Sunday Splash Page #121

"What's Red, White, Blue and Bleeding All Over?", in Daredevil (vol. 1) #233, by Frank Miller (writer), David Mazzucchelli (artist), Max Scheele (colorist), Joe Rosen (letterer)

Starting from Frank Miller's initial run on the book, through Born Again, with Denny O'Neill's run in the middle, I have about six issues. Which is probably not enough to merit touching on, except that so much of what came after was following the same gameplan, or could be seen as a reaction to the trends established during this stretch. The ninjas, the Catholic guilt, the misery.

Oh, the misery. If Matt's not sad over Bullseye killing Elektra, he's miserable over Heather killing herself, or Karen Page has wound up addicted to heroin. Or the Kingpin is destroying his entire life. Taking his money, his legal practice, his home, his friendship, his reputation, and briefly, his sanity. Fun times.

I think Born Again does work pretty well as a single story. It's not Miller or Mazzucchelli's fault writers can't stop going to the same well, in more or less the same fashion again and again. Wilson Fisk trying to destroy a good man, while also trying to buy his own way into the rarefied air of high society. He hasn't stopped being the same criminal he was before, he just wants people to forget about that, or ignore it. it's a long where from where he started, and he wants in.

I don't know if Miller had an opinion about Matt and Karen Page as a couple, but I find the fact she's the one who ultimately sold Matt's secret identity away, interesting, given how the Kingpin's own marriage went. Fisk had to send Vanessa to Europe just to protect her from his shit, his life was poisonous to her. Karen went away, comes back feeling about as low as possible, when Matt's in about as bad a way as possible, and the two of them end up picking themselves back up together.

Mazzucchelli's art has this real focus on both Fisk and Murdock as people, outside their costumes. Matt spends a lot of time in plainclothes, and Fisk seems to spend a lot of time working out or in steam rooms. Lot of panels of him sweating. There's a fair amount of him staring at the city from his hi-rise office in a fancy suit, but even then, he's either a shadowed outline, or it's an extreme close-up of his face. Which is imposing, but also reminds that this is meant to be a human, glaring out at the world, full of spite. Maybe Fisk would have gotten the acclaim and acceptance he wanted if he just focused on that, instead of relentlessly trying to finish off Murdock every time the blind man tries to pick himself up.

As for Matt, I mentioned last week one of the first Daredevil comics I owned was issue #228. Matt spends the entire issue in regular clothes, being slightly unhinged. Mazzucchelli draws him as what I'd call "movie star scruffy" - he's got stubble, but it's even and his hair is still relatively neat, and the clothes he's wearing aren't anything special, but they're clean and whole - rather than "near-destitute and dangerously paranoid scruffy" like Matt apparently is by then.

(Honestly, Matt in that issue reminds me a little of Stallone in Cobra. Maybe it's just the big, reflective sunglasses.)

That said, the way the violence is portrayed tells the story quite nicely. That when Matt punches a guy during a fight in the subway, the guy's head cracks the glass in the subway door on impact from the first punch, to say nothing of the second. Mazzucchelli (who handles the color duties himself in that issue) uses this extremely vivid red for the blood that is startlingly bright against every surface in the issue. Including Fisk's nose when Matt hits him across the face with a nightstick.

It's not like I hadn't seen comics where a character gets punched through a building before this, but characters tend to get up from that. Even if they don't, you don't see them mangled, and I can't really process what having a building fall on you feels like. My head hitting glass hard enough to crack it is more relatable, which makes it more impactful. Same way I was more squeamish watching Evil Dead when someone got stabbed in the ankle with a pencil than I was about Ash losing an entire hand. Point being, the story makes them feel less like these larger-than-life characters, and more like just a couple of dudes who really hate each other.