daredevil!

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Okay there are a million comments on daredevil, but I can't find them. I read Born Again this weekend and it's the best superhero comic I've read in like two or three years! It reminded me a lot of the "great" american movies from the '70s. When did it originally come out?

It also seemed like the kind of comic that would seem less experimental if you weren't familiar with superhero comics. Mazzuchelli's drawings have a way of wavering in and out of abstraction (cf ben urich on the phone) and some of the panel croppings are as dislocated as in Eightball or Chris Ware (like the panel just of Kingpin's fist followed by a red action line panel and an entirely red panel).

― asdf, Tuesday, 9 May 2006 14:22 (nineteen years ago)

Also: the scene where the Avengers land in Hell's Kitchen was great and reminded me of the JLA cameos in Swamp Thing. The straitahead powerful iconic characters seem way more interesting in cameos than as protagonists.

And: I never thought I'd say this, but I really like patriotic comic books--not just the double dose from reading Cap in this and CW, but also, say, Preacher (but not the hellblazer arc where JC goes to america's unconscious) and I guess ultimates. I guess partly b/c these comics detach american patriotism from america and use it critically?

― asdf, Tuesday, 9 May 2006 14:33 (nineteen years ago)

i was just re-reading this. it's pretty cool but i'm not so sure about the whole super-patriot bad guy stuff! whatever his name is! seemed to go off the rails a bit.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 9 May 2006 14:49 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah that part seemed kind of stupid. "We are now entering badly satirical period comic!" Also, the pacing is interesting in how it switches from summary to scenes, but this makes it not work: like the end just arrives out of nowhere.

― asdf, Tuesday, 9 May 2006 14:59 (nineteen years ago)

yeah it totally shows its '80ness at that point.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 9 May 2006 15:08 (nineteen years ago)

(i'm not against '80ness in comics but there's a certain type of political '80s thing that feels a little too dated now).

but the first issue is great, especially the way it builds to the last, wonderfully melodramatic panel:

"it was a nice piece of work, kingpin... you shouldn't have signed it!"

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 9 May 2006 15:10 (nineteen years ago)

I love the way Miller handles the Avengers, too. Its basically the same way he handles Superman in the early issues of Dark Knight. But you rarely see that approach applied to Marvel characters - people never seem properly awed by them as they so obviously are by the pantheon of the JLA in the DCU. So its refreshing to see their iconic qualities emphasised for once.

"A soldier with a voice that could command a God, and does..."

― David N (David N.), Tuesday, 9 May 2006 16:39 (nineteen years ago)

When did it originally come out?

Fall/winter 1985-6. It occurred to me a couple of weeks back that that story is now 20 years old, and the issue of The Dark Knight Returns which came out in April of that year is too (the last issue of Miller's DD run overlapped with the first DKR). Twenty year old comics seemed so ancient back then....

― Vic Funk, Thursday, 11 May 2006 19:54 (nineteen years ago)

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