Episode 1566 Talkback - Spotlight on Daredevil in the 2000s
i_am_scifi
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Our long, historical Highway to Hell's Kitchen ends in this episode, dedicated to the Daredevil comics of the past fifteen years. Discussed are some of the deepest, darkest lows and most hysterical highs of Matt Murdock's long and checkered crimefighting career, as seen in the comics work of David Mack, Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev, Ed Brubaker, Michael Lark, Andy Diggle, Mark Waid, Chris Samnee, and others; plus a few words about DD in other media. And don't miss a bonus 'post-credits' cameo from Drunk Cap!
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As for the artists during that period, Mack is a fantastic artist and does beautiful work, but I didn't think his sense of storytelling meshed well with Bendis’ David Mamet-obsessed approach to the writing. Their senses of pacing/timing didn't sync up very well. That said, I think it worked for the Echo story Mack wrote himself, as it fit well with that character and her story.
I was not a fan of what Maleev did on the book. Too often it looked like photographs run through a couple of Photoshop filters, and I just couldn't get into it. The draftsmanship was there, there just wasn't much life to it, and I think it fed into that monotony I was feeling toward the end of Bendis’ run.
1) Even if it will never be released due to how ill he was at the time, there's something about knowing that there is unreleased Jamie D content out there that makes me feel good. That as long as that's in the can, there's a little piece of him left in this world, outside of the hours of content we can listen to whenever we feel the itch to do so.
2) @wildpigcomics If you have not done so yet, make sure to watch the Honest Trailer for the Daredevil movie. It's pretty spot-on.
3) Here's an excellent article on how exactly they pulled that one-shot fight scene off on the Daredevil Netflix series. The switching between Charlie Cox and stunt doubles was still some of the best I've ever seen. Job well done, gentlemen. You did Daredevil proud with these Spotlights, and I'm looking forward to Born Again when it rolls around!
I know you guys were running low on time, but compared to some of the other things you talked about in detail in the episode, I think volumes 3 and 4 were given short shrift. For example, no one really talked about the opening pages of Daredevil vol. 3, #1, with DD taking down the Spot at the mob wedding, which I think it’s one of the best bits of comic book storytelling I've ever seen, and was the perfect way to introduce the new direction. Paolo's covers for volume 2 were mentioned, but no one talked about his amazing (and I think superior) covers for volume 3 for which he received an Eisner nomination for Best Cover Artist (which I think he should have won).
One other aspect of the Waid run I think should be stressed is the portrayal of how DD “sees” the world around him. The visual effects and sound effects designed by Paolo, Marcos Martin, and Chris (based off Mark’s ideas) have added a different level to the stories and have been a heck of a lot of fun.
There were also an appearance on the Fantastic Four animated series from the 90's as well. I won't link the YouTube here, since somebody sped the audio up and it's annoying as heck.
We also dodged two animated bullets, once in the 80's and once in the 90's. First, there was an attempt at a "Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends" style series that would have aired on ABC:
Yup, Daredevil and his seeing-eye dog, Lightning. That's a thing. Mark Evanier wrote a treatment and everything, but apparently the project got canned after a Marvel executive said the wrong thing to an ABC exec. I wonder if it was, "Your momma's so blind, she needs Lightning the Super-Dog to help her cross the street!"
Finally, in 1999, we came pretty close to a "Daredevil: The Animated Series" in the vein and style of "Spider-Man: The Animated Series." But we can thank the production of the Daredevil movie for that not happening.
One thing I would be interested in hearing about maybe as a footnote added to the upcoming Born Again episode you're going to do- what about the 1980s TV show "Trial of the Incredible Hulk" which was I believe a one-off spinoff from the old Incredible Hulk TV show in which Daredevil and Kingpin appear? I've never actually seen it.. If memory serves from what I've heard of it, the special was supposed to prompt a DD TV show which never materialized.
Without question Waid & his artists deserve tons of credit. The craft of those two volumes is fantastic and they fleshed out some minute details of DD's life as a blind man that other writers never considered, with really fascinating results. Those little moments were my favorite parts of the run, especially early on in it. After that great Spot issue in #1, I was less entertained by the monthly rackup of Silver Agers, and the Omega Drive crossover was pretty average.
Then Samnee came aboard and things got really good- the high point for me was the run up and immediate aftermath of the DD/Ikari battle where I think Waid was really firing on all cylinders. Paulo Rivera's visual representations of the radar sense, as drawn by Chris Samnee, have been really fantastic throughout.
But later in vol. 3 it became much more up and down for me. I thought the end of volume 3 was pretty disjointed plotwise. Vol. 4 started great in SF, dipped for the Original Sin tie-in, got great again with the Purple Man, and has dropped precipitously since.
The point where I really got worn out on it has been this odd autobiography arrangement and then Matt ditching his costume in V4, #14 and adding this red three piece suit as some sort of branding exercise for his upcoming autobiography. It just doesn't make any sense to me when given that justification.. and I don't see Matt waltzing flamboyantly into the courtroom as he did in that suit as being true to the Murdock character, regardless of whatever mental instability he may be careening towards. And of course here's Kingpin again to help him out of this jam. We've seen that one before- I trust there will be a new twist, Waid's good enough to give us one, but still.. I feel I've gone past my threshold of belief a bit in the current arc.
And yet this all happens while some really interesting challenges are being thrown DD's way. That pretty much sums up my feelings on the weak spots in Waid's run. There have been great ideas and great new perspectives on the Murdock world but there can be some cringeworthy character moments that don't ring true IMO.
But it's fine, all runs good, bad and indifferent do end.. For me this is still a good run, and a very important one historically with the new ideas introduced that I hope stick around with future teams. I just can't call it wall to wall great the way so many others have. Just my take.
The Bru arc in prison as well to me is a classic. I think that run was also great although it never got better than that first arc for me.
Full disclosure: I know nothing about this episode of The Incredible Hulk.
Thoughts so far (I'm at the 33-minute mark):
Delineating Bendis's work into different categories and "periods" is a fun practice. In general, I don't like Bendis's writing when he's trying to be cute and light-hearted... but then again a lot of early Ultimate Spider-Man is fairly light-hearted and I absolutely would recommend the first 60 or so issues of USM as VERY good stuff.
For me it just mostly falls into chronological periods. I think early- to mid-'00s Bendis is usually great, with much of it being outright excellent. His Daredevil run is top of the stack for me. It did get a bit monotonous toward the end, but even so, I might even rank it above Miller's work overall. Of course, it is very much indebted to Miller's work, even in tone, and could not exist without it, but still... while reading it for the first time I remember getting to the point where I realized "Okay, at some point very good quantity has to trimuph over slightly-better quality. On a per-issue basis, Frank Miller is the best Daredevil writer, but Bendis's run is just so much longer. There are individual Miller DD issues (and storylines) that Bendis cannot match, but overall I like the Bendis run better."
I did think that toward the end of his DD run Bendis was becoming a little too "chatty", but that was how he was getting in all his books at the midway point of the decade. Yes, he was a wordy writer before, but until 2004 or so it rarely felt as if his conversations just went nowhere. Then it started to feel like he was just spinning his wheels, and running his characters' mouths, in order to fill pages, and issues, and storylines, of... fluff. I didn't like much of anything he did after 2005, until the last couple years with All-New X-Men and the Miles Morales USM stuff.
Maleev and Mack are both great artists and I enjoyed their DD work. Such excellent and fitting work for the Man Without Fear, invoking noir and the best of Sienkiewicz respectively. They both did a great job.
The first few storyarcs of the Brubaker run were as good as anything Bendis did, but then things slowly got dull imo. Brubaker did a great job with Matt in prison and then with Matt in foreign locales (such a refreshing change of scenery). But after that, once he got back in the grind of Hell's Kitchen... It was never bad -- not even close -- but the run started out with so much more promise.
Was DD's costume in that episode of The Incredible Hulk the impetus for his costume in The Man Without Fear mini? As silly as it looks in the picture, if you've read TMWF or seen the Netflix show, it can and does work. It also doesn't look as silly now as it did the first time I saw it.
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I skipped the entire Bendis run but bought the last issue in anticipation of Brubaker taking over. I was loving what he was doing on Captain America and thought if anyone could turn me on to DD it would be him. It started off strong. I thought the whole prison storyline was fantastic. An interesting thing about the Punisher is that he got himself arrested on purpose just so he could be thrown in with Matt and everyone else. Once we get to Mr. Fear I start to lose interest. In fact I found the book depressing. It was like trying to find entertainment in a car accident as you watch people in pain. I dropped the book until..
Waid took over and it was a nice change from the depressing Brubaker run. Despite enjoying it the book just finally faded from my pull list.
I'll give Soule a chance when the book relaunches.
That said, I think the Waid run has been uneven. It's never been "bad", but I do think that the first year or so is clearly head and shoulders above the last 40-some issues. Basically, when Marcos Martin and Paolo Rivera were alternating as artists, Daredevil was clearly the best Marvel title by a longshot and we were getting legitimately innovative "instant classic" storytelling. Those two artists seemed to bring out the best in Waid, or maybe Waid was just giving it his all on the character or whatever. Because, for whatever reason--no disrespect to Chris Samnee, or Waid himself--but everything since then clearly seems a step or two below the standard said by Waid, Martin and Rivera when Vol. 3 started.
I think it's been a fairly solid title since then, and I hate to always have to argue the negative when it comes up, but I think Waid's DD is still a far cry from Bendis's, Brubaker's, or Miller's. Not even close. The emotional depth is not there, despite a lot of situations (Foggy's cancer, for one) that to me seem to be written, well, "adequately" but nothing more. In terms of love interests, Miller did infinitely more in a half-dozen early Elektra appearances than Waid's been able to do in four years of Kirsten McDuffie. And I like McDuffie, but she's not as interesting or meaningful as Milla was either. The villains of Waid's run, likewise, fall short and seem a case of diminishing returns: i.e., I've been pleased with how he's used everyone from the Owl, to Kingpin, to Bullseye, etc., but it isn't as if his use of these characters is anywhere near as good as two or three prior writers' use. And his original villains like the Coyote were fine, but nothing classic either. The Sons of the Snake stuff dragged on forever and was not interesting. At best I'm reduced to saying that the use of the Spot was the most noteworthy. And none of the storylines were as memorable, or had as memorable moments, as what Bendis and Miller did. (I guess in terms of storylines and "moments" Waid might equal or surpass Brubaker, but personally I think Brubaker was and is a much better scripter and dialogue-writer than Waid. And I do like Samnee, but Samnee's no Michael Lark.)
Still, to say that Waid's tenure is "only" the fourth-best Daredevil run speaks to the greatness of the character and his writers over the years.
I'm 2/3s of the way through the episode. Loving everything minute, and I appreciate all the work you guys put into it. Especially Chris.
I do love Samnee's work. For me it was a marked improvement over Rivera & Martin, who introduced a lot of interesting visual ideas.
We'll see what the last 2 issues hold.. Like I said, no doubt it's a historically significant run and I hope the team ends on a high point.
And after talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, and more talking, when something finally happens, BOOM!, it makes that much more of an impact. It becomes that much more memorable.
That’s not to take away from Bendis’ run. I thought it was great for a while, but like I said earlier, it became a bit tedious for me. There just haven't been that many well written, well drawn, fun, fast-paced (relatively speaking) superhero comics out there for some time (though, thankfully, that seems to be changing at least a little) and that's a big part of my attraction to Waid’s run on the book.
My first introduction to Daredevil was way back in 1978 with a Ron Wilson penciled Marvel Two-In-One (#38) where Matt Murdock was trying to get Ben Grimm out of some convoluted jam where he'd been framed, but believed he was guilty. While the story was forgetful to my pre-teen self, I was hooked. I would frequently draw my latest favorite comic characters, usually referring to the masthead's floating heads in the upper left corner of the covers, and Daredevil was no different. I remember being struck by just how much black shadow was regularly a part of DD's outfit, and especially his face.
As I said, I am just diving in, but I suspect the failed 70's attempt to bring Hornhead to the small screen was not mentioned. Probably the less said about it the better, eh @wildpigcomics ?
Thanks for putting these Spotlights our gentlemen. I'll be working through this gem over the next couple of days.
Quote of the episode:
"Sell me your electric guitars, ya dope fiends!" Drunk Cap