Hey Anons, long time no see! It's been a few months, but when we left off at Misty had finally caught Purple Man after ruining his convoluted plot to take over the New York underground. But before we move on, let's step back a bit to something I kept saying I'd eventually do, but slacked on.
Time for Bendis's Daredevil.
As we all know, whenever people ask if Bendis ever wrote something good, his defenders usually say "Alias, Daredevil, and Ultimate Spider-Man".
We already read Alias, so let's see if Daredevil is good, or if it's all just nostalgia.
Sadly, my network is total ass so, rather than doing the 4-6 issues we did before the Holidays, we're gonna have to cut it at 3 a night.
Oh shit, he has the power to turn Daredevil into a kid's drawing!
I get the feeling that last few pages was just Bendis taking the piss at more classic comics. And yet, hindsight being 20/20, I think I can say I'll stick with my 80's cheese.
>all that text
It's almost like he knows what he'll be famous for...
I'm sorry, I've played to much Metal Gear, so whenever they start going on about "The Fury", all I can think of is astronauts with flamethrowers.
Since we haven't read Daredevil before, I'll just say who the side characters are, for the benefit of the few people who don't know.
Ben Urich is a Daily Bugle writer/reporter who knows Daredevil's secret identity.
What, I'm not doing full backstories, or we'd be here forever, especially with my shitty network.
Maybe it's because I don't have an eye for art, but all I can think of while reading this is "Are we supposed to think they're on drugs?"
Before you ask, no, this isn't the middle of an arc. You're supposed to be able to pick up this and read on.
>"The police have made it very clear that they don't care."
>"They don't care?"
>"They don't care."
And based on the silence in this thread, nobody else does either.
I'm not reading Daredevil currently, what does Ben do now? He still running a newspaper?
Not to go full "It's current year", but how is it that Marvel can still give JJ the Hitler stache in 2017, and nobody whines about it?
Credit where it's due, I actually had to look up who the fuck Leap-Frog was, unlike some of the other supervillains who Bendis shits on.
Like The Wizard.
>all that cigar smoke
Somewhere, Quesada is crying, and has no idea why.
And suddenly, JJ is looking almost bishie.
>random Thor flying in the first panel
>literally nobody is even reacting to it
I mean, I know Superheroes are common in New York, but you'd think someone would at least make a smartass comment on the flying blonde guy.
So, is anyone actually here reading with me, or am I just snarking in the breeze?
I"m reading user :)
Seriously, the fuck is with this art style? These faces are horrifying!
I suppose I should've started the thread in my daytime hours.
In my defense, 12 hour shift.
If you don't get what this is a reference to, read Frank Miller's Daredevil run now.
Have a bump
God damn, his wife is a sound sleeper. He's waking up yelling, the phone's ringing, and she doesn't even MOVE.
Ah crap, I messed up the phone trick, didn't I? Thanks Preacher user.
How long do you think Ben has to wait there, until the kid decides the commercial break is over?
It's David Mack trying to do his best Dave McKean. Except McKean is a legend and Mack is a tracing hack.
I make this joke every time, but seriously, who's making these Spider-Man shirts in-universe? Someone's making money off him, and I find it hard to believe nobody ever did a one-shot with that.
>Ah crap, I messed up the phone trick, didn't I?
It happens sometimes.
So what you're saying is I should return these copies of Kabuki?
No, I didn't really buy Kabuki.
I REALLY hope "Pond Scum" is just a sarcastic pen name.
That kid has one hell of a thousand yard stare. Or is that just the art being shit again? It's hard to tell.
I'm reading, user.
Finally got a coworker into reading comics last week since he was asking about them for a while.
I pushed him towards Waiddevil, and now he's hooked on whatever DD he can find.
Well, I'll start a new thread in the afternoon, and hopefully I'll get it right this time.
Everyone, turn off Google.
Do you have ANY idea who Crusader Rabbit is?
I honestly don't know when/if he traced anything in Kabuki but his Marvel work is horribly phoned in, and as an aspiring artist it pisses me off to no end.
Why'd you start with Waid, if I may ask? I'm a minority in that I actually LIKE it, but that doesn't really give him a good idea of what Daredevil is usually like.
Hell, part of why I like it is because of how different it is from most Daredevil stories. Right up until the end, I was waiting for the reveal that Matt's happy attitude was just him trying to fake it after all the crap that happened to him ever since... well, since this run, actually.
Sure. Goodluck
Wait, so you're actually trying to do comics, and not the generic "I've got a story I've been working on" that people do for years?
Shit, good luck.
Ben, I get you don't want to get beaten with truncheons for asking stupid questions, but surely there's ways around that besides questioning them in the damn shower.
Okay X-user, you say this guy traces?
Where the fuck did he trace a man with no nipples?
Yes, I'm running out of stupid things to nitpick at.
Serious question. Cape comics frequently have normal people dismissively refer to superheroes/supervillains as "capes" or "spandex" and the like.
How man people in Marvel actually dress in capes and spandex/leotards now?
Yeah, I'm actually planning to start a webcomic next year. No shilling tho, I don't want my public persona to be associated with the hacker known as X-user, because, y'know, all the pirated comics and shit.
But thanks haha, I'll need it.
...
I know what you're thinking, and this ISN'T Karen Page. Kevin Smith killed her off earlier in this volume. She's just some unrelated blonde woman working the desk.
Waiddevil was my first exposure to the character. Didn't want to scare him off with going too traditional or avant garde on art.
Also, no way in hell I was loaning my HC Premiere sleevecase Man Without Fear out so haphazardly.
I guess that's supposed to be Echo? She was in the last arc (that we're not doing).
Fair point. Bendis doesn't exactly start well (as you can tell from my whining), and Brubaker's run leaves too many questions if you start from there. Now that you've got him hooked, are you gonna let him fend for himself, or do you have something else he should look for?
Do any artists here know if the watercolor effects here look good to people who know what they're doing? Because all I see is when I kept screwing up painting when I was 8.
...
I was about to make a joke about "How much experience could a random elementary school teacher POSSIBLY have with this?" until I remembered just how many freaking supervillains are in New York. If only half of them have kids, that's probably at least one entire school filled.
Welcome back to business.
Glad to see this coming back.
Probably can't/won't stay up for the whole thing, but I'll start in and bump a bit as I go.
Seriously, what the hell are these faces trying to express?
>Stan Lee Presents
You should have never left, marquee emeritus.
Jesus, those are some Ramos grade feet going on.
Slow and steady's fine with me. A trade a day was nice, but it is what it is.
Working two jobs over the holidays just ate into time I could post. Fortunately for the storytimes, the temp job finally ended, so I can probably finish up, and before Iron Fist like I hoped!
The kicker there is that there have already been Furys at Marvel, with Nick, his LMDs, and The Fury from Captain Britain.
Nick Fury: The Man on the Wall would be a much more palatable idea to me if he dressed like a cosmonaut and tried to murder things with fire.
We mostly started it because of Bendis's abysmal pacing during New Avengers, but once we're finished with this, we're done with him until... shit, until I have to go through Civil War II.
Man, Bendis sure is Bendising the fuck out this autistic kid's dialogue.
We are now going into Bendis's third Daredevil issue, and Daredevil has yet to actually show up outside this kid's fantasies.
In my defense, the only Captain Britain I've ever actually read was what X-user posted in prep for Excalibur. It's on my docket, but I've still got Doctor Strange to read.
By the way, in case you're curious what I've been up to in the two months I've been gone, outside of the two jobs?
I played shitty Final Fantasy games (Thunder Plains can eat a dick), finished the first Defenders series, and I got up to "Doctor Strange commits vampire genocide".
Sad thing is, he probably isn't even supposed to be autistic, just depressed from getting beaten by his dad, but because of his Bendis writes dialogue, he just SOUNDS autistic.
>Maybe it's because I don't have an eye for art, but all I can think of while reading this is "Are we supposed to think they're on drugs?"
Honestly, I think David Mack just tends to draw everything like covers off the Sandman.
Also
Okay, so I checked, it turns out this story is a only a four parter, so I'm thinking we get it in the thread, and hopefully actually get some DAREDEVIL in this Daredevil comic.
Gonna push him to Frank Miller, since now he's buying trades himself.
Also, considering getting a Frank Miller pass to C2E2, as to get that Man Without Fear HC signed.
If you told me a year ago that a Flinstones comic would be what I look forward to most every month, I'd call you a liar, but god damn, that series is amaing.
So what, is Ben Urich going full detective now?
Going out on a limb and saying "because his only friend is Robbie Robertson"
This is getting surprisingly real, outside the part where the kid pretends he's a superhero thing, anyway.
No, I mean why haven't real people started whining about it? Or have did Marvel just decide "It's not a Hitler mustache, he's rocking the Charlie Chaplin"?
Fisk is looking right out of Sienkiewicz on that front page.
How about now?
Weren't you going to do Thunderbolts?
Wait, the opposing lawyer can call bullshit if you just start asking pointless questions? Shit, that's half my Phoenix Wright strategy right there.
When was Aunt May ever that Italian?
Looks like an old Asian dude desu
Yes, but then I remembered that not only is Shadowland coming up, but I said I'd do Bendis's Daredevil since Bendis shoves Luke Cage in here constantly.
Also, there's an arc later on that shows the finale fate of our old friend the White Tiger.
The first one, from Deadly Hands. Not the mutated Tiger who wanted the Iron Fist.
Bendis's run is about 66 issues, not counting a span in between where Echo comes back that he didn't write. Assuming we do the 3 a day I came up with, and only that, we should finish this in about three weeks, although I'll try and do more if we're in the daytime.
You know, as much as I bitch, at least it in't Gaydos.
Ah, I see that like all the best Bendis collaborators, Mack knows how to zoom in on copied panels.
>"The Kingpin had been shot."
>"Story of the Year, and I wasn't there."
Well, just blame it on Spider-Man, and maybe JJ won't fire you on the spot.
You say that as though Officer Ravishing Rick Rude there ISN'T packing a truncheon in the shower.
Because of this arc, I can't even tell if this is the same woman as last time, although the dialogue makes it seem like it is.
Okay, I walked right into that one.
I mean I walked into the punchline, not the other thing.
Anyone more wellread on Daredevil than me know if Ben having nightmares about getting Elektra'd is a thing that was established before? Outside of Frank Miller, I've never read any Daredevil before Smith's run.
>How man people in Marvel actually dress in capes and spandex/leotards now?
Marvel was never really that heavy on the capes on the hero side- Vision, Thor, Scarlet Witch is about it for big names.
And we all already know that any time that kind of derision comes up, it's a projection of the writer, who is showing off how much hipper and mature he is than his own subject matter by codedly calling it gay.
At least he's zooming in. Back in Alias, Gaydos would post the exact same panel.
I can't remember, but it'd make sense since she did run him through with a sai.
The only time I really noticed that was when a civilian in the Luke Cage Netflix series made a crack about spandex wearing superheroes.
All I could think was "Literally nobody in your setting wears spandex, where are you getting this reference from?"
Oh look who finally showed up!
Also, didn't Karen Page stop being a major DD supporting cast member in like, the 70s, with only occasional appearances since, selling her body and Matt's secret identity for Heroin Bucks?
>Matt Murder
That is a solid name for a character in a noir story or something.
Speaking of netflix Is Comic Karen still Dead ??
Okay Anons, I want you to stop and think for a moment. Pretend you're starting Daredevil with this new "Marvel Knights" line.
This is your third issue, and it's mostly been about Ben Urich and this abused/vaguely autistic kid, and the title character only shows up in the last three pages of the third book.
Yeah, civvies rarely, if ever, come back.
According to their wikia, she is. All the way through Waid's run, she's been dead too, so unless Soule brought her back, she's still dead.
She was written out comparatively early on. yeah. As far as I'm aware, Frank Miller actually brought her BACK into the comic with Born Again, despite the whole "porn star for coke" thing, but I'm not 100% on that.
Weird Marvel never brought back.
FemAnons, your fanservice for the evening.
Very rarely do love interests have enough fan support to undo a death, and that goes extra for love interests that were replaced with vastly more popular options.
Characters have come back from worse, but she got a billy club to the heart, and Daredevil could tell she was dead. You COULD undo it with comic book shenenigans, but I doubt there's a real demand for it.
>draw a naked person
>color their skin some outlandish color like bright red
>call it spandex
Every fucking time.