Daredevil: Fall of the Kingpin, Jimmy's Bastards, Judas, Superman

I’m going to start commenting on the new comics that I buy every week.  It’ll be interesting to see how they compare to when I eventually re-read them as part of this project.

Jimmy’s Bastards 6

I was dangerously close to dropping this title.  While I’m usually a fan of Ennis’ brand of humor, I find that I enjoy his comics more when there’s a more serious tone at their core.  Hitman, for all its silliness, is great because it’s still centered around its themes of brotherhood and the inability of Tommy and all his friends to escape who they’ve been for so much of their lives.

But paging through this in the store today, the central twist of the issue was enough to keep me going for at least another month.  I can’t tell if this is a limited series (I suspect it’s an 8-parter), but at this point, I’m pretty much pot committed to finishing it up.

Judas 2

I am really enjoying this title.  Lucifer greets Judas in Hell in the aftermath of his suicide, and makes a convincing argument as to why God is the bad guy in The Grandest of Stories.  It’s a Preacher-esque take on Our Heavenly Father, a God who forces some people to be the bad guys because the narrative demands it.  It’s not a new point of view, but it’s effectively presented.  

The cliffhanger of the issue is one that I did not see coming, but makes perfect sense in its simplicity.  I only got the first issue because I liked Jeff Loveness’ interpretation of the Judas story, but now I can’t wait to see where the next issue goes.

Superman 39

I bought this because the premise was too heartwarming to turn down: Superman and the Justice League take a bunch of cancer ward kids out for the day.  

This kind of story depends entirely on the execution.  It has to bring the feels, but can’t come across as trite.  As a reader, I’m expecting (and demand) cute moments, but don’t want them to be too obvious or easy.  It’s a difficult tightrope to walk.

I give Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason a passing grade on this.  It was mostly by-the-numbers, and the attempts to make Batman smile were just too on the nose.  

Still, the final scene on the surface on the moon really brought home just how special the moment was, and I completely bought the wonder and joy these kids were feeling, as well as the tragedy that a number of them probably wouldn’t survive their battles with cancer.  Feels achieved.

Daredevil 297-300

I find it amusing that this arc was originally called Last Rites, but the trade paperback takes the far more straightforward The Fall of the Kingpin as its title instead.

This is clearly meant to parallel Born Again, but DG Chichester is no Frank Miller.  Kingpin’s fall comes a little too easy - I don’t buy that a few well placed rumors were enough to turn Hydra and Kingpin against each other, or that Hydra would win that battle so easily.  This is the kind of story that I would have liked to see play out in the background over a longer period of time.  Still it’s entertaining enough for what it is.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Fine

Nocenti/Romita Daredevil

Daredevil 269-275

Welp, it’s a little sad that whatever effort I had spent collecting Ann Nocenti’s run was mostly for naught.  I’m cutting most of it from my collection, save for the Typhoid Mary arc.  I stopped collecting with 275.  Looks like she kept going for another 16 issues.  I have no interest in searching those out.

Nocenti definitely brought something different to the table, but at the end of the day, I didn’t find it enjoyable to read, which I kinda wish wasn’t the case.  Different should be encouraged.  

Case in point: this final story arc.  It starts off as a commentary on the inhumane treatment of animals that are raised in the food industry.  And although it’s horrible to read about, I appreciate the effort to educate the reader.  Then it starts to fall apart as we learn that the owner of the farm, Skip, doesn’t just genetically engineer the animals, but fully grown women as well.  In particular, Number Nine, who’s been bred to be a Barbie-looking ditz who “cooks, cleans, is obedient, and of complete ethical character.”

When Skip’s daughter, Brandy, frees the animals in an act of eco-terrorism, Number Nine is inadvertently released as well, and imprints on Daredevil like a baby chick.  What follows is an odd clash of viewpoints - Number Nine just wants to pamper Daredevil, Brandy wants to smack some feminist sense into her, and Daredevil tries to counsel compassion to Brandy.  Mix in the revelation that Number Nine is a cutter and the Inhumans making an incomprehensible appearance, and I don’t know what we’ve got.  Something that I never want to read again.  

Regret buying? Yes

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Stupid

Nocenti/Romita Daredevil

Daredevil 261-268

I am fully prepared right now to dump the rest of the Nocenti run post-issue 260.  There’s nothing in these eight issues that I remotely want to read again.  I’ll start going through each issue, and hope that it takes up thirty minutes of my time.

DD 261 - Human Torch (in a random cameo) looks for the missing Daredevil.  The entirety of his efforts consist of entering a shady bar, fighting the biggest guy there, getting no answers, and burning the place down.  Karen moans so overtly about Daredevil’s disappearance that I can’t believe no one makes the connection to the also-missing Matt Murdock.

DD 262 - The three issue Inferno tie-in starts.  Karen’s uselessness without Matt is so so pathetic.  Matt’s still lying beneath the bridge, fighting a techno-demon-vacuum cleaner.  

Typhoid Mary realizes Matt isn’t dead.

How.  How is she the love of Matt Murdock's life?

DD 263 - Karen somehow finds out that Daredevil is in the hospital.  I don’t know who would know, think, or care to call her.  Typhoid shows up and tells Karen that Matt’s been unfaithful.  So instead of breaking Matt, the revelation breaks Karen, who has not been the most emotionally stable person without a man by her side to begin with.  

Then begins a trippy sequence where Daredevil is now well enough to get out of bed, board a train that’s heading to hell, and kill the demon conductor.  I have no idea what Nocenti is doing.

DD 264 - The editor of the book kindly informs the readers that John Romita Jr is taking a break for an issue to get married.  So we’re treated to a fill-in issue drawn by Steve Ditko.  Nocenti uses this opportunity to bring back the random escaped felon who adopted a baby he found abandoned in the street.  The stupidness of this issue boggles my mind.  

DD 265 - Back to Inferno for one last issue.  Daredevil walks around beating up demons in a catatonic haze.  Nocenti has got to be loving this; She gets to write about about a New York with literal demons to match the figurative ones that rule the city every day.  But it all comes out incomprehensibly, much like a Jonathan Hickman comic.

DD 266 - I’ve completely given up at this point.  DD’s having a beer at a bar.  Mephisto comes to chat him up, makes him ignore a murder that’s going on behind him, destroys the bar, and drops him from a great height into a pile of garbage.  Then a couple of bums help him up and go grab Christmas dinner with him at the local soup kitchen as if nothing happened.  I can’t.  I just can’t.

DD 267 - Daredevil decides to exact revenge on those who beat him up.  He goes to Bullet’s apartment, but meeting Bullet’s messed up kid convinces him to give up his vengeance tour before it even kicks off.  It occurs to me that we haven’t seen Karen in four issues, and I haven’t missed her.

DD 268 - Daredevil starts wandering the backroads of America, which he’ll repeat years later post-Shadowlands.  This issue actually doesn’t suck.  He pops into a bed and breakfast, secretly helps to solve the problems of the owners, and pops back out a day later.  

And done.  Things aren’t looking good for the post-Typhoid Nocenti era.  (Though Typhoid Mary hasn’t entirely disappeared yet.  She’s still got her hooks in Kingpin, and I’m waiting for the payoff.)

Regret buying? Yes

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Stupid.  268 Didn’t suck.

Nocenti/Romita Daredevil

Daredevil 258

This was a fill in issue.

Regret buying? Yes

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Stupid

Daredevil 255-257, 259

Leading up to the really good stuff.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Pretty good

Daredevil 260

Phew.  260 is as remains intense as my memories of it.  Typhoid Mary completes her crushing of Matt Murdock.  From a narrative point of view, I’m disappointed that she didn’t complete her mission as directed by the Kingpin - She didn’t break his heart by revealing that Mary, the woman he cheated on Karen with, was also Typhoid.  Catfishing Daredevil would have made for a unique entry in the book of Ways Matt Murdock’s Life Has Been Put Through The Ringer.  

As it is, Way #72 is up there on its own merits.  On paper, it doesn’t sound like much: Hire Daredevil’s recent rogues gallery to beat the crap out of him.  Then drop him off a bridge.  Unimaginative, no subtlety.  But the execution is amazing.  

Things that make it work:

It starts with Daredevil prancing out of his apartment.  He’s legit prancing:

Right before he gets blindsided by Bullet, starting his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Daredevil gets wrecked in the middle of an Independence Day parade.  The indifference of the crowd as he stumbles among them in an increasingly-beat up state feels like Nocenti’s final word on the state of the world.

The thrashing Matt undergoes is brutal.  John Romita Jr does not compromise in showing the punishment that he’s taking.  The reader feels every hit, and Matt’s pain, exhaustion, and loss of mental faculties screams out from every page.

That ending.  I remember reading this issue off the spinner rack as a kid, at a time where the only comic I read was Transformers.  This was like a slap in the face; I had no idea who Daredevil was, but I knew that I just saw him die, left to rot in the weeds beneath an anonymous bridge.  I did not know this creepy woman, but I saw her kiss him before she killed him, and that perversion struck me as the deepest betrayal.  But she cried as he fell, and I felt her pain as well.

Heady stuff for a ten year old, and maybe that’s coloring this read through, but it remains just as powerful thirty years later.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Major feels.  (Hard to objective rank this as Really good, so new category.)

Nocenti/Romita Daredevil

Daredevil 250-254

John Romita Jr finally joins Ann Nocenti, and the book immediately improves.  I have a few issues with his style, but man, can he ball.

Those cheekbone lines.  He does it so much, I've never liked it.

But look at that flow!

Nocenti continues to write a spiritually grimy and filthy world.  By issue 254, a prolonged garbage strike reflects this materially as well.  The Kingpin’s responsible for the stoppage, and he starts to make his presence felt in other ways as well as Matt’s community clinic begins to nip at the heels of his machinations and schemes.  

I’ll mention here that JRJR and Bill Sienkiewicz draw the best Kingpins, huge solid masses of physicality with equally imposing wills.

If you ever wanted to see a sumo wrestler play racketball.

Sienkiewicz's interpretation

Kingpin also hires Typhoid Mary, making her first appearance in the Marvel universe.  I love this character.  Her mix of depravity and allure makes for a compelling and dangerous adversary.  As Mary’s creator, Nocenti provided the blueprint to future writers to show how she can shine in all her wicked glory.

10-year old me was haunted by this ad after seeing it in an issue of Transformers.

From Nocenti’s list of why the world sucks:

Nocenti's Daredevil thesis statement.

Bullet leaves his elementary school son alone at home, has no problems touching him with radioactive waste, and tells him to lie about his whereabouts.  His son is also has an obsessive complex about nuclear war, and has all the makings of a survival nut.  Nocenti spends enough time on the kid that the mental damage inflicted on him by his dad, upbringing, and surroundings feels especially messed up.  

Therapy's not going to help this kid.

Corporations are dumping toxic waste all over the place, and Foggy Nelson is defending them.  The eco-terrorists fighting them aren’t much better.

For all the crap the Fatboys go through, they still wear helmets when they skateboard.  That’s actually a good thing, but I wonder why they even bother.  Something else in the world is sure to kill them.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Nice.  Pretty good once Typhoid Mary shows up.

Daredevil

Nocenti definitely brings a different sensibility to Daredevil.  Her writing depicts a far more jaded world than the one that’s normally portrayed: Daredevil catches a bunch of kids (the Fatboys) dressing up as a Salvation Army Santa to scam pedestrians for money.  He makes them donate the money to a nun to teach them a lesson, but that cookie-cutter moment is undermined when the reader discovers that the ‘nun’ is running a con as well.  

Early Todd MacFarlane art!

There’s no black and white with her characters, just black and grey.  Nothing’s clean in this universe, and it’s hard to imagine Daredevil ever getting a win in this New York City.  Take a look at some of his encounters:

Rotgut - A delusional man, raised by his mother to fear all the chemicals that are pervading our society and environment.  He’s not completely wrong, as part of his rants include the hazards of smoking and the destructive effects of illegal drug use.  But the other half induces him to poison the water supply of his apartment building.  While the Fatboys keep most of the inhabitants from drinking the water, one of the kids doesn’t warn a resident as retribution for some rude words that were hurled in his direction.  I repeat: A ten-year old kid lets a man die because he was mean to him.  (Horrible use of pronouns, my apologies.)  

A down-on-his-luck blue-collar worker starts killing rich people as some kind of protest against the system.  A sleazy reporter, instead of reporting the man to the authorities, lets this go on in exchange for the scoop.  A segment of the population, of course, has no problem with any of this, leading to a riot that puts Daredevil on the wrong side of public opinion.  All of this is frighteningly real, despite the cynicism.  

A former soldier in the Wakandan army develops a gambling addiction, failing to provide for his wife or son.  His wife, coincidentally Black Panther’s cousin, deals with this by locking herself into the bedroom, refusing to come out until her husband pays the bills.  When Black Panther shows up, he’s perfectly happy to let the soldier kill himself as the honorable way of resolving the situation.  Nothing but bleak.  

Karen Page comes to the realization, after all this time, that her boyfriend beats people up in his off-hours.  This transforms her into a flat-out Roy Lichtenstein clone.

One that’s very, very emo.

Dude, villains don't monologue this much.

Yet two issues later, she’s cheering for Daredevil to beat up the bad guy of the month.  So now violence is okay as long as she’s the one being saved?  Nocenti is unrelenting as she points out the hypocrisies and bent views of the America she sees.  

My criticism is not with the ideas that Nocenti puts on display, but in the presentation.  In the vein of Stern’s Avengers, her scripts are overly wordy, and the plots themselves are uninspiring.  I can’t imagine reading these issues again, even with her interesting take on Daredevil’s world.  So I don’t know if I’m keeping these issues yet.  I’ll decide at the end of the run.  Forty issues from now.  Sigh.

The art is surprisingly good, considering that I’d never heard of these artists before.  (John Romita Jr hasn’t joined the title yet.)

Mike Zeck.  I've heard of him :P

I can find less than twenty issues to Louis William’s credit, but he acquits himself well, and I wonder why he didn’t continue in the industry.  Below is an understated depiction of Matt’s radar sense, which makes for a beautiful, romantic page.

And I just like the execution and composition of this splash:

Finally, calling out an example of composition that confuses me:

For all the word balloons and center placement of the corporate bigwig in the foreground, the fine linework of the maid is what stands out to my eye.  (It’s got nothing to do with the outfit.  Serious.)  Considering how she plays absolutely no role in the rest of the comic, her prominent positioning makes no sense.  (Keith Pollard, the artist, did a three-year run on Thor right before Walt Simonson.  Learned something new.)

Regret buying? Yes

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Fine, Didn’t Suck for the last four issues

Daredevil

This marks the start of my non-Frank Miller 80’s Daredevil collection.  I’m not expecting great things here; I bought the Ann Nocenti run ages ago, and I don’t think I’ve re-read them since.  (I think I got it for the Typhoid Mary arc, which I'll talk more about when I get there.)

Daredevil 208

I tracked this issue down because Harlan Ellison wrote this, and the idea of a famous science fiction author scripting a comic sounded like such a novel (sorry!) thing back when I was in college (or whenever I bought this).  Daredevil is lured into a deathtrap, and spends the issue escaping.  I spent the entire read thinking how ridiculous it all was, but still found myself utterly charmed by its blatant impossibilities.  It helps that Daredevil continually calls out the injuries he is accumulating as he overcomes each successive obstacle.  That little splash of human frailty in a sea of inhuman physical accomplishment makes all the difference.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Nice

Daredevil 223

The Beyonder gives Matt his sight back in this Secret Wars II tie-in.  I kept thinking that this scenario would be treated so differently with today’s comic writing sensibilities.  If nothing else, it would have more than 6 pages devoted to the concept.  Still, it’s decently written by Denny O’Neil and Jim Shooter.  David Mazzucchelli does the art, and it’s hard to believe that this is the same artist that’s going to blow the roof off 4 issues later with Born Again; His work here is entirely average.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Nice

Daredevil 234-235

Mark Gruenwald and Danny Fingeroth write these two filler issues.  Completely forgettable, and they will no longer be wasting space in my collection.

Regret buying? Yes

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Stupid

Daredevil 236

Comments:

• What a wonderful surprise it is to open a comic and be greeted by the joy of Barry Windsor-Smith art.
• I think I’ve been spoiled by the modern day treatment of Black Widow as a badass who doesn’t take any crap from idiots.  There’s no way she would let a group of guys talk to her that way. 
• The most compelling bit of the story is the soldier’s nephew.  He stands there silently as the insane Jack Hazzard rants about patriotism, hands him a hand cannon, and goes off to get killed.  The final panels as he plays with the very loaded gun while fireworks shoot off on Independence Day are haunting.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? No

Rating: Fine

Daredevil 237  

Written by John Harkness, which sounded like a pseudonym.  A quick search confirmed that it was written by Steve Englehart.  He suggests that Ann Nocenti stole what would have been a regular run on the title from him, though judging from this issue, the readers didn’t really miss out on all that much.  Dropping.

Regret buying? Yes

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Stupid