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Sunday, March 02, 2008
Sunday Comics Talk
Bill Reed of Comics Should Be Good! and Sean T Collins (Sean, fix that link!) both take issue with my statement in my review of Kick Ass #1 that by and large high school kids don't read superhero comics. They both use themselves as examples. Like I said in the review if it was just one kid following superhero comics I'd believe it. But I just have to go on my anecdotal information here. If a group of high school age boys are going to bond over some geeky interest it's far more likely that it's going to be some on-line video game over something that requires you to flip through pages and read words.
Again, it feels like I'm just go on and on about what makes 3% of the actual book. It really speaks to Millar's talent as a writer that reviewers such as myself and others do this. Millar's stories run so smooth, a talent that's easy not to notice but you miss it when it's gone, that these odd little statements character make are the only bumps in the road. I'm still interested in Millar writing about a psychotic lunatic who thinks he can be a force of good. I'm sure with further issues I won't be distracted by the mentioning of comic books. The book will be beyond that but I just know we'll be in the middle of a good action scene when Millar will, who knows, probably make some childish joke about disabled people. Then two days later I'll still be thinking "seriously, did we need that?"
Daredevil #105 is the first superhero comic book I've read in a real long where the villain just straight out won. When it comes to chronicling a character's inner turmoil Ed Brubaker cannot be touched and him writing Matt Murdock is like giving Michaelangelo the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In Mr. Fear Brubaker has a character who can just torture Murdock's mind, appropriate given that physical torture has also been addressed during this storyline.
Reading this month by month I felt it didn't live up to the past two storylines, both very good. Reading it all together I realize that since the story requires Murdock/Daredevil to be passive so much of the time there's a momentum in the action that's not going to be there. Now I see how there's a parallel to how Murdock must suffer in silence while his wife loses her mind with the fact that Daredevil must take a back seat as Mr. Fear and The Hood's soldiers tear up his first love, Hell's Kitchen. For a character who releases his feelings by conducting acts of superheroism this just kills him. Near the end of the story he has the thug Ox tied up and just releases all that has built up inside of him in the cruelest form his ethics allow him. But with the issue that came out last week we see Mr. Fear exploit the contradiction central to Daredevil's life. If he's going to be The Man Without Fear then how can he truly care for those around him? Living a life of law and a life of vigilantism is the external version of Murdock's duality. Brubaker just showed us how deep that duality can reside internally, where all superheroes have their weaknesses.
Think of the last few scenes of #105. Murdock, once one of the biggest ladykillers in the Marvel U, sees his wife being committed to a mental hospital. Lance Cranston a.k.a. Mr. Fear has this hottie in his jail cell that's under the same mind control as everyone else in his path. He's about fuck, really a sci-fi version of rape but it's not like this character cares, while Murdock walks away from the woman he loves. She is rendered powerless because she fell for the that famous New York attorney, the one with all the rumors about him.
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