Poor Matt Murdock has had a rough time lately. His girlfriend was murdered (again), his identity was sorta-but-not-exactly revealed, he went to jail, he broke out jail, another one of his girlfriends went insane, he was more or less forced into leadership of a crazy ninja cult, he was possessed by an entity of pure evil, and then he experienced some sort of spiritual death… thing. Did I miss anything? Yeah, I figured that was about it. Ladies and gentlemen, Daredevil needs a clean slate and a new creative team to start another great decade of comics with. Sure, Andy Diggle has Daredevil: Reborn coming out relatively soon, but who should take the reigns of the Man Without Fear’s ongoing series once Matt Murdock’s life has returned to something resembling the traditional status quo for the first time in nearly ten years? Follow the cut to find out my opinion on the matter.
Now, I don’t actually know whether or not Daredevil: Reborn will leave the Daredevil franchise with a clean new start, but I fully believe that it should. The title has been great ever since Brian Michael Bendis joined early in the second volume, but there has been a slight weakness in the title’s reliance on its serial nature. The later half of Bendis’ run wouldn’t work as well without the first, the beginning of Brubaker’s run is strengthened by reading Bendis’, Diggle’s run is easier to get into after reading Brubaker’s… you get the picture. Sure, it wasn’t by any means impossible for a new reader to jump in with a new writer, but there were often gaps that needed to be filled in by reading between the lines or by consulting Wikipedia. I by no means find that to be an inherent flaw in the title; comics — and superhero comics in particular — are very much a serial medium, and the “passing-of-the-torch” aspect is extremely pleasing when it is pulled off well, as it was with the Daredevil ongoing. Eventually, though, you have to reach a resolution and start over again, or else you end up with the fiasco that was the X-Men franchise until the early 2000s. As such — and because Shadowland was a bit of a disappointment — I think Diggle needs to just give us his best with Reborn and then hand the title over to someone else.
The question, then, is who to hand it over to. Sure, we could look for another big name like Ed Brubaker or Brian Michael Bendis, but I think now is the perfect time to let somebody onto the book that hasn’t had a chance to write such a high-profile title. My pick? Mike Benson. For those of you that aren’t familiar with this up and coming writer, nearly all of Benson’s published comics work has been with Marvel — though he had a nice two-parter in Streets of Gotham at the beginning of the year. So far nearly all the comics he has worked on have been minis or one-shots, with his lengthiest run so far being his stay on Moon Knight after Charlie Huston left the book. It’s time that he moves on up.
I’m sure I don’t need to remind you readers of the over-saturation of Marvel’s output with Deadpool titles. It’s starting to dwindle, but we’re still dealing with the Merc With A Mouth being in far too many titles. Just when I was deriding Marvel for focusing on the character more than the quality of the writing, though, they released Benson’s Suicide Kings mini, which was easily the best Deadpool-related title to be released since Cable & Deadpool. Unlike certain writers, Benson didn’t rely on cheap gimmicks to get the job done; rather, he wrote an actual Deadpool story, and he wrote it damn well. From that point on I kept my eye on him, looking out for anything new with his name on it as well as looking for his earlier work. As fun as Suicide Kings was, though, it paled in comparison to Luke Cage: Noir. I’m probably one of the few to have read it, but I thought that mini was incredibly well done, and I made it a gift to a couple of friends who ended up liking it just as much as I did. Now he has been writing Deadpool: Pulp, and as much as it pains me to be supporting a Deadpool series in these dark times, it really is worth the read. With those last two he was joined by co-writer Adam Glass, and if his involvment is part of their success then I welcome him aboard too.
Continued belowBenson’s writing has that gritty feel that the Daredevil ongoing knows and desires. No matter how he adapts his style to fit the characters he is working with, it still has this dark pulse behind it that is — to sound like Madrox for a second — as noir as it gets. And honestly, what Marvel title — besides, you know, the Noir minis — is more “noir” than Daredevil? I get the feeling — and I could be wrong, in which case I apologize to Mr. Benson — that Daredevil is exactly the sort of title that Benson wants to be writing, and I would be more than willing to see what he could do with it. Fresh writers bring fresh ideas, and Benson’s resume proves that those ideas would most likely be of solid quality. The only negative mark I can give him is for his Moon Knight, but even that was more alright than it was bad. I think the few negative qualities of that run can be attributed to a tentativeness stemming from a then unknown writer working on an obscure character’s ongoing. I don’t know about you, but I would be terrified of cancelation in that situation, and that would probably affect my writing. Again, though, Benson’s Moon Knight was by no means bad, and everything else he has done has been either good or great, and he deserves another chance at an ongoing.
To match a lower-profile writer, I looked around for an equally lesser-known artist, and the first to come to mind was Matthew Southworth. You may recognize his name from the very awesome Stumptown, which made our list of Most Overlooked Title of 2010 last week. As well as his great work on Stumptown, Southworth filled in on The Amazing Spider-Man a couple of times to help artists such as Michael Lark and Paul Azaceta make deadlines, as well as one of the stories in the recent Batman 80-Page Giant. Beyond that, he hasn’t done much, and that’s a shame considering how solid his linework is. His style is similar to Daredevil veteran Lark’s, but unique enough that it would clearly be a visually different book were he to join up. I suppose this would mean that the next few issues Stumptown would be even more spread out than the first four were, but I think it would be worth it to see the currently under-exposed Southworth work on such a high-profile gig.
Longtime Multiversity readers will know me to be a huge Daredevil fan. I wouldn’t throw my favorite character to the wolves and just suggest the first two names to come to mind. Even if it isn’t on this imaginary project, I want to see both Benson and Southworth get more recognition in the industry and become names that won’t just prompt an “Oh yeah, what did he do again?” Daredevil won’t be free until Reborn ends (if it even is free after that), but until then you have my two cents, Marvel. Make it happen.
