Word Baloon challange!

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:

Daredevil's Centrific Feats #5 - Die Hard

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?

The Motivational Poster-Boy

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

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

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


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

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

- Non vali niente, Murdock!

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

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


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


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

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

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

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


... it feels good.

Daredevil's Centrific Feats #4 - Deflecting Bullets

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

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

__________________________________________________________

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


- Call me Daredevil.

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

...

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

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

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

The Devil you know, part 1

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.