This week brings the second issue of Waid’s latest run on Daredevil, and once again I am left underwhelmed. Waid’s newer take on the character – specifically, the removal of the darker, street-level elements in favor of more light-hearted fanfare – has left me wanting. Instead of embracing the new, I find myself turning to two omnibi on my shelf to satiate my love of the character and the stories that turned the character from a member of the Marvel U into a favorite of mine. These two hardcover tomes, to me, are the modern day equivalent of the Ten Commandments of Daredevil; a veritable guide on how the character should be written and what kind of stories are worthwhile to be told.
Those two omnibi are: Daredevil by Brian Michael Bendis, volumes one and two.
Check behind the cut for some thoughts on his epic run.
Daredevil is a character who, for all my comic reading years, has always been one of the more tragic characters at Marvel. Birthed in a radioactive substance, Matthew Murdock grew up Catholic in a world that reinforced education above violence, yet he found himself thrust in the middle of the two, struggling to find the appropriate balance between the law and his own enforcement of what he felt was right. Thus was the Daredevil quandry: how much could Matt really do? And at what cost to himself? It’s this simple formula, immersed in the lush and ever shifting dark landscape of Hell’s Kitchen, that have resulted in some of the greatest stories – let alone ones centering around Daredevil – that I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading.
So if Frank Miller created the Daredevil that we all know and love with the grit, the grime and the whole “my city, she whispers to me of pain” shtick, then it was Brian Bendis who refined that for the modern age, effectively setting the stage for the creators that followed. Coming after short runs from Kevin Smith, Joe Quesada and David Mack (and a curiously never discussed run by Bob Gale), Bendis took his experience from his indie work (Jinx), his previous for-hire work (Sam and Twitch) and his own creator-owned dialogue-filled work (Powers) and mixed it all together for one of the most celebrated Daredevil runs since the Miller run that inspired it.
Pitting Daredevil against a tough judicial system and an even tougher gallery of rogues, Bendis kept Daredevil low to the ground and heavily immersed in the social landscape of Hell’s Kitchen. Drawing heavily on Matt’s faith and strict morality, we followed him through a series of sharply written arcs in which Matt frequently fought for justice in and out of the court room, taking down crime to a colossal extent against the backdrop of his identity being leaked to the press. Bendis’ Daredevil was trying to save everyone and himself at the same time, constantly being forced to weigh his life and livelihood against the lives of others both close to him and not, resulting in an intense morality play written over 50+ issues. It was a battle fought on all fronts, and – to put it bluntly? – it was amazing.
It’s amazing to me now to look at how much Bendis used to play around with various storytelling techniques that others are only starting to experiment around. Bendis would often derail the story off of the main narrative in order to really show the world that Daredevil lived in. One of the earlier arcs (that featured Terry Dodson on art) would flash between the “main story” of Matt defending his client, the former White Tiger, and the “side story” which helped illuminate other elements of the main story. What was interesting here was that Bendis was actively trying to make the Marvel universe a more believable place to the same extent that he had written Powers, which was a book featuring superheroes that were still adamantly subjected to the law – an element that is often lost in most superhero stories, in which the police are usually footnotes and/or cannon fodder. Bendis took his time on Daredevil to reconnect readers to the long lost common folk of the Marvel Universe, who have so little a part in the grand opera of events. Daredevil’s purpose here really was to be a hero of the people, not just someone off to fight a cosmic battle every other week against abstract entities and gauntlet weilding madmen. There is no Marvel book really like it today anymore, not even the ones that Bendis is writing, and that lost element is such a shame.
Continued below
There is no greater story in the entire run, though, than Bendis’ second to last arc, Decalogue. Decalogue is perhaps the shining moment of the entire run, in which the entire arc focuses on a support group who have had to deal with the fallout in their own lives of Daredevil’s behavior. This was perhaps the pinnacle of ideas for Bendis, fully realizing every tiny element he had ever played with in combining grandiose superheroics with street-level drama. It also featured arguably the finest pay-off for Bendis’ entire run, which had been full of high points throughout. It’s the kind of story that I often use as an example against the average “random angry internet commentator” who doesn’t like Bendis’ writing; Decalogue proves Bendis’ talent as a master plotter, a writer with a sharp ear for dialgoue, and a man absolutely deserved of the current acclaim that he has. It’s certainly a double-edged sword, because I’m not sure Bendis could ever be better than his work on Decalogue, but it’s certainly the comic that I hold up every version of Daredevil to – and none have ever come close to the emotional and visual impact of the arc.
(Which, really, is just me saying: if you take none of what I say in this Friday Rec to heart, at least go read Decalogue.)
Finally, let me also note here that I am not opposed to change. If Marvel and Mark Waid see fit to redefine Daredevil as this more happy-go-lucky type vigilante character who borderline lives in a comedy and kisses mob bosses potential wives just because, then so be it. That’s fine for them and anyone who enjoys it, but that’s not the Daredevil that I know, nor is that the Daredevil that I love. I prefer the Daredevil who lives in the dirt and the grime, the troubled character who has regular crises of faith and is frequently given the short end of the stick, allowed brief moments of hope before having those dreams shattered before his very eyes (no pun intended, of course).
I mean, it’s not like Bendis didn’t have moments of humor:
He just found better ways to work them into the story.
To put it simply: I like reading stories in which Daredevil is the underdog, struggling to make it from arc to arc. I can appreciate a “happier Daredevil” given the fallout of Shadowland, but I’d rather just read the books I already own rather than invest in the new story, because the stories of the past – and specifically, Bendis’ work – have defined the Daredevil that should exist. I hate to be someone living in the past, but as dark as the world of Bendis’ run is, it’s a much nicer place to be.
