Written by Mark Waid
Illustrated by Paolo Rivera and Marcos MartinTHIS SUMMER, THE DEVIL IS REBORN. RENEWED. RESSURECTED. With new enemies, new friends…and that same old ‘grinnin’ in the face of hell’ attitude, The Man Without Fear is back in a double-sized first issue and leading with his face! Mark Waid (AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, Irredeemable, RUSE) joins neo-legendary artists Paolo Rivera and Marcos Martin for a new spin on Daredevil that will leave you gasping for air. Having turned his world upside over the past several years, Matt Murdock realizes that justice may not be blind to his past and villains may not be the only ones looking for answers. Bring it on. If Matt Murdock could see what he was doing… he’d be terrified.
Daredevil is my favorite Marvel character, and has been for while at this point. Still, when comics super-scribe Mark Waid was announced as the newest writer to tackle ol’ hornhead, I was a bit worried. Not that I had any doubt about Waid’s writing ability, of course; rather, I was concerned with his insistence that his Daredevil was going to be more jovial and generally fun than the foreboding figure we’ve come to know. Of course, I understand that Daredevil was cracking wise back in the 60s and 70s, but the grim and gritty stories are the ones that I treasure. Was I right to worry, or did Waid prove my fears to be misplaced? Follow the cut and see.
Mark Waid likes “figuring out” superheroes, if you can call it that. When he worked on The Flash and Impulse back in the 90s, Waid went about “explaining” how the speedsters’ powers worked, and created the Speed Force. In this issue we see something similar: Waid, through Matt Murdock’s voice, explores exactly how Daredevil’s “radar sense” works. By interspersing this throughout the issue, Waid is able to free us from the burden of being lectured to, and instead makes the topic not just interesting but fun, as he invites us to join him in this bit of whimsy. He is also able to demonstrate it through ways other than simply “telling” us; by working closely with artists Paolo Rivera and Marcos Martin, Waid is able to slip in various ideas without actually writing it and disturbing the flow of his story. Writers and artists both, take a major note of this.
But, as neat as it is to speculate about Daredevil’s powers, that’s not the highlight of this comic. What gives it the edge is the marriage of its exciting breakneck pace with a good deal of content. As I reached the end of the wedding scene, I was almost surprised to find that there were more pages. Within that one scene, Waid had packed more action than you normally find in a single issue… and the issue wasn’t even halfway through. From there, Waid took the story to a courtroom scene, to a casual rooftop confrontation, and finally to a night on patrol (with a cliffhanger, of course), but not once did it feel like “oh, well the cool part’s over.” Every scene was equally exciting, only Waid channeled that excitement in different ways. The energy of this book did not relent even once, and the train that is Mark Waid kept going at full steam from start to finish without even a hint of feeling desperate for time or space. That, my friends, makes for a damn well-written comic book.
Waid isn’t alone in this endeavor, though. Amazing Spider-Man artists Paolo Rivera and Marcos Martin — though that certainly isn’t the sole claim to fame for either of them — have joined up with the former member of the “Brand New Day” brain trust for this series, and both are at the top of their game. Rivera handles the main story with inker Joe Rivera, and one can instantly see that the two were meant for this title. The lines they place are bold, but no more are drawn than are needed to define a figure. The result is something with the definite solidity of the iconic superhero look, while allowing tons of freedom for the characters to move and breathe — something incredibly important for a comic featuring an acrobatic character like Daredevil. More importantly, though, both Rivera and Martin are masters of storytelling. Unlike a lot of comics, you don’t have to consciously move your eye across the page and make sense of what you’re reading. Rivera and Martin do it for you. Look at that page in the second story where Matt wakes up from his dream. It’s almost impossible to study it and pick up on the relation of the panel-to-panel transitions, simply because it guides you along so incredibly well. Even something half as good would be an example of great sequential art. Great news: every page of this comic is at least half as good as that one, and almost all are even better than that ratio.
Above all else, this is a fun comic. An incredibly fun one. The combined strength of Waid, Rivera and Martin was enough to keep me grinning from ear to ear from page to page — not in a “oh, that’s funny” sense (though that did happen a few times), but more along the lines of “oh man, this is great.” If the first issue is any indication, this new volume of Daredevil is going to be exciting, entertaining, and — say it with me one more time — fun. And you know what? I’m fine with that. Sure, I like me some Miller-inspired darkness in my Daredevil comics, but this book’s stellar team have convinced me that they don’t always have to be that way. I don’t like going to either extreme while judging first issues, but man, this was just great. The icing on the cake? It’s perfectly accessible to new readers, so you have no reason to not buy it.
Final Verdict: 9.0 – Buy it!
