potato sack over his head, he decides to borrow a Daredevil costume from Matt Murdock. Don't ask me why.

He heads to Matt's law office at Hell's Kitchen, calling him on the phone at the same time:

So he calls and Matt Murdock doesn't believe him to be Spider-man and thinks it's a prank call, because, y'see, Peter is a clumsy hard luck hero. Ha ha ha. How funny.
Yeah, funny. Apart from the fact that Matt Murdock is blind and has been training himself for a lifetime to not only recognize voices, but also to detect anomalies in the voice and speech patterns (enabling him to tell if someone is saying the truth or not even when he cannot hear that person's heartbeat, like in this case). You really think that the blind superhero with heightened senses cannot tell the voice of a long time ally from that of a prank calling nut? I say thee nay.
The Superman bit was a nice touch, though.

Peter then tells Matt to look out of the window, so that he can see him - wearing a facial disguise made of webbing - sticking on the outside wall of the building and be convinced that it was actually the real Spider-Man calling him.
I repeat. He's telling a person whom he knows he's blind to look out of his window. According to Guggenheim's twisted logic, not only Matt Murdock doesn't believe the identity of a person he was talking to on the phone (not an unknown guy, a person he should be familiar with), he also has to put his head out of the window to detect the presence of someone outside in the immediate vicinities.
This is ridiculous. Last time I checked his powers were "superhumanly heightened senses and radar sense", not "is a lawyer and wears shirts and red sunglasses when out of costume"

Sure, anything for you, webhead. After all, it's not like I'm currently having a hard time now, with my wife having been driven mad by a maniac and a case of an innocent in death row who will be executed in a handful of days. Oh, also, do you realize how irrelevant is to me the mask you're wearing? I can recognize your odor and track you by scent if I ever wanted. By the way, how is aunt May?

Peter, anyway specifically asks for a costume with eyeholes on the mask. He apparently knows that DD doesn't need those, being blind. And to think that just three panels before he had asked Matt to "look" out of the window...

Wow. What do ya know? Brand New Day Spidey is also somehow aware that there are cartoon series about him with characteristic theme songs, and he's made up a Daredevil variant! I don't know, it's supposed to be a witty/funny thing, I guess.
Anyway, he goes to the police precinct to gather some informations on the kidnapper. He is aware that Spider-man, to the public, is menace, and so he expects to be treated with more respect by the police, since he's posing as Daredevil.

About that, I'm sure everyone at the precinct loves DD, especially considered that Daredevil is unregistered too and that he has beaten two policemen to near death in recent issues, under the effect of Mr Fear's gas. But this is "younger readers-friendly BND Spidey", it's a safe bet to say that 90% of them don't read a book like Daredevil (which is commonly considered to be dark and depressing).

As for the remaining 10%, they can suck it up, just like they did with the rest of the One More Day/Brand New Day mess.

Fighting for Hope. Fighting Without Fear.

2008-08-08T01:51:00.000-07:00

"Who is Darediva?" you might ask.
Darediva is the alter ego of a friend of mine, a Daredevil fan. One of the biggest Daredevil fans, undoubtly. A girl without fear, as she likes to call herself.

But if I were to describe her properly, I'd say that Darediva is a fighter.
Yes. And not a "let's assemble, fly up to the big bad alien guy who's threatening the universe and punch him with super-strength"-fighter or even a "I got superpowers through radioactive wastes and now I prowl the streets at night seeking justice"-fighter.
She doesn't fight against ninjas or colourful villains.
She fights in real life. She fights against life, when life is a bitch. Does so by trying to live her own to the fullest. By facing reality with strength and willpower. By believing in true friendship. By giving a smile to those who are around her (yes, because being able to smile in order to make those who are around us happy, even when our life goes so-and-so, is a sign of strength in itself, in a society that is becoming more and more selfish).

Alice - this her real name - has put up Team Darediva to participate to the VisionWalk 2008 in Memphis, TN. It is an event promoted by Foundation Fighting Blindness, a non-profit organization raising funds for research on retinal diseases that lead to blindness (such as Stargardt's, Usher's Syndrome, or the one she's affected by, macular degeneration).
If you want to help research on these diseases, please, support Team Darediva by donating a minimum of $25 on her visionwalk page. The goal is to reach at least 500$. It is only with your contribution that this will be attainable.

Vision Walk

Foundation Fighting Blindness

Darediva's blog

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Traduzione:

"Chi è Darediva?" mi si potrebbe chiedere.
Darediva è il nickname di una mia amica, una fan di Daredevil. Forse una delle più grandi fan di Daredevil (anche in senso cronologico, visto che leggeva già il fumetto quando io ancora avevo i pannolini).
Darediva è una che combatte.
E non "combattere" nel senso "Pigliamo a pugni con la superforza il despota intergalattico che minaccia l'universo" o "Ho acquisito i superpoteri dalle scorie radioattive e di notte veglio sulla città proteggendo i deboli dai criminali".
No. Qui parliamo della vera lotta. Quella contro la vita, quando la vita è una mignotta.
Quella lotta che si combatte giorno per giorno. Lei la affronta a viso aperto, con forza di volontà e determinazione. Senza abbattersi, ma cercando sempre di sorridere a chi le sta accanto (e in una società come la nostra, che sta diventando sempre più egoista, sorridere a chi ci sta accanto mentre si è in mezzo alle avversità è una dimostrazione di forza morale enorme).

Alice - questo il suo nome - ha messo su il Team Darediva per partecipare a VisionWalk 2008. L'evento si svolgerà a Memphis, Tennessee, ed è sponsorizzato dalla Foundation Fighting Blindness, un'organizzazione no-profit impegnata nella raccolta di fondi per la lotta alle malattie degenerative della retina, come la sindrome di Usher o la degenerazione maculare, da cui lei stessa è affetta.
Se vuoi aiutare Alice e unirti nella lotta a queste terribili malattie, puoi sostenere il Team Darediva, visitando la relativa pagina web e donando un minimo di 25 dollari (circa 16,5 euro). L'obiettivo è raccogliere almeno 500 dollari. Il tuo contributo è molto importante.

Vision Walk

Foundation Fighting Blindness

Blog di Darediva

Dealing With Mobsters...

2008-07-31T13:41:00.001-07:00

The following sequence is from the Golden Age storyarc, part 2 (vol.2 #67), by Bendis and Maleev. The story is about the former kingpin of New York city, how he came to power, how he was overthrown by a young Daredevil and how in the present day he attempted to get vengeance.
In the second part of Bendis' run, after an important event like the self-proclaiming of Daredevil as kingpin of Hell's Kitchen, this story came up as a fill-in, in comparison, but it is a neat tale, with homages to Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America, in which different artistic styles are used to illustrate the three different timelines of the narration.

After the intervention of Daredevil, the crime lord of New York Alexander Bont is having some troubles with justice, and is in need of a lawyer, preferably a newly-graduated, fresh of college and needing a job, who would defend him without creating too many problems. He goes to Nelson & Murdock (and this is also perfectly coherent with the intent of imitating the silver age style of the book, since all evildoers always ended up turning to the protagonists' law firm, back in those days).
Unfortunately for him, Matt unexpectedly refuses to accept his case:

(Wow, isn't it true that nowadays people don't care about conflicts of interest).
Bont, being the criminal big cheese he is, is not used to receive a no for an answer. But Matt is adamantine. They cannot defend him in court because they're already representing some Hell's Kitchen citizens in a lawsuit against him. You can imagine if realizing that those lawyers are actually his adversaries doesn't piss him off even more:

Figgy. Foogy. Fiji. (!)

XD
Man, Foggy timidly correcting a man like that (a pissed off man like that, on the top of that) on how to properly say his nickname is a priceless image.
Anyway, not only Matt doesn't flinch, he even slyly tries to take advantage of the situation for his other clients:

If you're giving me a dirty look in hopes of intimidating me... I'd like to now remind you that I am blind.

Heh. Take that.

Through Matt's character, Bendis here points at a thing that is almost always true. Mobsters and the like can try to be scary and intimidating as much as they want, but deep down, they're just poor idiots.

Bont seethes with fury at Murdock's stinging mot juste! And when even mild mannered Foogy err... Foggy Nelson indirectly participates to the mockery, he snaps. And goes into full "C-list gangster threats" mode:

Notice how, confronted with all that crap that guy's throwing at him, Matt keeps a straight face. One who doesn't know him would wonder if it's because he's blind or rather because he's just badass enough not to give a damn about what even the chief gangster of his city has to say to him.
But Matt is not done with verbally raping his interlocutor yet:

[...] it is apparent to me, from this angle, that you drink in the afternoon. And my professional advice to you would be to stop doing that as you are about to go to federal court.

Holy s%*#. If that's not a complete ownage we got there, I honestly don't know what it is. Bendis' run is really rich with such dry humor moments, and this is one of my favourites. Among the other things, it also shows that Matt is fearsome to have as opponent not only in his guise of costumed crimefighter, but also (maybe even more so) in his civilian role of lawyer. Not to mention that the sequence shows him in the beginning of his career, long before he became one of the most respected legal eagles of his fictional universe.

A short time after this encounter, thanks also to the meddling of a DD still in his yellow duds, Bont is arrested and sentenced to jail. He would get out of there only years later, at the age of 93.
And with that (as a fellow DD fan pointed out to me once) we learn that during the course of his career Daredevil has taken out of commission not one, but two crime overlords. Not too shabby, considering that certain other superheroes - in other comic book universes - have been trying unsuccessfully to do the same with crazed clowns for seventy years now.

Thoughts on Lady Bullseye

2008-07-31T11:18:00.000-07:00

So, it seems that with issue #111, coming out this next September, a new villain will debut in the world of Daredevil. We could summarily describe Lady Bullseye (this is the name of the new character) as a female version of Bullseye, historical nemesis of our hero, but as is evident by the pictures that have accompanied the announcement, and by Brubaker's words, there is more to her than meets the eye.

According to what Brubaker said in an interview with Newsarama, the new character of Lady Bullseye originates from an idea that Brubaker and his colleague Matt Fraction (co-writer of Immortal Iron Fist) were toying with one year ago.
The character is largely inspired by the protagonist of a classical manga by Kazuo Koike, Shurayuki Hime, or Lady Snowblood. Lady Bullseye is oriental themed, and - like Lady Snowblood - a mysterious, deadly beauty.
Brubaker also said that apart from the name and theme, Lady Bullseye is somehow linked to Bullseye and that she knows of his position in the Thunderbolts (the state-sanctioned team of ex-villains tasked to apprehend unregistered superheroes, like DD). Better yet, she decided to take up that nome de guerre also because Bullseye is currently in that position.
It is still not exactly clear if she has a personal grudge against Daredevil, or whether she will be a friend or a foe to the hero of Hell's Kitchen. Brubaker said that "she's really self-obsessed" and has hinted to a complex background story for her.

Costume and appearance are to be credited to Marko Djurdjevic, current cover artist of the creative team, who was told to combine Bullseye's original theme and give it a Japanese look (a most happy choice, in my opinion, since Djurdjevic is a real genius at illustrating concepts).
What the German illustrator came up with consists in a neat looking skin tight suit with an asymmetrical Bullseye pattern, an eye mask with a simple decoration and a small bullseye painted in the middle of her forehead.

It isn't yet clear if the colours will be simply black and white or, as shown in the cover art of #110 above, burgundy and white.

Some of the preview pictures released, as well as the cover to #112, clearly show Lady Bullseye being allied with the Hand, also hinting at a leadership position among them.
This makes me wonder if it was she, and not Elektra, who was the person who back in DD #88 the Hand swordsman was referring by "my mistress" after having saved Foggy Nelson from the mobsters. At the time, in fact, the Hand was lead by a Skrull impersonating Elektra, and if you ask me it's a little unlikely that this Skrull would've given a damn about Foggy's safety. Lady Bullseye, on the other hand, could've been leading her own faction of ninjas and be interested in keeping Foggy alive for more obscure reasons (hey, what do you know? Maybe she just fancies the Fogster. I know for certain that to some women he's irresistible).

What could her ties with the male version of the character be? Or their relationship? Well, given that Bullseye has always been a little obsessed with his reputation as hired assassin, and has never liked competition in his... um... field, I don't think he will be too happy with the appearence of a new assassin carrying his name and insignia. One of the preview pictures in particular seems to confirm this:

Add to this the fact that Bullseye is currently in New York with his Thunderbolt teammates, on missions to try and apprehend folks like Spider-man and Moon Knight, and I think that we might have a showdown between "the old" and "the new" sooner than we expect.

As for her ties with Daredevil and Bullseye's past, the only thing that comes to mind, linking together Bullseye and Japan, is Matt's trip to that country in O'Neill's run, during which Bullseye was recovered by Lord Dark Wind and had his skeleton reinforced with adamantium.

Regarding her powers and abilities, one can safely expect that - like Bullseye - she has the uncanny ability of never missing with throwing weapons. Probably she will mostly be seen favoring oriental themed weapons, like shurikens or kunai daggers (even if I suspect that anything she can throw can become a deadly weapon in her hands, like, let's say... pointy hairpins).
Also, given that Bullseye himself is a formidable fighter, in peak physical condition, capable to hold his own against both Elektra and Daredevil at the same time, I think it is safe to say that Lady Bullseye will also be excellent at unarmed, hand-to-hand combat, possibly even deadlier than Bullseye, if we factor the ninja/Japanese martial artist background into it.
Indeed, it looks like Daredevil will be in for a hell of a fight.

Readers' reactions to the announcement of this debutant character can be divided in two categories. Some, especially those who aren't currently following the book, are quite disappointed by this, dismissing the character as an umpteenth repetition of the theme of the female assassin, that has been used quite a bit in the past of Daredevil (with Elektra, Typhoid Mary and more recently, Echo). Another common criticism is that the idea of a female version of a male character has been used ad nauseam in the past, or even in the present (as shown by the new female Loki or by the latest heir to Kraven the Hunter's legacy).

Most of the fans of the book, on the other hand, while well aware of the above problems, trust Brubaker's skills as a narrator, and are waiting to see how the story will develop.

Personally, I find this new character very intriguing. I like the concept behind it, that of a deadly female assassin. I see no repetitivity in it, since a character like Daredevil, with its premises, its background and its story has naturally to deal with assassins, ninjas and beautiful, lethal women. I think that Lady Bullseye will be unique, just as the previous women he has faced have been, each in her own way.
Also, it appears that the storyline that will mark her debut will include a lot of action and fighting, also involving Daredevil's allies Iron Fist and Black Tarantula. It will be a nice change of pace, after the staticity of the current issues. And I'm sure the creative team will astound us readers.
Last, I really dig her appearence. Everything of it. The suit with big, off-centered bullseyes, the Japanese look, hairstyle, the sense of physical perfection and badass-ness emanating from all of it.

I can't wait to see how it will all look in the fluid style of Clay Mann (the artist chosen to do the art for issue #111) and what will the new storyline be about.

Daredevil's Centrific Feats #1 - Snatching Arrows

2008-07-13T10:21:00.000-07:00

In the following panels, taken from DD vol.1 #199, written by Denny O'Neil and penciled by William Johnson, we find Matt Murdock in Japan, running through some snowy woods, in company of a delicious Asian girl (Yuriko Darkwind, the future Lady Deathstrike), pursued by the henchmen of an evil crimelord with a taste for medieval japanese stuff.

- The lord Dark Wind's archers. We must run...
- From bows and arrows?

Tell her, Matt. A titular superhero doesn't run from antediluvian weapons, no matter what corny name the guy who sent them has chosen for himself.

Upon this sight, the three archers, being honourable and loyal - as convenient to guys dressed in japanese medieval clothes - but not stupid, turn their heels and flee. Presumably to their mamas.

The panel is then followed with the memorable exchange between Yuriko and Matt, which gives the name to this series of entries that will deal with the most astonishing feats performed by Daredevil during his career.

- You are... is the word centrific?
- Sensational. Or terrific. Anyway thanks.

F#@%, yeah.

Also, this series of entries is dedicated to my friend Alessandro...

... per cui, attenzione.

Preposterous Plot Points #5 - "The Make Up of Make Up Artists"

2008-07-04T15:03:00.000-07:00

Here we go with another update to the renowned "Preposterous Plot Points" series! In this installment, we'll talk about shape-shifting.

It is a power that has returned en vogue recently with Secret Invasion, the latest Marvel event dealing with the invasion of Earth by Skrulls, a dreaded alien race with the power of multiple chins and shape-shifting.
The event has been going for something like three months and it is a real mine of preposterous plot points in itself. However, since this event doesn't involve DD the slightest (thank god), it is not my role to comment on those.
Instead we'll now see how the idea of changing one's shape was intended back in the year 1970, when full scale invasions of green pointy-eared aliens were way ahead to come.
In DD vol.I #67, Daredevil is in Los Angeles, keeping an eye - pardon, a radar wave - on his beloved Karen, who had become a rather appreciated movie starlette.
By coincidence, the director of her current film calls her when Matt is at her home, expressing her his desire to have the real Daredevil appear in their movie, which already features the now reformed costumed criminal Stuntmaster.
So, after a while, there he is: in the middle of a movie set, in his red longjohns, with the chance of staying close to the woman he loves.

Notice how the 70's DD doesn't give a rat's ass that he's there, vainly fantasizing about the show-biz while his help could be needed elsewhere (to stop a robbery, or save a kitten etc.).
However, a menace is lurking in Los Angeles. An old foe seeking revenge.

Unaware of it, the Stuntmaster takes a break during the filming, and goes to his trailer.

The old foe is revealed! It's none other than Stilt-man!

That's right. Stilt-man has learned that DD is appearing in the movie they're filming and has sneaked inside the Stuntmaster's trailer, waiting for the opportunity to strike at his mortal enemy. I wonder if he put on his armor before or after entering inside. I hope it's the latter, because I can't imagine anyone wearing what looks like one of those spacesuit worn by extraterrestrials in pulp magazines sneaking inside a private trailer unnoticed. Especially because moving with a metallic armor of that sort must make a hell of noise.

Unless a scene like this occurred:

Security guard: Who the heck are you? What are you doing? This is Stuntmaster's private trailer.
Stilt-man: Hey, cool down, man. I'm just...
Security guard: Yeah, yeah. Look, only staff members are allowed in here, buzz off.
Stilt-man: Relax, buddy. I'm appearing in scene in ten minutes, the one where the zombie aliens from Mars abduct Miss Page. Stuntmaster told me to come here and get him his... err... theatrical make-up kit. You're just wasting our time here, and you know how the director hates that.
Security guard: Oh, uh... yeah. Sorry. My job is to keep out intruders, you know.

And so, while the hapless Stuntmaster is distracted...

..Kerwack! No, not the pioneer of the beat generation, the onomatopoeia of an armored fist impacting on cervical vertebrae.
Note to aspiring villains: When you're about to blindside an opponent attacking him from behind, it's preferable not to raise your voice.

The villain ties up and gags the now unconscious Stuntmaster, all the while describing aloud what he's doing, just in case he forgets some detail. As he so gently tells the reader, his plan is to disguise as the Stuntmaster, and use this opportunity to attack DD by surprise and defeat him in front of everyone.
The part of managing to pass for the Stuntmaster would theoretically be pretty easy, since he could just hide his facial traits with Stuntmaster's helmet and goggles. Yet, our villain decides to make it unnecessarily complicated:

So, Stilt-man grabs a box of theatrical make up and starts working on his "chaneyesque" disguise (obviously not before having removed his headplate, as he unnecessarily reminds himself aloud).

I wonder if the readers of those days were familiar with the meaning of the word chaneyesque, by the way.

I don't know if make up alone can alter a person's facial features to the point of making him look like another individual. Even if it does, wouldn't that require a ridicoulous amount of time, during which the rest of the troupe could get suspicious and go search for Stuntmaster, making Stilt-man's plan fail? Also, why does he need to look at the picture of the Stuntmaster? He has the real thing right there, in the closet, unconscious and tied up like a hog.

This plot point of Stilt-man disguising himself with theatrical make up takes up nearly three pages of stretched logic and bad guy monologue, but here is the result:

Of course, there's the tiny particular that the voice and physical appearence are still the same. Maybe that would go unnoticed to a normal person (very unlikely), but certainly, a superhero who is blind and has the remaining senses superhumanly heightened will not be fooled by a facial disguise. Right?
No. The disguise evidently works even if you cannot see it:

The meticulous work of our villain, by the way, is only useful for another panel. After that, the helmet and goggles he wears make everything he went through to do that utterly unrelevant. And after a couple of pages, anyway, he has already revealed himself as Stilt-man and started battling Daredevil.

Also, the way he suddenly gets rid of the costume and the facial make-up makes me wonder why he didn't outright attack Daredevil without putting up all this charade.

Certainly, Roy Thomas, writer of this issue, must have had a real fascination with the supposed virtues of "theatrical make up" if he used this idea again in the very following issue (which you can read about in the blog entry that has inspired this one).

That's all folks. I don't think there's need I tell you how the battle between Stilt-man and DD ended, so what else to say? See you next time for another episode of "Preposterous Plot Points".

Big Ben Donovan

2008-06-29T08:55:00.000-07:00

The solicitations for DD #107, first issue of the current storyarc of Daredevil, mentions "a Marvel villain now sitting on death row".
A "Marvel villain"! Holy cow. If they're anticipating a villain in a story by saying that he's a Marvel villain, that probably means he's someone big, like, who knows, Dr Octopus? Mr Sinister? Loki?
He -has- to be somebody this important, otherwise - come on - what need was there to say that this guy is a "Marvel villain" in the solicits of a Marvel comic?

Allright, here's a little hint for neophyte comic book readers: Never trust the solicits.

Here's the so much anticipated "Marvel villain":

"Big Ben" Donovan.
What, you don't recognize him?
That's understandable. He can be considered a D-list villain, whose level of irrelevance would put to shame guys like Leap Frog or Stilt-man (who at least have become iconic in their ridiculousness as villains).

As far as I know, this guy was a foe of Luke Cage, appeared for the first time in the pages of "Luke Cage: Hero For Hire" back in the days when the hero with unbreakable skin was fresh of creation, the umpteenth product of the "blaxploitation" trend of the late seventies, complete with a fancy metal tiara under the afro hairstyle and ghetto slang (today things have changed, and Luke is now the reflection of the blaxploitation trend of the 2000s, complete with bald head and gangsta rapper attitude).
Luke Cage is also revealed to be the "old friend" the solicits talk about, the one who brings Matt the last minute appeal of Donovan.

When in DD #107 Matt goes to meet Big Ben Donovan in jail, from the dialogue that they have it appears that the two already know each other. When did that happen?
Their last, and maybe only encounter dates back to Marvel Knights vol. I #12, a totally forgettable series of the year 2001 in which some street level heroes including among the others the Black Widow, Luke Cage and Daredevil decide to form a team to... um... fight bad guys, I guess.

That series, in fact, was literally packed with fight scenes. In one of these fight scenes, the writer, Chuck Dixon, has the team composed by Moon Knight, Black Widow, Luke Cage, Shang Chi, Dagger and Daredevil take on Bengal, Bullet, Big Ben Donovan and the one who gathered them, Tombstone (who is evidently fond of alliterations when it comes to hire muscle). Already from the number of characters involved you can imagine what kind of mess the brawl is. The artist, however, ensured to make it look even more messy.
Our hero, anyway, takes on Big Ben.

Two things are evident (besides the fact that the art in this book is heinous) from this first panel about Big Ben.
First. He is big, strong and mean. His level of strength is probably peak human. It's the kind of villain that in general works well for Daredevil, with above average strength, speed or endurance, enough to be a match for our hero, and one step above from the ordinary street thug.
Second - and a bit disappointing - he refers to himself in third person. Coupled with the fact that he's big, this translates into the fact that he's not supposed to be very bright.

Daredevil responds with a move that will make Chris Sims' fans rejoice:

The enormous Ben counterattacks with a bear hug, but DD just continues pounding on his face.

Notice what Ben is saying here:
"Uh uh uh UH!"

Wha...? Is he somehow replying to what DD is telling him? Feeling that single blow to his face multiple times?!? Imitating a Mandrill's mating call?!? I'm totally lost here.
Daredevil is clearly having the upper hand, until Ben seizes him by the head with his enormous hand.

How do you get free from a hold like this?

Simple, you just kick your enemy in the torso with both your legs (assuming that's what DD is doing in the above panel). That will automatically make him slacken his hold without risk of any other reaction. Especially if the writing of the book you're in sucks.
After that, with an uppercut from a professional superhero and a simultaneous Widow's bite, Donovan is taken out of commission.

But our heroes now face a new threat: Tombstone is shooting at them with a bazooka he happened to have brought with him for that fight!

How will they escape that? I don't know, don't ask me because the suckiness of this book is overwhelming and I can't just take to read it anymore.
I'll just post another panel from it, that fits in a singularly nice way with the situation Daredevil is facing with Big Ben in the current storyarc:

Man, how I wish Matt would re-enact this panel for real (especially after what Ben said to him in jail, remarking on his inability to protect Milla).

Bad Guys Brawl

2008-06-17T06:57:00.001-07:00

A thing that really never gets old in superhero comics, and that every reader - though some won't openly admit it - deep down enjoys, is a good hero-vs-hero fight. An example of this involving Daredevil can be seen in the very recent crossover issue Magdalena/Daredevil, where the two titular characters start to fight each other the very first moment they appear on panel together.
A logical explanation for the fact that hero-vs-hero situations are so frequent could be the desire of protagonism incidental to deciding to wear a cape and go out to dispense justice, which coupled with a good dose of holier-than-thou attitude, translates into the irresistible impulse to beat the tar out of whoever threatens to steal the hero his/her spotlight.

Villains, on the other hand, don't seem to share this problem. If another villain shows up, it's quite rare to see the two fight each other for no good reason. Rather, they'll gladly neglect any mutual difference and take the more practical course of action of teaming up against the good guys (often also taking advantage of the fact that in the meantime the heroes have spent time and energies fighting each other).

Situations in which bad guys fight each other are less frequent, but they occur nonetheless. One such situation, magistrally scripted by Ed Brubaker and illustrated by Michael Lark, happened in DD vol.II #102.

The issue is the second part of the "Without Fear" storyarc. In this arc, Mr Fear is causing trouble in Hell's Kitchen, starting a fearsome crime wave and pushing a new powerful chemical drug in the streets. He is aided in this by the notorious evildoers known as The Enforcers: Montana, Fancy Dan and Ox.

The trio is hanging around in a bar, putting in act an old-style intimidation against the owner. Montana and Fancy Dan are outside, making sure that no one dares to interfere, while their enormous comrade trashes the inside:

The Ox is thoroughly enjoying this activity, but is suddenly interrupted by Montana being thrown inside through the glass pane.

Oh yeah. The guy speaking is the Wrecker, the leader of the Wrecking Crew, packing an enchanted crowbar and imbued with the strength and durability of an Asgardian god. The one in the background is Razorfist, who is just a martial artist with blades in place of his missing hands (and don't ask me to make a joke about his condition, because it would be the equivalent of shooting at the Red Cross). As told by the Wrecker, both of them are in employment of the Hood, a fearsome ex-mobster who has managed to unite under his command a large number of supervillains, and is planning to control the post-Civil War New York underworld.

Not intimidated at all, the Ox responds with defiance. Taking advantage of the distraction, Dan repeatedly shoots Wrecker in the face and gets free.

Enhanced durability or not, a couple of point blank shot to the face gotta hurt. The Ox prepares to attack the opposing party's strong guy, while scoffing them for not coming in numbers.

You should'a brung more guys, Wrecker.

What a line.
It must be noted that in some places, the Ox's strength level is said to be peak human. I don't think it's the case. The Ox has superhuman strength. Since his first appearances in fact, he's been shown to be capable of feats like bending steel bars or breaking pig iron. And as shown here, he can give a Thor villain such as the Wrecker a run for his money.

In the meantime, Fancy Dan is tangling with Razor Fist.

Meanwhile, Dakota is informed of the situation by her NYPD contact. She turns the tip to Matt, who dons his costume, reaches the place as fast as he can, and enters the fray, both to stop the villains who are thrashing his neighborhood and in hopes of obtaining informations on Mr Fear's whereabouts.
So, from that moment onwards, Daredevil takes them all on, or at least, the Hood's party (the Enforcers seemed to be on the losing end of it). And by definition, that pretty much ends the bad guys brawl, I think.

.

.

.

.

... naah, I can't just end this post now that DD is about to lay the smack upon some villains with odds against him, can I? :P
The scarlet swashbucler takes full advantage of the element of surprise, and pushes the midget gunman Fancy Dan right into the reach of Razorfist's Blades:

At this sudden appearence and unexpected aid, Razorfist gets confused as a cat in a violin making factory, stopping to wonder whether DD has "switched sides". Daredevil is quick to remind him that sides and superheroes have stopped being cool in the same context with issue #2 of Civil War, by landing a boot on his face.

Razorfist slashes savagely through the air, in hopes of catching the paladin of Hell's Kitchen. But, unfortunately for him, hitting an acrobat with a built in radar sense isn't exactly the easiest thing to do. The Wrecker, in the meantime, has gained the upper hand on Ox and is about to turn his attention on the newcomer. Realizing that those blades are adamantium, Daredevil pushes Razorfist towards the Wrecker, making him inadvertently slash his own ally.

The enchanted crowbar fallen off the villain's hand, Daredevil concentrates on Wrecker, starting with a heavy dropkick to his head.

The scene switches for a moment to the Enforcers, who regroup together and decide that, with one of them severly injured and the cops surrounding the zone, it's best to make a strategic retreat. We then return to DD and the Wrecker, and this is what we see:

Yes. Daredevil is pounding the snot out of his superhumanly-strong opponent by hitting him repeatedly with the end of the street lamp Razorfist has cut before.
How cool is that?

However, focused on not letting the Wrecker catch his breath, Daredevil forgets about the Ox and his cronies, whom he was planning to pursuit to be lead to Mr Fear. When he notices that they are no longer there, he gets distracted for a moment, allowing the Wrecker to make a wall collapse on him.

And this ends the battle.
Ah, by the way don't worry about the fate of Daredevil, anyway. As someone else put it, in fact:

"he is a survivor. That's his curse, really... whether he knows it or not."

Coming soon at "The Other Murdock Papers" !

2008-06-11T10:30:00.000-07:00

Coming soon at The Other Murdock Papers Daredevil blog, a delicious analysis of a recurring situation in the adventures of ol' hornhead...

...see? Even Daredevil cannot wait, and has hi-jacked a cab in order to "get there first". Don't miss it!

Preposterous Plot Points #4 - "The Matryoshka Identities"

2008-06-06T03:09:00.000-07:00

In the beginning, the blind lawyer Matt Murdock decided to use his talents to fight crime as the costumed vigilante Daredevil. Whenever he wore the costume, he was simply Matt Murdock impersonating Daredevil.
Why am I stating this obvious fact? Well, because there was a period in which it all became a little more complicated.

For a series of reasons that deserve a chapter solely dedicated to them, in fact, Matt told his closest friends that Daredevil was actually his twin brother, Mike, who wasn't blind and whose personality was totally different from his. To convince them of the existence of this imaginary twin, Matt began to impersonate him. And obviously, to maintain the charade, he had to keep in mind that whenever he was in costume, he was actually Matt Murdock impersonating Mike Murdock impersonating Daredevil.

With DD#30 the thing was brought to a new level of absurdity.
Matt, in fact, in order to lure Cobra and Mr Hyde, two villains who were traditionally antagonists of Thor, decides to disguise as the thunder god himself.
Better yet, instead of directly disguising as Thor, he decides to wear a Thor costume over the usual Daredevil costume.

What? Skin-colored plastic worn over his Daredevil costume? Wouldn't he feel hot as hell under all those layers of skin-tight stuff? Also, why does he feel he'd need his regular costume? Is he afraid that they can tell his true identity if he leaves his bare arms exposed?
Be as it may, with the transition of a page, there he is: happy as a schoolboy in his thunder god disguise. Now watch the panel below while keeping in mind that all of what appears skin is actually plastic fabric, and that underneath it there is supposed to be a Daredevil costume:

But it isn't over:

In this panel - which I personally find quite scary - not only the main character sort of admits the absurdity of forcing himself to juggle four identities, but we're also told that, because he needs to know the effectiveness of all the crap he's wearing, he decides he must test it on his friends. These friends, by the way, know that Mike Murdock is Daredevil, therefore he must be Mike Murdock under those masks. Which means that he's going to wear the "fancier" type of sunglasses which visually characterize Mike. Although Mike is supposed to be his identical twin, in fact, Matt is evidently afraid that they would believe him to be the one who is Daredevil, if he showed up with the wrong type of sunglasses.
So, in short, Matt decides to be Mike Murdock under the mask, and so wears the loud sunglasses for a moment. I think it's reasonable to say that he removes them immediately after, because despite all the effort I can put into it, I can't believe he would be wearing sunglasses underneath the DD mask underneath the Thor mask.

Despite all of this, his main problem is the "nutty cape" he's wearing, wich muffles his radar sense (I know what you're thinking, but remember we're talking about the days when even a clown like the first Matador, by just waving a cape of cloth around, could be a match for our hero).

It has to be noticed that his friends weren't exactly depicted as very bright in those days (which indirectly suggests that he has set the bar a little low for himself when he decided to test the effect of his costume on them).
Here Matt removes his Thor mask (which was apparently also included with the costume), revealing himself as the cool-sunglasses-wearing Mike Murdock, to the surprise of Foggy and Karen.

To be frank, Foggy, more than surprised looks perplexed, probably wondering how crazy Matt's twin brother really is. The poor fellow couldn't imagine that he was just peeking at the tip of an iceberg, there, and that there wasn't even a twin brother at all to begin with.

We now have Matt Murdock impersonating Mike Murdock impersonating Daredevil impersonating Thor.

Sure enough, as anyone who is familiar with superhero comics knows, impersonating another superhero, could well be a way to lure villains into a trap, but, more realistically, it is a good way to lure the impersonated superhero to you, leading to one of those "battle between two good guys caused by a misunderstanding" situations that have always made the authors go crazy.
Thor learns that someone is fooling around New York wearing his vestiges and decides that, verily, it is an outrage that can't go unpunished.
Before the fight gets serious (still, serious according to the 60's standards), the Norse god invokes the fury of the winds, which strips Daredevil of his disguise (the outermost one, the DD one remains conveniently in place), including the skin-colored plastic.

And so, at long last, after excruciating pages of distorted logic and improbable physics, one of the most insane plot points of the Stan Lee era comes to an end.
I'll conclude this entry of the matryoshka-identities of Matt Murdock with another eloquent panel taken from that issue that really contains it all: the writer's subtle admission of the fact that the plot is insane, the disturbing image of a man with half a costume who is about to wear a cowl of another costume over a pair of large sunglasses and looks happy about it, the obnoxius attitude that Matt had to put up whenever he was playing his twin brother, the blonde girl of the supporting cast who doesn't really care about it all because she's so in love with the main character.

With this issue, the reader is - maybe for the first time - grazed by suspects of Matt Murdock's latent mental instability, which in the successive decades of publications would have degenerated in more explicit forms like dissociative identity disorder, passive-aggressive neurosis and episodes of nervous breakdowns.

The Crusher (!)

2008-05-31T09:51:00.000-07:00

Okay. Where do I start?
Well, as every Daredevil fan is more or less aware of, in-between the beginnings by Stan Lee and Roy Thomas - acclaimed and celebrated for their "golden age" factor, if nothing else - and the coming of Frank Miller to the title, which practically redefined the character, there was a period that can be considered the dark age of Daredevil. I'm talking about the issues of the first volume going approximately from #70 to #150.
The book lacked then an identity, a defining mood. The Matt Murdock persona of the protagonist almost forgotten, Daredevil was just a little more than a masked acrobat in a fancy suit swinging around the city, making tiring wisecracks at the baddies while fighting them and getting all chauvinist on his then sidekick, the Black Widow.
Most of the bad guys fought during that period where also particularly lame. The hero got to fight them usually only for a storyarc or even a single issue, and after that they were pretty much - thankfully, I might add - forgotten. God-forsaken villains like "The Black Messiah" "Angar the Screamer", Ramrod, or this one villain here appearing in DD #119:

The Crusher.
Basically, this individual is Juan, a young boxer who underwent a series of clandestine treatments by a medic member of an underworld organization, in the hopes of increasing his body mass and thus be able to fulfill his dream of competing in the heavier boxing leagues. His trainer, Pop Fenton, and the ex fighter Kid Gawaine are however worried by all this, especially because of some minor side-effects that the drug seems to have on him.
While Matt is visiting the boxing gym, the gangsters come to intimidate Pop into not interfering, but everything gets violently interrupted when Juan suddenly turns into this mindless, oversized lump of meat with progressive alopecia, and steel pants.
Fortunately, Matt finds the opportunity to change into Daredevil and intervene.

Notice that he's actually the first to attack. The monster hasn't still given any sign of hostility. Who knows, maybe he was even about to ask for help to his friends. And yet, basing his judgement solely on the fact that he's now large, muscular and ugly, our hero assumes that Juan has also become evil, and that he must be attacked.
In any case, the giant is not too pleased:

Also, in case someone hasn't heard him in the first post-metamorphosis panel, he repeats his name.

No, in case you were wondering, no one has asked him what was his name again in the preceeding panel. Apparently, another side effect of the treatments is the compulsion to accompany every action with the repetition a certain name/title. While trying not to get "crushed" DD wonders why:

A drug being capable of transferring the personality of people who died elsewhere, as well as the impulse of repeating a title again and again? Interesting theory. Doesn't matter that much when you're getting slapped around by an enraged mountain of beef like that, but interesting theory nonetheless.

Damn. Who was he fighting again?

Oh, yeah. It had escaped me momentarily. Anyway here we have an example of the corny spidey-esque wisecracks that DD was made to say - or think - those days:

We are not shown how he manages to do it, but Daredevil tries to play smart by cutting the Smasher's supply of oxygen using the ropes of the ring:

Yeah, yeah, I mean the Crusher, geez.

Ouch. Anyway, we get a long sequence of the guy wrecking everything around, with DD utterly incapable of doing something about it. In all the ruckus, the structure of the old building gets compromised, and a wall is about to collapse on Pop and Kid Gawaine. In a brief moment of lucidity, "the Crusher!" throws himself between them and the collapsing wall. The young man reverts to his normal self, which, incidentally, didn't have any alopecia and didn't sport the hardcore metallic pants and boots of his monstrous alter-ego.

The issue ends rather abruptly, with a scene that was probably supposed to be touching, but fails miserably to be so. After all, there's no way any three-panel sequence can be touching, if it comes after pages and pages of a bald guy wearing only iron pants repeatedly yelling "The Crusher".
Notice also how DD asks pop for the boy's health status, even though he should know better than anybody else, given his heightened senses.

*sniff* how sad. This anyway, is the last we see of the Crusher.
Luckily, to cheer things up a little, I have here a panel from the same issue that will almost certainly make a certain DD fan jump for joy:

:p

"You can thank Daredevil for that one"

2008-05-26T01:02:00.000-07:00

Onboard the Helicarrier...

SHIELD personnel is pretending to earn their taxdollar payed salary, monitoring the situation and notifying every darn single event that happens in the Marvel Universe to their handlebar moustached commanding officer (who may or may not be Dum Dum Dugan), like if the poor man could keep in mind all those unrelated bits of informations on his own.
Suddenly, a man in a SHIELD crew uniform enters the main deck...

...and thwacks moustache-officer in the head by flinging a flashlight at him, showing an ability at throwing oblong objects that reminds a lot that of a certain superhero. The element of surprise expired, the agents attack the mysterious assailant, who however proves to be more than a match for them:

The attacker makes a blind reverse somersault, kicking two foes in the head upon landing. Only a martial artist like Daredevil could have performed such a feat, as confirmed by the mystery man's cynical remark. How can all of this be explained?
The man in question is none other than the Taskmaster, a ruthless mercenary with an ability commonly called "photographic reflexes", which consist in the fact that he can duplicate to perfection any physical action he has previously watched (for example, Captain America's proficiency with the shield, Hawkeye's marksmanship or, as in the case here presented, Daredevil's moveset and fighting abilities).

This sequence of panels, taken from a post Civil War issue of "Marvel Comics Presents", shows that, while DD seldom appears outside his own book (often as a mere a walk on), and is generally overlooked among the characters of the Marvel universe, a thing that is universally acknowledged is that, in the fictional world he lives in, he's considered one of the most formidable hand to hand fighters and an excellent acrobat.

The Plastoid

2008-05-18T14:26:00.002-07:00

Christine here posted a rather funny bit from the early days of the scarlet swashbuckler, with our hero turned into macaroni stuffing by a big robot/android. DD looks justifiably horrified, not so much because he's about to get squashed, but rather because he's meeting his demise in a most laughable way.
The art here is by an early Barry Windsor Smith. Without detracting anything from the level of prowess afterwards reached by the English artist, it can be said that, compared to the amazing art provided by Gene Colan before and after his first brief stint with DD, this looks like fanart more than anything else.
Let's see, for one, the very same scene pictured by Colan in the cliffhanger of the preceeding issue:

To tell you the truth, this sort of looks scarier, with the plastic pose of the robot, exposing us its crotch and holding its victim like a sexually aroused gorilla.
The robot, anyway, is called the Plastoid, and was created and programmed by the evil genius scientist Starr Saxon to seek and destroy Daredevil. The explanation of how the android managed to find our hero is given in the following panels:

Yes, the Plastoid is able to track its intended target by scent, or, more specifically, by using a built-in scentolator and following input provided by a photo of the victim treated with a special aromascope.
...
Yeah, I realize how retarded is that, but keep in mind that all of this was created by a guy who thinks it's necessary to tell an inanimated object to stay still while he installs something onto it.

Another peculiarity of the Plastoid is the indicator on its chest, showing a number that, as we're told via "bad guy conceited monologue", can go from 0 to 10 and is descriptive of the current level of efficiency of the Plastoid itself. This will be important later on.
So, the Plastoid reaches Matt's apartment, knocks him out after a short fight and captures him.

It's about to head for its master's hideout, when it hears the sound of someone approaching. This forces it to abandon the mission, drop Matt's body and return to the base empty-handed.

And what could that be? What was this unexpected danger, this sound not covered in the instructions, this event that forced a giant robot with superhuman strength and invulnerable body to leave its intended victim and flee in order to absolve its first function of protecting itself? The Avengers? The Mighty Thor? An earthquake?
No, just a blind man and his guide dog passing by.

So, thanks to the unaware intervention of his friend (the blind war veteran Willie Lincoln), Daredevil manages to avoid capture. The robot, hovewer, returns for him the day after, surprising him in his gym. Which leads us to the embarassing situation of Daredevil's gym equipment used against him.
It must be noticed that there was a changing of writer between these issues. Stan Lee, in fact, becomes editor. With issue 51, the writing chores fall to Roy Thomas, and along with them the burden of resolving the Saxon/Plastoid storyline. Lee, however, has still to find a way for DD out of that situation. He manages to do so, albeit by cheating a bit:

He can throw it where he wants to... but I won't be inside!

Uh, sure. Only that he wasn't going to kill him by throwing the "DD macarone" anywhere, he was about to kill him by squeezing him inside the rolled mat like a lemon, as was clearly told in the previous page and at the end of the previous issue.
But here comes the better part. Remember how they said that the numbers on the Plastoid's chest indicated his power level? Well, after failing to kill DD by renouncing to squish him to death and just throwing him at a wall, the already uber-powerful android decides he needs more power and automatically increases that number to... 50.

So, in case of extreme situations, the normal range of the indicator can be overrun by 500%? Five times more powerful than the original form, which was already unbeatable? And this was the same robot who ran away from an approaching passer-by and his dog?
Well, anyway. Having reached Hulk's power level, the Plastoid judges himself ready to face Daredevil with acceptable odds. It manages to pin him under its hand:

Again, an embarassing situation with our hero's incredulous face depicted full frontally again. See how the synthetic assailant indulges in a useless description of what's happening and what it's about to do instead of just killing Daredevil and be done with it. Note: By the time I reached this page, I was getting so confused by the art and by the redundant text that I was reading DD's baloons with the "robotic-pattern" as well.
Daredevil takes adavantage of the Plastoid's taste for the dramatic, and manages to free himself from the hold:

He then tricks the robot into punching a fusebox. This temporarily takes it out, and erases its memory bank. After a short time, in fact, the robot gets up again and starts heading to Starr Saxon's hideout to get new instructions. How do we know all this? Because the android has the unexplainable need to say everything that passes through his circuits aloud, that's why.
Daredevil follows the android, both to learn the location of the hideout and to make sure that no civilians get harmed along the way.
And here we have Daredevil trying to convince the police not attempting to stop a menacing mechanical humanoid walking in the middle of the city streets as if nothing was:

I wonder what he means by "I take complete responsibility". That thing is going around thrashing everything in its path, detroying cars and at risk of stepping on abandoned baby carriages, old ladies etc. Is he willing to pay for all that? In any event, the police decides to play it his way.

The story continues then with the Plastoid leading DD to Saxon's sanctum, where some more mess happens, leading to more convoluted mess later, and so on. To make a long story short, the Plastoid self-deactivates after having accomplished his new objective, that is exterminating an imprisoned mob boss.
As for the rest of the plot, it is resolved after some four or five issue, with the defeat of Starr Saxon.
We never hear of the Plastoid again. Too bad, it was a rather intriguing foe and had an interesting concept, even taking into account the numerous absurdities shown in this entry.

Unfinished Business...

2008-05-14T10:35:00.001-07:00

Wha? Daredevil got smacked around that way by the Gladiator? But... not fair! What happened then?

Oh, yeah. Cannot just leave it that way now, can I? It kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
So, what happened afterwards?
Obviously, in the end, DD kicked Melvin's ass and returned him to the loving care of the psychiatric hospital. Here's how it happened.

We left Daredevil KOed by the Gladiator, courtesy of some chair swatting and a couple of well placed "help yourself!" gut punches. The Gladiator leaves the now deserted restaurant.
When Matt wakes up, he finds himself in the back of a police car, handcuffed. He still has his costume on. In fact, outside, two policemen are arguing over the licitness of removing his mask, in the light of the new superhero registration laws (DD is an unregistered superhero).
Fortunately, it is as true today as it was in the Stan Lee era: a civil servant won't remove your mask if there's even the remote risk of his ass being sued because of it:

If you say so...
While in the car, DD hears a voice apparently made inaudible to a normal human ear. It is also muffled so as to make it unrecognizable (personally I imagined it as the voice of the bad guy of the Saw series). The voice taunts him and tells him that, with his wallet left behind with the rest of his civilian clothes in the restaurant, they now know his new home address. Also, Milla had probably reached the apartment by then, and the crazed Gladiator is heading there. Once again, another loved woman is about to be killed by one of his enemies. And there's nothing Matt can do about it now, being handcuffed and about to be brought away by the police, presumably to the CSA and the 42 prison.

After having some more whiny inner monologue and having begged the cop who is driving the car he's in, to no avail, to let him go, Matt finally stops acting like a guy who fools around in a fancy devil costume and remembers that he's Daredevil.

So he busts the car door open with a well placed double kick, and jumps out of the car. The cops try to stop him, but a few acrobatic feats are all our Man Without Fear needs to dodge their bullets, steal the keys to his handcuffs and leap away into the night.

Daredevil rushes to save Milla. He finds his apartment in a mess, the door opened. With the help of his senses he deduces that Melvin wanted to lure him somewhere else. He goes back to the rooftops, hoping that Milla calls for help, so that he can locate her before it's too late.
Milla is in a nearby rooftop with Melvin, shocked, her pretty face badly beaten. Nevertheless, she tries to reason with the large man, trying to make him remember that he's a good guy, a honest man who doesn't kill. Her words manage to pierce Melvin's mind for maybe a couple of instants, but whatever the cause of his madness, it proves to be stronger than the blind woman's words. Milla must be sacrificed:

... and I am the walrus. Fortunately, Daredevil arrives. Once more, he attempts to negotiate, and once more, Melvin answers by being totally uncooperative, specifically by dropping Milla from the rooftop and throwing a pair of circular sawblades at Daredevil.

(what a bastard).
In a spectacular scene, DD manages to slide between the trajectories of the blades, leap over the Gladiator and pull off a neat aerial rescue:

Matt and Milla land safely inside an empty office. Moments after, the Gladiator crashes in through a drywall panel, ready to go berserk again on Daredevil.

One more round.
But with a different factor now in play: Melvin has attempted to harm an innocent under his protection. And as any hornhead fan can tell you: you don't wanna do that when tangling with Daredevil.

So, they clash again and, although enraged for what Melvin has done to Milla, Daredevil stays focused. The Gladiator, on the other hand, fights with brutal savagery, and - as Daredevil notices while fighting - without the level of dexterity he used to have in his old days. So it goes without saying that this time DD opens up a can of whoop-ass on him.

Or should I say, a bucket of whoop-ass:

Yup. He dodges one of Melvin's powerful straights, making him hit a wall instead. Immediately after he slaps him in the face with a paint bucket.
And now let me say that in Italian, now, because I totally enjoyed this panel: Daredevil lo ha colpito in faccia con una latta di pittura:

Still furious because the Gladiator had harmed and attempted to kill his wife, Daredevil continues to attack, now holding him by the neck (in a position not unlike that of the classical scene of Born Again when he threatens the defeated Nuke). As had occurrent in the past, it is Milla who, hearing the violence of the fight, begs him to stop, reminding him that Melvin was just being manipulated.

At that point, Melvin, realizing what has he done up to that point, cries, holds his head in anguish, and attempts to commit suicide by throwing himself out of the window, but Daredevil physically prevents him from doing so by latching onto him and then knocking him out for good.
The nightmare is over.

...for now, at least.
I want to conclude this entry with a little reflection. Despite the fact that the Gladiator had ben depicted, for most of the storyarc, as a maniac out of control, despite the fact that he had slaughtered many innocent and had nearly killed his wife, we see here that Daredevil, although furious because of all this, manages to refrain from excessively hurt his foe and even stops him from killing himself. And a big role in all of this is played by Milla, who, acting as an anchor to his fury, stops him from crossing the treshold. We can say that she reminds him who he is. It is a recurring theme in the recent Brubaker works.
And nowadays it's an uncommon vision of the figure of the "hero". Usually, in fact, the hero is the one who's always right in what he does. He can savagely beat an enemy, and even kill him, and the plot will almost always justify him for that.
With Daredevil, this is not the case. He's a flawed hero. He can commit grave mistakes, and has done so in the past (even the recent past). Better yet, he himself realizes that he can go too far, and that sometimes he needs to listen to his friends and loved ones to avoid committing mistakes.

This is certainly another reason why, when compared to other modern superheroes, Daredevil can be considered more multifaceted, and more suitable mature readers.

Preposterous Plot Points #3 - "No! Bleeding is slowing my reflexes!"

2008-05-11T04:05:00.000-07:00

You thought preposterous plot points could only be found in ye olde issues of ye 60's?

Think again. Here we have a neat example of how, sometimes, something absurde can be written even in the modern age. And by modern here I mean the year 2007.
What's so odd in this storyarc? Tony Stark dresses DD in an iron man suit to frame him for drunkenness? Weird use of the radar sense? Improbable dialogues?
No, simplier...

Daredevil is defeated in hand to hand combat twice in a row by a big guy with no superhuman abilities.

Yup.

Oh, well. A little recap in pills. The guy in question is Melvin Potter, also known as the Gladiator. In the past, the Gladiator was a bitter enemy of the Man Without Fear. Highly delusional and a bit crazy, Melvin crafted for himself a costume with some special features, including wrist-worn electrically powered circular sawblades. That, coupled with the fact that he was a pretty big and muscular guy would've made him, in his dreams, the ultimate hero buster.
After targeting our hero in hopes of achieving glory, and after getting beaten at every turn, Melvin quit his activity as villain, reformed, and went back to his work as a tailor and costume maker.

Problem is - being, as I said, a bit mentally unstable and with a not so strong force of will - from time to time Melvin got manipulated by some schemer into donning his Gladiator duds again and return to fight Daredevil.
And the one featured in DD vol.2 #95 to #99 was one of these times. But now, without further ado, let's tell the facts and peek at some scenes.

Having killed an inmate and a guard while being temporarily held at a psychiatric hospital, Melvin is taken away into a police van, to return to the penitentiary of Ryker's Island:

DD, suspicious about what is happening to his neighborhood and to Melvin, follows.
Armed goons attack the van, kill the escorting officers and engage DD with rifles and uzis, while at the same time freeing a now enraged Melvin.

The goons who haven't already been taken out by Daredevil are brutally disposed of by the large man. The scene is thus left for Daredevil and Melvin. Daredevil faces his former ally, trying to reason with him at the same time, but is not listened to and instead receives a pretty good beating.

Some notes: Daredevil here was probably tired from the fight, slightly dishoriented by the precedent loud explosion, and wasn't giving it all, convinced that Melvin could maybe still be helped. So this loss was somehow understandable. Even if I don't think an experienced fighter like DD would make the mistake of getting so close to a physically stronger opponent to allow him to do this:

especially because he was mainly trying to knock some sense on him with words in this fight. What the heck, you want to talk him out? Do it from safe distance, for god's sake. It's not like you have to whisper in his ear.

The second fight happens two days after. Melvin, in his Gladiator costume, has gone on a killing spree and is still at large. Matt and his wife Milla are at a restaurant. The Gladiator bursts in, this time looking especially for Matt.

The panicked crowd flees and Milla manages to get to safety, while Matt quickly changes into his costume and faces the Gladiator, now in full armor, helmet and wrist blades.

Do we get a showdown? Do we get the big resolving fight between the costumed hero and the costumed villain, with the latter emerging finally on the top? This is what I was hungering for while avidly sifting through the panels.
But nothing. Not only Daredevil is defeated again by the big guy, this time the desolating event is correlated with Matt's inner monologues (which sound awfully close to whining, if you ask me), told via caption boxes.

Gasp in awe as the Man Without Fear gets slashed and punched around while wallowing in a sad and - given the circumstances - absurde self-commiseration:

"I've forgotten how hard he can hurt when he wants to [...] or how sharp his blades can be"

Yes, okay, now could you please shut up and kick his butt like you're supposed to?

"No. Bleeding is slowing my reflexes"

Yeah, it's not like I trained myself to fight against people who could also attack me with cutting weapons. So when I'm bleeding my reflexes are slowed down to the point that I totally let a peasant clock me in the face with a chair.

"Let him get too close [...] understimated his rage"

No, don't tell me. Want a prize for that?

Long story short, our hero surely gets a few shots, but Melvin succeeds in KOing him again, and leaves him unconscious for the police to find. And this time, there are no excuses.
And there's also a little particular that just adds to the absurdity of it all, and pretty much summarizes this entry:

I have no words. Sure, both the events are used to set up the plot (which is in fact, remarkably good), but can this really be the guy who has made the likes of Bullseye cower in fear, who can go toe to toe with folks the caliber of Mr Hyde?
At least the first two installments of "Preposterous Plot Points" were sort of funny in themselves. This was just hard to swallow. Hard and bitter.

The Devil you know, part 2

2008-05-10T05:46:00.000-07:00

La porzione di storia che ha significative ripercussioni sulla situazione attuale del paladino di Hell's Kitchen coincide pressappoco con quella contenuta nel secondo volume di Daredevil. Come è noto, la numerazione della pubblicazione, comiciata nel 1964 con Daredevil #1 di Lee ed Everett è stata resettata nel 1998, concludendo il primo volume e dando inizio, a un rilancio della serie nell'ambito della collana "Marvel Knights" ad opera di Kevin Smith, Joe Quesada e Jimmy Palmiotti.

Proprio nel primo arco narrativo di questo rilancio avviene un evento sconvolgente nella vita di Matt Murdock. Karen Page, già segretaria dell'ufficio legale Nelson e Murdock, la donna con cui ha vissuto con alterne vicende una intensa storia d'amore, il primo e forse l'unico vero amore della sua vita, viene uccisa.
La cornice in cui questo avviene, a dire il vero, conta poco (tanto che il fatto in sé è stato ritenuto da molti una mossa editoriale ad hoc, che si poteva evitare). Quello che invece conta è l'entità dell'evento. Per rendersene conto si consideri che, oltre a far parte preponderante del supporting cast della serie, il personaggio di Karen è stato presente sin dalle origini, ed ha avuto un ruolo cruciale nel plasmare Matt Murdock/Daredevil, in più di una occasione.

Ecco allora che Karen muore, così all'improvviso, in quello che poteva essere uno qualsiasi dei tanti pericolosi episodi della vita dell'eroe. Barbaramente uccisa da Bullseye, sanguinario assassino e vera nemesi di Daredevil. Trafitta dallo stesso billy-club dell'eroe, Karen esala l'ultimo respiro tra le sue braccia.

Come nella realtà di chiunque abbia mai perso una persona cara, tuttavia, la vita dell'avvocato Matt Murdock prosegue, e con essa la crociata di Daredevil a favore della giustizia. Ma il ricordo di lei e la paura di mettere in pericolo le persone care torna frequentemente a rabbuiare la mente di Matt.

Altro evento senza dubbio cruciale per capire il contesto attuale è ciò che avviene poco tempo dopo: un agente dell'FBI rivela a un tabloid l'identità segreta di Daredevil. Nonostante non venga fornita prova di ciò, gli editori del tabloid non perdono tempo a sbattere la notizia in prima pagina:

"Il popolare eroe di Hell's Kitchen è l'avvocato cieco"

Il mondo crolla addosso al protagonista. Sostenuto dai pochi amici che aveva messo a parte del suo segreto (il socio e amico fraterno Foggy Nelson soprattutto, ma anche la Vedova Nera, Luke Cage e l'Uomo Ragno) Matt cerca di non affogare nel pandemonio che ne segue: attacchi da parte di vecchi e nuovi nemici in cerca di vendetta, schiere di reporter accalcati di fronte casa e ufficio, il rischio di venire privato della licenza di pratica legale, o peggio, di essere arrestato per le continue violazioni della legge nelle vesti del vigilante mascherato.
Si affaccia l'opzione di appendere il costume al chiodo per sempre. Matt, però, ha sempre creduto nella sua missione. E, fedele all'insegnamento del padre, in base al quale non si sarebbe mai arreso nonostante le difficoltà, affronta la situazione a testa bassa e senza scendere a compromessi.

L'uomo senza paura continua ad affrontare i suoi nemici con più ardore e tenacia di prima, li sconfigge, e nelle vesti dell'avvocato Matt Murdock risponde alle illazioni sollevate negando tutto, e anzi facendo causa agli editori del tabloid.
Non essendovi prove certe che il notoriamente cieco Matt Murdock sia il supereroe, gli editori sono costretti a smentire la rivelazione e a pagare una ingente somma - che viene devoluta in beneficienza - allo studio legale Nelson & Murdock.

E' in questo periodo che Matt conosce e si innamora di Milla Donovan, impiegata alla commissione edilizia della città. Come Matt, Milla è cieca. Il primo incontro tra i due avviene quando lui, nei panni di Daredevil, la salva da un camion che stava per investirla. Durante il turbolento periodo della rivelazione del tabloid, l'amore tra Milla e Matt si cementa sempre più. Matt rivela inoltre a Milla di essere Daredevil, cosa che la donna aveva sospettato sin dai loro primi incontri.

Col ritrovamento dell'amore e della serenità, torna però la coscienza dell'incompatibilità di una vita normale con l'attività di vigilante mascherato. Anzi, si può indubbiamente dire che questo è uno dei temi portanti del secondo volume.
Questo è tanto più vero quando - come nel caso di Daredevil - si hanno come nemici individui spregiudicati, disposti a tutto pur di rovinare la vita di chi gli si è opposto. Wilson Fisk, il temibile Kingpin, torna a riconsolidare il proprio potere a New York. Per farlo, tuttavia, ha bisogno di mettere in riga gli altri boss criminali, e al contempo tenere in scacco l'FBI e soprattutto Daredevil, l'implacabile eroe che ha ripetutamente intralciato i suoi piani in passato.

Non ancora completamente ripresosi dai problemi con i mass-media e i federali, Daredevil è costretto ad affrontare in successione la letale Thyphoid Mary e Bullseye. Quindi, inaspettatamente piomba addosso a Kingpin proprio durante il colloquio tra i capi che avrebbe dovuto sancire il suo ritorno al potere. Stremato fisicamente e mentalmente, Daredevil affronta in corpo a corpo il colossale signore del crimine, e lo abbatte.
Ma la serie di eventi sin qui accaduti lo hanno portato al limite. Dopo lo scontro irrompe in un bar frequentato dalla malavita, getta ai piedi dei presenti la carcassa di Wilson Fisk, si toglie la maschera e si autoproclama nuovo dominatore di Hell's Kitchen. Agli sconvolti avventori dichiara che, da quel momento, chi non avesse rigato diritto avrebbe dovuto abbandonare il quartiere o pagarne le conseguenze.

La voce si sparge rapidamente. In breve tempo, Kitchen diventa un posto più vivibile. I cittadini onesti sono grati per questo a Matt Murdock, anche se il fatto che lui sia effettivamente Daredevil viene ufficialmente considerato alla stregua di una leggenda metropolitana. Nel frattempo, Matt sposa Milla, con una cerimonia privata.

Passa all'incirca un anno prima che i criminali si organizzino per togliere di mezzo brutalmente Daredevil, rimasto ormai senza lo scudo di una identità segreta e potendo contare solo sul timore suscitato dalle sue azioni. Un banda di Yakuza assale Matt Murdock in massa. Matt riesce a salvarsi, ma viene ridotto in fin di vita. Ancora una volta, le conseguenze delle scelte fatte ricadono, pesanti, su di lui. E sono ancor più pesanti in quanto questa volta Matt ha fatto queste scelte decidendo per conto proprio, isolandosi da tutti e tenendo lontani, forse anche solo per proteggerli, gli amici più cari.
La realtà è forse ben peggiore. Ciò che è accaduto dalla morte di Karen in poi ha portato Matt all'esaurimento nervoso. Quando l'amico giornalista Ben Urich dà voce a questo ormai evidente fatto, Matt si scuote, torna in sé, ritorna a chiedere aiuto ai suoi amici e riporta l'ordine a Hell's Kitchen, sconfiggendo la Yakuza.
Milla, di fronte all'ammissione di Matt del fatto che la sua crisi possa essere dovuta al persistente ricordo della morte di Karen, sentendosi tradita, lo abbandona, richiedendo l'annullamento legale del matrimonio.

La decisione è sofferta, ma Matt acconsente a tale concessione. Milla, però, comprendendo di aver sbagliato a giudicare così sbrigativamente il comportamento di Matt, ritorna da lui dopo qualche tempo. I due tornano ad essere sposati, giusto in tempo per un ancora più grande sconvolgimento nella vita di Matt Murdock. Dal carcere, Kingpin annuncia di voler rivelare tutto quello che sa su Matt Murdock e Daredevil. Tutte le prove, gli indizi e le informazioni da lui raccolte sulla sua identità. Elementi che avrebbero finalmente dimostrato che Matt Murdock è sempre stato Daredevil, consentendone dunque l'incriminazione, contenuti in un dossier speciale.
In realtà, ciò si rivela essere nient'altro che una macchinazione di Kingpin per far uscire Daredevil allo scoperto, farlo mettere fuori combattimento da un cecchino e consentirne la cattura da parte dei federali, che da tempo gli stanno dando la caccia. Il piano riesce. Matt Murdock, ferito gravemente e con indosso parte del costume, si consegna all FBI. Per lui scattano le manette.

In attesa del processo, Murdock viene rinchiuso nel carcere di Ryker's island. I prosecutori riescono inoltre a negargli lo status speciale di detenuto con disabilità, e a metterlo assieme alla popolazione carceraria generale. Matt attende pazientemente che la giustizia faccia il suo corso. I suoi soci, Foggy e Becky, lavorano senza posa in preparazione del processo, che con ogni probabilità, in assenza di prove, lo dovrebbe riconoscere innocente.

Ma anche in questa situazione così drammatica, qualcuno trama nell'ombra. Qualcuno preme affinché la situazione nel carcere divenga tale da far sì che Kingpin e Matt, rinchiusi assieme a criminali come Bullseye, il Gufo, la Tarantola Nera e Testa di Martello, si uccidano tra loro.
Viene inscenata l'uccisione di Foggy Nelson durante una visita al carcere, mentre un altro misterioso uomo continua ad operare ad Hell's Kitchen nelle vesti di Daredevil. Ciò porta Matt Murdock a scatenare nel carcere la parte più violenta e cinica di sé stesso. La sua priorità diviene scoprire chi ha ordinato l'uccisione di Foggy e fargliela pagare, anche a costo di brutalizzare secondini e detenuti, anche a costo di rendere palese il fatto di non essere un cieco come tutti gli altri.
L'occasione di evadere si presenta con una rivolta carceraria organizzata dai leader dei vari gruppi di detenuti, con l'intento di eliminare i due principali bersagli del mondo criminale: l'ormai tramontato Kingpin e Matt Murdock, ormai noto a tutti come il vigilante Daredevil.
Matt si trova suo malgrado a lottare al fianco di Kingpin e Bullseye contro orde di detenuti inviati per fargli la pelle. Nel trambusto che segue, grazie anche al Punitore, Matt riesce a fuggire dal carcere, assicurandosi al contempo che Kingpin e Bullseye vi rimangano.

Deciso a vendicare la morte di Foggy, Matt scopre che il misterioso uomo nei panni di Daredevil altri non era che il suo amico Danny Rand, alias Iron Fist, reclutato per fare questo per conto di una persona residente in Europa. Matt, ufficialmente ancora fuggitivo, raccoglie i pochi indizi che ha e il suo costume da diavolo, e parte alla volta del vecchio continente, a caccia del mandante.
Dopo una tortuosa ricerca, Matt scoprirà che il mandante di tutto questo altri non era che Vanessa Fisk, moglie di Kingpin. La donna, ormai in fin di vita per un male incurabile, ha architettato tutto il vortice di eventi per far sì che il marito e Matt Murdock (che ritiene responsabili di averle rovinato la vita con le loro interminabili guerre) si uccidano a vicenda, o alternativamente siano condannati a soffrire continuando a lottare fra loro per sempre.

La donna propone dunque un patto. Lei avrebbe utilizzato le sue possibilità e i suoi vari agganci per scagionare completamente Matt da ciò di cui era accusato. In cambio, Matt avrebbe dovuto provvedere legalmente al rilascio di Wilson Fisk.

Matt - mai uomo da scendere a compromessi torbidi - rifiuta, ma di ritorno in America apprende che Vanessa aveva già messo in atto la sua parte del patto, e che l'assassinio di Foggy era stato solo una messa in scena architettata dalla donna.
Matt e Milla si ricongiungono, Foggy e Becky riescono a far prosciogliere Matt dalle accuse e a fargli riottenere l'abilitazione alla professione legale. Matt adempie alla sua parte del patto, facendo rilasciare Kingpin. Distrutto dall'apprendere che quanto sia accaduto sia stato causato dalle sofferenze fatte patire all'amata Vanessa, ormai morta, Fisk acconsente a rinunciare alla propria cittadinanza americana e abbandonare il continente.

In breve tempo, la situazione torna ad un minimo di normalità. Ma non tutto è realmente come prima. Anche se non vi sono prove ufficiali, l'identità di Matt Murdock è ormai nota. Inoltre, alla luce delle nuove leggi sui supereroi e sul vigilantismo, Matt risulta un supereroe non registrato, in palese violazione delle leggi e costantemente a rischio di venire colto in flagrante ed arrestato.
L'equilibrio tra l'attività di custode di Hell's Kitchen e una vita felice rimane più che mai delicato, e già si profilano ombre all'orizzonte. Durante la sua lunga assenza sono sorte nuove lotte per il potere, e il quartiere è tornato ad essere terra di nessuno per i criminali.
Matt Murdock/Daredevil è comunque là, pronto a combattere il crimine e a vigilare sulla città, dispensando giustizia sulla punta di un billy-club, con lo stesso spirito di abnegazione e la stessa risolutezza di sempre.

Matt Murdock vive e lavora ancora ad Hell's Kitchen.
E cerca di tenerla pulita. Questo e tutto ciò che dovete sapere.

The Devil you know, part 1

2008-04-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

Il generico lettore neofita a questo punto potrebbe pensare tra sé:

Okay. Il billy-club, l'identità segreta, il modo di scrivere di 45 anni fa che visto oggi fa sorridere... tutto ciò è molto bello. Sai che ti dico? Voglio avventurarmi anche io nel mondo dell'uomo senza paura.

Splendido. Non te ne pentirai.

Sì ma da dove comincio?

Domanda giusta. Ecco quello che ho fatto io (ovvero "come sono stato iniziato alle gioie e ai dolori del cornetto", come direbbe un mio amico).
Inizialmente, come penso chiunque, avevo solo un'idea generica di chi Daredevil fosse, quale fosse la sua storia, i suoi poteri eccetera. Dapprima, quando il mio interesse ha iniziato a farsi più forte, sono andato a visitare un paio di siti internet per farmi meglio un'idea. A tal proposito, mi sento di consigliare ai neofiti il fantastico sito www.manwithoutfear.com.
Apro una parentesi. Uno dei punti forti di DD sugli altri personaggi dei fumetti supereroistici è quello di essere uno dei pochi ad avere, nell'era di internet, un fan site talmente completo, curato, definitivo, attivo come quello di Kuljit Mithra.
Un bel po' di informazioni anche su Daredevil resource, ottimo sito anch'esso, anche se non viene aggiornato da molto tempo.

Il passo successivo che consiglio è quello leggere qualcosa della pubblicazione corrente. Acquistare l'albo corrente, leggerlo, farsi un'idea. Il primo numero che ho letto, a ben guardare, mi avrebbe dovuto scoraggiare un po'. Era già la seconda parte di un arco narrativo, e la narrazione era piuttosto lenta. Nonostante ciò, esso mi diede la possibilità di "entrare nell'atmosfera" e di cominciare a sentire le storie come "mie".

Dopo aver letto un arco narrativo, se l'interesse è stato destato, consiglio ai neo-lettori non tanto di andare a recuperare subito le storie delle origini, che potrebbero risultare anacronistiche per il tono decisamente più allegro ed avventuroso, ma di andare invece a recuperare storie più riconoscibili come toni e sicuramente migliori stilisticamente, come il Daredevil di Frank Miller (sì, proprio lui. quello di 300 e Sin City) e David Mazzuchelli, e soprattutto l'acclamato arco narrativo "Born Again" (Devil: Rinascita, in italiano), universalmente riconosciuto come la migliore storia di Daredevil mai pubblicata.

E' poi sicuramente interessante per un nuovo lettore la reinterpretazione delle origini data nella serie "The Man Without Fear", dallo stesso Frank Miller e John Romita Jr.
"Rinascita" e "L'Uomo Senza Paura" non dovrebbero essere difficili da reperire, in quanto ripubblicati con regolarità dalla Marvel Italia (accanto a questi, viene correntemente pubblicato anche Devil: Giallo, di Loeb e Sale. Un'altra rivisitazione delle origini che però, personalmente, mi ha lasciato un po' tiepido).

Le storie dei primi numeri sono pubblicate (però in bianco e nero e in lingua inglese), negli "Essential Daredevil".

Si è detto che il primo passo è quello di iniziare ad acquistare la serie attuale e vedere se questa, effettivamente, riesce a fare presa. Mi si potrebbe chiedere:

Va bene. Però non so quasi niente di come sia andata la storia finora, quali siano i personaggi attuali, la situazione, eccetera.

E che problema c'è? Nella seconda parte di questa entry, per chi avrà la compiacenza di leggerla, verrà riassunto tutto quello che bisogna sapere per gustare appieno Daredevil nell'anno di grazia 2008.

Preposterous Plot Points #2 - "Keep screaming! Don't stop!"

2008-04-26T05:35:00.000-07:00

Note: the alliterative title of this series of entries has been suggested by Darediva, a friend of mine who's arguably the biggest Daredevil fan alive. Thank you, Alice!

Apparently, back in the glorious sixties, if you happened to be in imminent danger, you could be saved by folks like Spider-man, or the Human Torch, or even, sometimes, Daredevil.

In this last case however, the process of being rescued could've been somewhat more difficult, requiring a little effort on your part to allow the potential saviour to "pinpoint your position".
Specifically, because the aforementioned hero uses his super developed senses to navigate (the concept of the radar sense as primary mean of vision had still to be accepted by the mind of Stan Lee), you would've had to make yourself detectable to those hypersenses, for example by - let's say - emitting a strong odor... or as in the case here illustrated, by "keeping screaming".

Even if by chance you happened to be a rookie at the practice of being saved by superheroes in NY, there was no need to be worried. While swinging to rescue you, the hero himself would've told you exactly what you had to do. You just had to follow his instructions.

Keep screaming! Don't stop! Don't stop screaming!

...

Man, this is just so absurde. If the lady there has time to say all that stuff about her needing help from somebody because the situation could result in her death, and if the swinging DD believes that there's still time before the impact, during which she shouldn't stop screaming, why doesn't she use this enormous window of time to just get away from there on her own?

Also, what would the bystanders think of a superhero yelling those words to a person in danger? Seriously: "Don't stop screaming"? Wouldn't that sound a little... odd to them? And the fact that the rescuing hero is dressed up like Satan wouldn't help, either.

The real reason of this grotesque assassination of common logic is perhaps explained with the classic "Marvel way" of producing comics, which worked this way: normally, Stan Lee threw out some general ideas about the overall plot, then, the artist (Wally Wood, in this case) drew all the panels according to this general plot, but without a definite script to follow, and finally, Lee added dialogues, captions and text in general.
Probably, with this page (and the following), Wood just wanted to depict a normal heroic rescue. Then came Stan Lee and, with the intent of reminding the distracted reader that "Daredevil is the new unique hero with supersenses", ruined what could've been a good scene by forcedly adding text to it, making it completely nonsensical.

Excelsior! I guess.

A little less conversation...

2008-04-25T13:12:00.000-07:00

Now, because I honestly think I got a little intoxicated with all this silver age/Stan Lee/paleozoic stuff from the previous entries, let's have a breath of fresh air with some more recent material from DD(II) #63, drawn by Alex Maleev.

At the same time, this will provide a fine example of a more modern (and practical) use of the billy-club. Also, it's a neat fight scene. And, if I still haven't told you, I love neat fight scenes.
That's right. Especially those where DD shines.

Ah, yeah. Some recap is needed, of course. So, this killer guy has been hired to assassinate the Black Widow and Matt Murdock, who at that moment are sitting outside a bar. He positions himself on a rooftop two blocks away, preparing to gun them down with a semi automatic sniper rifle.
Matt, however, catches the scent of gunpowder in the air, just in time for he and the Widow to dive and take cover. The killer is about to leave and plan another attempt but is reached by DD.

Yeah. Fast, indeed. Judging by how the sequence was illustrated, half a minute, tops, had passed from the shooting to Matt showing up in that rooftop in full DD gear. But you should expect such things to happen if you put yourself against a superhero.

Very neat. You deserve a cookie.

(believe me, it's a relief to enjoy DD kicking butt without having to continuously read baloons containing silver age hero wisecracks and real time panel descriptions)

F#@% Yeah. That's all I can say.