Daredevil: Father #1
story and art by Joe Quesada
I was
talking with an artist friend about Marvel comics recently,
the good and the bad. He made an interesting claim: Joey
Q’s background is from the art side of the medium,
not the story side, and that’s why art comes before
story at Marvel these days. I’m not sure I believe
that, but Daredevil: Father brought the statement
to mind.
The
new mini-series by Marvel’s Editor-In-Chief starts
off with a languid retelling of Matt Murdock’s origin,
spending roughly the first thirteen pages (half the book)
showing The Man Without Fear hopping rooftops as he recalls
the lessons he learned from his father and Hell’s
Kitchen.
Matt
arrives at work the following morning to find their new
client already waiting for them. The case? Maggie Farrell
has cancer and she and her husband Sean want to sue New
Jersey Power and Light for dumping chemicals into the water
they drink and the land they live on. It’s not just
about injuries, though: Maggie has ovarian cancer. The family
she and Sean worked their entire lives to start will never
be.
Artistically,
this is a pretty nice book. The characters look less…
I hesitate to say “cartoony”, but they seem
less like caricature than Quesada’s work on the early
issues of the current Daredevil series. That probably has
more to do with Danny Miki’s inks and the choice to
have Richard Isanove paint, but the effect works for the
story, giving it a look somewhere between a chunky Frank
Miller and Alex Maleev’s breathtaking work on the
current run of Daredevil. Fans of Joey Q will still recognize
his quirky expressions, penchant for facial lines, and love
of “low angle” shots, but this isn’t quite
the same stuff he did for Kevin Smith.
On the
story side, however, things are a bit unbalanced. The summary
above, for instance, goes more than two thirds of the way
into the issue. When the story finally does get started,
it feels more like a collection of beginnings than interrelated
events building off of one another. The issue ends with
a bit of intrigue, but the few plot points we’re given
don’t really add up to much at all. Next month, it
may all come together as the story builds, but the series
doesn’t have much of a hook yet. What it DOES have
is a clear theme centering on men who’ve lost their
fathers and their chances at fatherhood, but is that enough
to keep it going?
I can’t
say whether or not the lack of plot will lose readers, but
it doesn’t look like sales tapering off will hurt
the book much. This sucker flew off the shelves at my local
shop and I’ve heard the same from people all around
the country. The combined lure of Quesada’s name and
Marvel’s full issue preview through Mile High Comics
got the fans out in droves and probably attracted a number
of irregular Daredevil readers, as well.
But
this begs a question: what does this mean for the future?
Will the revolution be computerized? The fact that so many
people went for the blurry, low grade images of the web
preview reinforces the notion of comics moving to the web,
but we’ve been down this road before.
And
then you have to consider how well the book sold, even though
people could technically get it for free. Do sales speak
for the material value of comics, a lack of web proficiency
among comic fans (that’ll be the day), guilt over
getting a comic for free online, or maybe just a desire
to see whether the art was really as foggy as the .jpegs
were?
Food
for thought, indeed.
Rating:
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