What I Bought 9/7/2012

 No, comics didn't come in the mail. Perhaps later this week or the next. But I did a little traveling on my weekend, there was a comic shop along the way, and I picked up both issues of Daredevil that shipped last month. It seems possible Jack got shorted on DD #16, so why take chances?

Daredevil #16 by Mark (writer), Chris Samnee (art), Javier Rodriguez (color art), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - I must like how Samnee draws shoes. That's the only explanation I have for why my eyes keep going to Matt and Foggy's footwear on the cover.

Much of this issue is spent inside Matt's brain. Literally, as Hank Pym has shrunk himself down and is running around with an EMP gun blasting all those little nanobots. There are an awful lot of them, though, and it doesn't help that Matt's senses are still trying to transmit information. And seeing as Matt's brain isn't being allowed to decipher it, everything's going to Pym's brain instead. Which is just what Hank needs: A stressful situation that completely alters his perceptions for a period of time. He does help Murdock, though, and once Matt learns he's been out for 9 days, he's off like a shot to the office. Only to find Foggy has essentially fired him for being unstable. Turns out Foggy found the remains of Matt's father in his desk. Well, his skull and boxing gloves, anyway.

That's awkward.

But it's a good issue on the whole. Samnee draws the inside of the brain to look a bit like a squishy pink cave, which, might be what it would look like from the size? I don't know. I guess I know where Pym's supposed to be, and that's sufficient for me to go along with it. Some of the expressive work Samnee does is fantastic, though. The 2nd panel on page 8, after Pym loses contact with Stark and loses the gun, where he looks up afraid and unsure, to be greeted with pitch darkness in panel 3. Very effective, as is the bit on the next page where we see Matt's brain somehow confer his radar sense to Pym, and so there's a shift in how the bugs are perceived, and the outline of the hero goes from Pym's head to Daredevil's. Also the confrontation on page 19, Matt holding his head in his hands, looking crushed, with the reflection of his father's skull reflected in his glasses.

So Nelson and Murdock is just Nelson, now, which brings us to. . .

Daredevil #17 by Mark Waid (writer), Michael Allred (art), Laura Allred (Color art), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - So is Daredevil supposed to look gigantic on the cover? Is it meant to be the city closing in on him?

Matt takes a walk to where he and Foggy used to house their law practice, now torn down. Matt reflects on another time when they were set at odds, only for the partnership to be saved by an attack from Stilt-Man, of all people. He grabs some things Foggy is highly protective of, Daredevil captures Stilt-Man, saves Foggy from the actual threat, and makes Foggy tell him what's going on. What's going on is Foggy's agreed to work for an inventor named Pasko who has a device that may restore sight to the sightless. But he's being hassled by a ruthless company, and so Foggy's been fighting for him on the chance it might someday give Matt his sight back. Recalling this convinces Matt he won't let anyone mess with his life, and that's where the story ends.

I find it significant that in the last panel, as Matt vows to keep his life on the upswing, he's diving off a building and shown in a slow-motion descent towards. . . Well, the way Alrred draws it, I don't think matt's going to reach that building on the other side. Maybe it puts lie to his words, maybe it's supposed to show he's still Daredevil no matter what, I don't know. It just wasn't the sort of image I'd expect to end with given the inner monologue.