For the last year or so, Daredevil has flourished under the direction of writer Mark Waid and a bevy of art talent well-suited to the character. But this annual is the product of Alan Davis in both the script and the art, with no involvement from any creative talent from the ongoing series. On that note, your mileage with the annual may vary based on how invested you are in what Waid has been doing.
Written & Illustrated by Alan Davis
Marvel Tales by Alan Davis Part 2
. The return of a menace from the past sets Daredevil, Doctor Strange and the Clan Destine on a collision course!
. Continues in this month’s Wolverine Annual #1!
Annuals can be something of an enigma in the comic book world. Sometimes they continue a story arc or flesh out events from the ongoing, sometimes they include reprint material to pad things, and sometimes they have nothing to do with what the ongoing issues have been doing. There are no hard and fast rules about what the content of an annual has to be. In fact, there only seems to be 2 guarantees when you pick an annual issue up off the shelves: you’ll get more pages than you get from an ongoing and you’ll pay $4.99 for them.
Although Davis’ Daredevil story has virtually nothing to do with Waid’s ongoing, he does get one thing right: he gets the tone of Matt Murdock’s current demeanor. In the opening sequence, Daredevil swings through New York City singing a song with a smile on his face. He spends the rest of the issue investigating crimes and dodging danger with a cocksure grin and with plenty of quips at his disposal, leaving the dour Shadowland Daredevil days far behind. Truthfully, Davis’ Matt Murdock feels like Waid’s Matt Murdock.
But the plot of the issue really kicks into gear when the ClanDestine chase a robot they believe is possessed by one of their own through the streets of New York City in an attempt to try and corral it. It’s when Davis inserts these brainchildren of his that the writing gets rough. Daredevil takes a backseat to characters that haven’t been relevant in several years and they aren’t given much of a proper introduction here. While I was familiar with them, unfamiliar readers will likely feel lost or lose interest. The ClanDestine interact with one another, saying things that only they would understand. Davis doesn’t really find a way to tie them in to Daredevil’s world.
Davis makes a lot of references to the fact that the ClanDestine cannot be classified as either heroes or villains, but that they operate in their own circles. The problem is that their machinations end up causing a lot of chaos and destruction in the order of the city. Davis tries to make the point several times that the ClanDestine live in a moral grey area, but we only ever see them as an inconvenience.
Alan Davis could be considered a Hall-of-Fame artist in the comics world, and truthfully he hasn’t lost his ability to draw technically impressive characters and scenery. His rendering of Daredevil’s signature skyscraper acrobatics is as captivating as any. There are times where the action gets away from Davis, though, and the sequence of a fight scene becomes a little hard to place. Daredevil is up against foes with the means to counter his sensory abilities and utilize mysticism, both of which weren’t always depicted in the clearest manner. There’s one scene where Daredevil leaps to a flagpole, bends it, and then appears to launch himself back onto the building that he just jumped from. It was unclear where he was in relation to the adversary that was chasing him or what he was hoping to accomplish. And speaking of Daredevil’s senses, radar vision is present, but is never used with the ingenuity seen from the artists on Waid’s current run. Those artists changed Daredevil’s landscape, where Davis’ radar rendering is little more than an alternate color palette and less detail. It’s not as breathtaking.
At the end of the day, because the ClanDestine haven’t been around in the Marvel Universe in several years, this issue needed to do more to make them feel relevant and re-introduce them to the Marvel 616. Instead, Davis keeps them at arms length from the usual cast of Daredevil and they are kept at a distance from the reader, as a consequence. Because we are purposely kept from knowing the true circumstances behind the ClanDestine’s robotic possession predicament, the reader is left in the cold, and Daredevil himself begins to feel like an afterthought.
This annual could have capitalized on all the current Eisner success of Waid’s Daredevil, but instead ended up letting Alan Davis do whatever he wanted. I guess that’s fine, if you’ve been clamoring to read the ClanDestine somewhere again. Readers that want more of what Waid has been doing need not apply.
Final Verdict: 5.0 – Completely skippable, if you’re following Waid’s run on Daredevil.
