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?

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

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

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

(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...

The Issues of Brubaker's Run Christmas Carol

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

a Red-clad Vigilante

~~~

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

Foggy getting Stabbed
and a Red-clad Vigilante

~~~

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

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

~~~

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

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

~~~

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

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

~~~

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

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

~~~

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

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

~~~

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

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

~~~

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

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

~~~

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

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

~~~

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

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

~~~

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

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


Happy Holidays from F's Kitchen!

The Motivational Poster-Boy

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

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

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


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

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

- Non vali niente, Murdock!

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

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


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


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

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

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

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


... it feels good.

Something totally random...

...
So, beware.
:p