MARVEL MASTERWORKS: DAREDEVIL vol. 1 DAREDEVIL #1-11 - all in slightly greasy-looking colour for a... OMG! The DD I particularly like is by Miller, O Neil, Nocenti, Bendis, Janson, Mazzuchelli, Romita Jnr, Maleev, Brubaker, Lark and co - in other words, the stuff that came after the Shooter/McKenzie darkening up of the character in the later 70s. Mention to Steve Gerber, as well, for the Dark Spectre storyline late in his tenure - once hed removed the stock science fiction elements that were cluttering up the book, left over from Gerry Conway. (And should anyone doubt my belief in the vision of Gene Colan - dont. In a way, hes one of two definitive DAREDEVIL periods...) So...should I be such a big fan of this hardback presenting the character in its infancy and raw development? Oh, you bet I should. Favourite stories: The Origin of Daredevil by Lee and Bill Everett (and Ditko and any possibly other helpers), Killgrave, the Unbelievable Purple Man drawn by Joe Orlando and Vince Colletta and In Mortal Combat with...the Submariner drawn by Wally Wood. (From #1, 4 and 7.) Each are defining moments, not to mention among the best structured stories. Origin of Daredevil: Great electric artwork by Bill Everett. (Although Bill had quite a help in the layouts.) Everetts panel of Battlin Jack Murdock striding along holding his head high on page 9 after just signing the Fixers dotted line (in the very centre of the page) reminds me of Kurtzmans Goodman Beaver in an offhand kinda way. AJAX ATOMIC LABS RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS - DANGER - thats what the swerving truck that gives Matt a facefull of super-powers says on it. (Kind of Laugh Out Loud time!) At least Frank Miller gave it a motorcycle motorcade visual to offset the fatuousness of this crucial element in his version of the origin. Killgrave: The best of the three efforts by Lee in conjunction with Joe Orlando and Vince Colletta. The Purple Man is cheerful - and chilling. Thats one scary power. At one stage Karen is standing on the side of a building ready to leap. *Yeesh* Submariner: Here Daredevil does that Daredevil thing of battling a foe that is insanely out of his reach in terms of raw power - a pattern that we see again in that McKenzie/Miller issue against the Hulk - and even in the one single Englehart-written issue against Klaw. DD, just as much as Cap, plunges in headfirst, hoping he will find a way. (Trivial reference - when Daredevil OUTWITS the Grand Master in GIANT-SIZE DEFENDERS #3 - that rules. Thank you, Gerber. I like Matt kept away from fantasy and cosmic stuff nearly all of the time, but that issue had a good pay-off and is also my favourite DEFENDERS story of all.) Winning Namors respect. I like it. He goes: I have fought the Fantastic Four, the Avengers and other super-powered humans, but none has been more courageous than he, the most vulnerable of all. Wally Wood rules! All the purely Wally Wood strips do artistically. And, apart from Everett, they are the best-told and best-looking strips in the collection. The Mysterious Masked Matador (#5 by Wood) is a runner-up for best-stories. The art by Orlando and Colletta is the trickiest to talk about and get right. Colletta is at his most appealing in some panels and at his utterly most deadwood-looking in others. Often with scenery. By the Killgrave story, Joe Orlando is starting to warm up. The sequence of the yellow and black DD climbing a tree to escape the crowds under Killgraves sway looks brilliant. Everything about this third Orlando outing is the best of the three. In #2, The Evil Menace of Electro, you can almost see the draw-strings of the material. Presumably, Lee scripted small batches of pages as Orlando got them in to the office. (I dunno. I dont know how they worked exactly.) But Stan does call DD muscular an unusual number of times. And hes got a thing about hair tonic. Just in general. Hair tonic this, hair tonic that! Edwoodville: the rocket that DD manages to come back down in that lands in Central Park in the Electro story. O-kay - its as dumb as dumb. So is a lot of this stuff. Often, Lees use of Matts powers is inane and doesnt even make sense. Look - its the charm of the era. Theres almost something crackers in every panel. If you dont grok it, perhaps the Income Tax Act is for you. Now, the actual scripting, I have to say, is really very clumsy. I was surprised to what degree. What Stan does is pump his enthusiasm for the naked concept of DD into the mix, but hes tripping over his feet as he does so. Especially on Electro and The Owl, Ominous Overlord of Crime (from #3.) (I think of the flow FANTASTIC FOUR with Kirby and SPIDERMAN with Ditko has, and conclude that Stan wrote better scripts with a constant collaborator of the same monthly signature - and also that his writing-style evolved through out the 60s. He used to tell a lot of short fright pieces very well - then he grew the legs to tell the ongoing epics in the above-mentioned - and THOR!) In the Owl story, the Owl comes across quite effectively, despite the pure cliche of everything. And the story itself, which is poorly structured, still gives you a good, strong sense of intrigue. It just doesnt pay off at the end. To me, the parts are greater than the sum. In Trapped by the Fellowship of Fear, Wood displays a good knowledge of Ditko fighting-kinetics. Also true of the Matador and Submariner stories, but made more visible in Fellowship following the use of the Ox from the Enforcers - or SPIDERMAN #14. A howler for me: Sue Storm sees Karen Page at the window of the lawyer-office and thinks in one of those sometimes extinct-feelin thought balloons: My! What an attractive hair do! Ill have to TRY that sometime. Stan, even at his most clumsy here, gives us the flavour and tactile nature of the powers DD wields. This I really appreciate. You get all the stuff with DD thinking to himself what hes doing - and interpreting accelerated heartbeats (bogus but something different - something to set you apart from Spidey and Johnny Storm.) But also a description of events that you know he cant see in the same way we can looking at the information presented to us in these comic-page panels. Hes repeating everything but hes describing his world. No-one thinks in this pattern in RL - but this is a seminal 60s piece of comic-wonder, so it really is fine. Thats exactly how the books of that time told the story. Wally Woods script for While the City Sleeps (#10) keeps the tone nicely, but is a heck of a lot less corn-soaked than all the Lee material. And you get some interestingly different-sounding lines: When DD is batting some thugs around, he says: ...And remember as you lie there, politics makes strange bedfellows. Bob Powells pencil-work on #9-11, all inked by Wood, is decent. #9s That He May See set in a castle in Lictenbad is particularly effective. What else ?: Yes, I prefer the all-red devil-suit to the yellow and black job. The soap aspects between Matt, Foggy and Karen are as lame as a dog - but kind of fun. Getting married was the BIG thing. Getting engaged, first. So very quaint. Yeah, I loved the darn thing. Im a Daredevil fan and it was written for. And drawn. And collected.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 00:18:17 +0000
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