A few notes on how to revitalize Daredevil...

Nu-Kingpin is the most AWEOME idea, but acknowledging the real-life gentrification would probably actually revitalize the series. So of course I voted for Nu-Kingpin. (Did you know he also has an irrational Burger King double-stacked cheeseburger obsession? And he often licks barbecue sauce off his fingers while giving long "evil" speeches about how he's going to destroy Daredevil. Also! He has gotten ahold of the old Kingpin's head, and he keeps it in his office and bounces ideas off of it -- using a more feminine voice when speaking for Kingpin Head.)

acknowledging the real-life gentrification would probably actually revitalize the series.

Dude - an actual idea! How'd that get in there?

last four options are gold

Also Typhoid Gary

that isn't cockney rhyming slang, is it

I actually wrote a page-long rant delineating, point by point, the stagnancy I felt the title had fallen into

BRIEF SUMMARY (‘cos I couldn’t let it go): coasting on unspoken “prestige” within Marvel line; characters all ciphers prodded into action by the plot; angst without urgency; inert miasma of elements derived from past glories; sundry et ceteras. Blah.

so they turned Daredevil into an X-book?

I can't speak with any authority, x-book, wise - once I found out that Cable hadn't really shot Prof. X in the x-ecutioner's song, I took my 12 year old sould elsewhere.

But yeah - unengaging tedium, like reading an illustrated outline of an idea rather than a comic.

How about: "Daredevil regains sight after being hit in the head with a radioactive brick, quits crimefighting, jerks off to internet pr0n a lot."

Wait, are we talking about current Daredevil, the comic by Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark? But...it's very good! It's, you know, Daredevil. Daredevil has had a pretty consistent tone since the early 80s, which is pretty rare, really. Who the hell would want it to be any different? Are you being ironic?

As someone who's only caught up to starting with the current series (like, #1 with Kevin Smith and whatever) I have to say that the last year and a half or so has really started to wear on me. I don't know if it's Brubaker or if the unending torrent of misery in this comic has just finally added up to too much. But it's one of those books where NOTHING. GOOD. EVER. HAPPENS. and if something sorta good happens you can bet Matt will find a way to be boneheadedly guilty about it while his friends try to talk sense into him. This business of Milla being driven insane by The Scarecrow (or whatever) was really the breaking point for me, so clearly abandoning any attempt at following through on the established plot in favor of just more abuse. (The Women In Refrigerators contingent, I'm sure, had a field day - I mean Daredevil is practically DEFINED by the fact that his girlfriends keep getting murdered, deranged, etc....)

btw i voted for foggy with fog powers

from recent aim chat:

MY FRIEND: What the fuck is he thinking with the treatment of Milla, really?
MY FRIEND: Like, this is going somewhere, right? Even Bendis has said like "Why are you such a prick to Milla?" to him at panels in public
ME: The best you can say about it is that it's consistent with the history of the comic but that's not much defense. Daredevil really needs a break from continuing torture and misery generally and specifically from the torture of everyone close to him. I don't know how you get that break plausibly into these plotlines, now that everyone knows who he is and all of his enemies are sadists with no compunction, but the book is going to be looked back on in the future as one long assault on the reader's sense of well-being. Paranoia and guilt are fine themes but THE GUY NEEDS A BREAK.
MY FRIEND: Is Brubaker trying to give Murdock that break with Dakota? I mean, I kind of get what Brubaker's going for that maybe Dakota's able to keep up with him way more effectively.
ME: Yeah, I mean, there's some potential in the Dakota story, someone who can actually call Matt out on his bullshit the way his Helper Friends always do, seems better than Milla going "oh, whatever you say Matt" or whatever. She had so much more personality when she first showed up, all completely wiped away, no wonder they decided to have her be driven insane, nothing else going on there anyway. The problem with the Dakota angle is that Matt is full of shit 90% of the time, so if Dakota actually does consistently call him out on his shit, she would eventually just say "fuck this, see you later dude, I'm going to go find someone who's not a basketcase." More likely we see the standard nerd fiction trope where a cool, confident, smart, attractive woman with a strong personality apparently has nothing better to do than to hang around nursing a goober out of his gooberness.

Daredevil was always more of a soap opera than most comics, Brubaker did work his way out of the corner Bendis had painted him into. I thought the follow up in prison and the bust out tracking down Vanessa worked pretty well. I know in general what happens to Milla, but I'm still a bout 20 issues behind the current storyline.

Part of the problem is that the Marvel Universe is caught in a serious cycle of miserabilism, even if you wanted to right the status quo, Murdock is still going to be wanted or have to fight aliens in the streets. Someone is going to have to tell the tale on what happened to the Hand and Elektra in the wake of the invasion, so maybe that is something that could be done in Daredevil.

If it was me and have no idea where Matt Murdock is at in the current series, but I would love to see a big kung fu epic co-starring Iron Fist, as I love that book and it seems that most Marvel zombies don't care.

Current storyline gives some hope in that direction....

Agreed 100% about the prison story, that was actually really great. And yeah, Bendis is partly to blame, because once you "out" a superhero it's really tough to put that genie back in the bottle, especially when, again, all of the superhero's enemies are ruthless killers. The thing is that I think Bendis's stories were on the whole much more interesting. There's been some good stuff to come out of Brubaker - the prison breakout, the Gladiator arc was fine, etc. Basically I like it when Daredevil is doing detective stuff and fighting crime and I roll my eyes when it's time to rub more salt in the wounds of his personal life. The guy just needs to recharge for a bit - after a while I just get numbed to everything.

RE: PERPETUA, ET AL.

It's not necessarily content I'm railing against (despite the tone of the poll), it's execution. I've caught up on the past few trades ever since I called it quits on the monthly (around #100) and find the book a drag, dullsville. "Angst without urgency" is a phrase I used earlier, and it's the one that summarizes my dissatisfaction, I suppose. There's no doubt that both Brubaker and Lark are excellent craftsmen (Lark's art kept me buying after the prison arc), but the book they produce I find consistently unengaging.

And I am someone who's willing to stand up for the Bendis/Maleev run, mind you, while fully acknowledging its sundry annoying tics.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

RE: THAT JOE KELLY-DEADPOOL ISH OF AMAZING SPIDER-MAN FROM A FEW MONTHS BACK (WHICH I JUST READ)

Lady Stilt-Man

Clever, that.

Joe Kelly is really fucking great and is almost convincing me to buy Spider-Man comics

ME-IFIED

Fred Van Lente is really ******* great and is almost convincing me to buy Spider-Man comics

fooey on Andy Diggle, this book headed straight down the tubes when he took over

yeah, i quit the instant ish 300 showed.

I dunno, I'm caught to date and I am still game to see where this is headed. The Hand has been around the marvel-u for a long time, but really you haven't seen the background of the organization. I think the one thing that is a bit striking on Diggles run is that he has co-written some of the issues with Anthony Johnson, who isn't a bad comic writer, but the style is much different on the issues he has worked on. They need to get Jock to do some artwork on the book, as they worked well on The Losers.

The guy that I think could be good writer for Daredevil is Joe Casey. Casey did a couple of comics called Codeflesh and a graphic novel called Nixon's Pals, which were about a super villain bailbondsman and a super villain parole officer that leads me to think that he could do a pretty good comic about a super hero lawyer.