Daredevil

[Llava]

Character never did it for me before.  I didn't really care one way or the other about him.

Since I read 1602, though, I'm more interested.  In "Secret War" I was wishing they'd give him more badass screen time.

So for someone who knows Daredevil's basic story, and watched but loathed the movie, what's a good starting point?  If I go to a comic store tomorrow and pick up one or two Daredevil trades, which should they be?

My personal taste: I don't like most comics from the 80s or earlier.  Sorry, I just don't.  They were great stories, but the art was not engaging for the most part and the actual storytelling style was pretty bad.  90s and on, now we're talking.  Also, I don't have to follow every little omg detail of a story to enjoy it.  I can come in partway through- as long as I can pick up what's going on, I'm okay.

So.  RECOMMEND!

[Trippy]

Well if you skip the 80s you'll miss out on Frank Miller's run.

[Velorath]

The first issue of Brubaker's run just came out recently and has the potential to be pretty good.  Never been much of a DD fan though so can't really recommend much other than the Millar stuff.  Always thought it was funny how the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tied their origin into Daredevil's though.

[HaemishM]

Daredevil is my favorite comics character, thanks in no small part to Frank Miller's run.

Start here.

Your best bets? Get the Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller trades (3 volumes). Those are the best issues. Then Daredevil: Born Again show Miller's last work with Daredevil, where he basically tore the character down. As bad as that sounds, it really was a great story. From there, go to the D.G. Chicester run with art by Scott McDaniel. I don't think there's a trade on this one, but it had some good art by McDaniel and Lee Weeks, and even though it featured Daredevil's costume change (to the gray and red armor), it was still good writing. After that, the trades by Kevin Smith and the ones by Brian Michael Bendis are good. The Bendis stuff will start to get not so good towards the end (around Vol. 4).

He's a fantastic character in the right hands, but unfortunately, he's not always in the right hands. The run after Miller's initial run (after issue 191, written by Dennis O' Neil) is pretty damn good, but gets no respect. After Miller's second run, there's a long period of overwritten sophistry by Louise Simonson (who did introduce Typhoid Mary so not a complete loss), that doesn't improve until Chicester's run in the 270's or so.

[Llava]

I'm gonna say something here, and you'll probably ban me for saying it,  but I'm going to say it anyways:

Dark Knight Returns was not that good.  The art took away from it, and he falls into the same trap that McFarlane did with Spawn (McFarlane probably ripped it off from him) the "Let's stop all the action and story progression and spend a couple pages watching news people talking,  THAT'LL be fun!" device.

Additionally, the Batman he wrote isn't my Batman.  He interpreted the character differently, fine, whatever, but that wasn't the Batman that I imagine.

So I didn't really enjoy it all that much.  There were some good parts, no doubt, but altogether I've read far better.

So.

Should I still read this Frank Miller run?  I'm willing to give it a shot, but I don't feel that everything Miller puts down on paper is gold.  Is it more of the same as DK, but blind and in a red suit?  Is it SIGNIFICANTLY different?

Didn't catch any Kevin Smith trades while I was there yesterday, saw the Bendis ones.  I'm game to try his out, I just wanted to know if he falls into the same fourth-wall breaking, buffy-esque smartmouth dialogue that really doesn't belong in a comic like this.

[HaemishM]

Should I still read this Frank Miller run?  I'm willing to give it a shot, but I don't feel that everything Miller puts down on paper is gold.  Is it more of the same as DK, but blind and in a red suit?  Is it SIGNIFICANTLY different?

Yes, it is different. It's a lot less overblown. I love Dark Knight Returns (and ignore that a sequel ever came out), but the Daredevil stuff is just different. The character is much more sympathetic, by design. He's also not so much of a Nazi ass. The Elektra/Bullseye thing in #181 is just pure luv.

Didn't catch any Kevin Smith trades while I was there yesterday, saw the Bendis ones.  I'm game to try his out, I just wanted to know if he falls into the same fourth-wall breaking, buffy-esque smartmouth dialogue that really doesn't belong in a comic like this.

Like I said, the Bendis Daredevil run started really well. It doesn't have nearly the same "I'm so clever" dialogue as New Avengers or Spider-Man. It only started getting tiring about the same time Bendis started dabbling with the Avengers stuff, because the whole resolution to the "Daredevil is outed" story just drags towards the end, especially in the Decameron arc. Bendis started stretching stories out over 6 issues, whem many of them could/should have been done in 1. Right up until about issue 60, his Daredevil stuff is money.

I'll give a for-instance. In Miller's run, there is an issue, #170 or #171 I think. Daredevil goes into the sewer and fights a kind of Kingpin of the sewers type. Not a bad story, not a great one. Really more of a tangent story, with very little to advance the main character's arc. Miller took one issue. Bendis would have made it 6.

[Llava]

Cool, thanks for the advice.  Next time I'm down at the comic shop (probably next week) I'll probably pick up the Miller run. Maybe Bendis, depending on my mood.

On an unrelated note, I got Batman: Cataclysm yesterday, having never read the No Man's Land arc (I'm sort of a scattershot collector- I buy what I feel like, when I feel like) and wow.... is this ever some shitty art.  God awful.  I'm only a little bit in, but this art really looks like it'd be in a Mad Magazine parody of Batman rather than an actual Batman comic.  Thankfully, this book runs across several artists so I won't have to deal with it for long.  (Pretty crappy writing, too, actually.  Quote Alfred: "And while  you clean up crime in Gotham City-- -- I'll clean up the family silver!"  Egh.)

[Margalis]

I like Ann Nocenti's work on Daredevil. DD has been written pretty solidly over time. Having only one book probably has a lot to do with that.

[HaemishM]

Maybe it was Ann Nocenti's work on DD that I was thinking of when I said Louise Simonson. Whichever run came after Miller's last run was the one I really didn't like. The one that got Daredevil out of New York, on the road, and facing down Mephisto.

[Llava]

Daredevil VS Mephisto?

That's like Batman VS Dracula.




Oh yeah, they did that, too.

Well, still a bad idea.