Sunday, August 23, 2020

Sunday Splash Page #128

"Matt's More In the Dark than Usual", in Daredevil (vol. 4), #15, by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee (storytellers), Matthew Wilson (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)

When Waid and Samnee's previous volume of Daredevil concluded, Matt was disbarred in New York for admitting he really was Daredevil, meaning he committed perjury all those times in the past he insisted he wasn't. But, he used to practice law in California, so they moved the new series out there.

Naturally, because this is Marvel we're talking about, they started the new series the very next month after the old one ended, and bumped up the price a dollar. Definitely a wise and sustainable strategy!

This volume started up during the second wave of Marvel NOW! I think it was "All-New Marvel NOW!", but hell if I'm going back to check. It started the month after G. Willow Wilson/Adrian Alphona's Ms. Marvel and the Charles Soule/Javier Pulido She-Hulk book, to mention two things that came out during that stretch I also bought. It ran until Marvel canceled their entire line as part of Jonathan Hickman's lousy (also horribly-paced and constantly behind schedule) Secret Wars event.

After - or actually before, because again, poorly paced and behind schedule - Secret Wars ended, Waid and Samnee moved on to the Black Widow book we looked at for Sunday Splash Page #90. So Marvel didn't entirely dismiss the notion of giving specific creative teams their own titles and just letting them run with it, but it felt like it lost some momentum with the complete disruption of their entire publishing line for several months because of an event which didn't do anything so extreme it couldn't have been done without the aforementioned complete disruption of the entire publishing line.

The main theme of this 18-issue run seems to be "information". Or maybe "secrets", but that's information. What the value of information is, and to who. The vulnerabilities it creates, the ways it can be twisted, either with intent, or unconsciously. Waid and Samnee bring in the Owl, a man obsessed with knowing as much as possible, as a recurring threat. This is intermixed with the Shroud, who doesn't exactly fare well under Waid's pen as a broken man obsessed with trying to get back some sense of happiness. There's one particular piece of information he thinks will give him that back, and he pursues it relentlessly.

There's also Kirsten's father offering Matt a lot of money for Daredevil's life story, which will be Matt trying to figure out what he's comfortable revealing about himself. He gradually tries to lean into the fact that now everyone knows he's Daredevil, which makes him a celebrity. Starts wearing a flashy red suit (as seen above) both when he fights crime and in the courtroom. (If that page where he presents himself as "Daredevil for the defense, your honor!" with his cane leaned over his shoulder had been a splash page, I absolutely would have used it.)

Even that is just a form of him trying to control how that information is perceived, in the same way he tries to include a highly jaundiced account of his first meeting with Hawkeye in the book, only to have Foggy call him on it hilariously. It's Matt trying to act as if this isn't a huge weak spot for him. But Samnee does draw the hell out of Matt in that suit, along with a lot of good fight scenes. He tones down the Owl's weird, Wolverine-style spiked up hair look, but emphasizes his tendency to lurk above you and stare ominously. Even though I have a hard time taking the character seriously, it's not for lack of effort on the creative team's part.

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