CBI Archive
Daredevil #93 Review
- by Brian Cronin
- in Comic Reviews
Friday, January 31st, 2003 at 4:34 AM EST
Updated: Thursday, February 1st, 2007 at 4:35 PM EST
So it’s come to this….a bad issue of Ed Brubaker’s Daredevil. Ah well, I guess the streak couldn’t last forever, but it’s really too bad, because I thought Brubaker was doing such a great job on this title, so to see him hit such a glaring pot hole, it is pretty disappointing. Why couldn’t this at least have a fill-in arist? Why waste Michael Lark and Stefano Gaudiano’s excellent (as always) artwork on this story?
I probably shouldn’t be too hard on this issue. I mean, if your favorite part of watching Columbo is just the scene at the end when Columbo describes, in detail, how the bad guy did the murder, then this is the comic book for you! For this issue is essentially entirely that - Brubaker putting all the pieces back together to set up the new status quo for Daredevil. I am not even really saying that this sort of thing doesn’t have its use, especially if it sets up future good stories (which I am confident that it will), but for the time being, the issue itself is not a good one.
Perhaps, when read as a collected tale, this issue will read as a really good epilogue. That certainly makes sense, but an epilogue isn’t really enough to sustain a full issue on its own, is it? I don’t believe so, and that’s what really hurts this issue the most.
It is short scenes of “here’s how Matt gets back,” “here’s how Matt clears his name,” “here’s how Matt reunites with Foggy,” handled sort of like the ending of the last Lord of the Rings film, a series of endings, one after the other.
Brubaker handles the characters very well in each of the scenes, especially their interactions with each other (Foggy’s life in witness protection, in particular, was great), but it really reads more like going through the motions.
Last issue’s confrontation with Vanessa Fisk - THAT was the real climax to this arc. This is all just cleaning up the loose ends.
I do enjoy the work Brubaker is doing with Karen Page’s memory. I like how he is finally giving that the credit it deserves. Bendis had a great idea with Matt’s handling of Karen’s death, but never really got a chance to follow up on it, and now Brubaker is doing so, and it works quite well (and should make next issue’s Milla spotlight quite interesting).
The ending of the book also promises to bring us some interesting future tales as well, and I love the new lawyer set-up. But otherwise, this was like reading an issue of the Official Marvel Handbook to Daredevil, just with some nice character moments mixed in here and there.
But hey, one false step isn’t a big deal. I look forward to the next storyline, if it is as good as the previous issues before this one, then Daredevil will continue to be one of the best books Marvel has going for them.
Not Recommended.
6 Comments
Martin
February 1, 2007 at 6:31 am
That’s weird. I thought this was the only good issue in this story arc.
Michael
February 1, 2007 at 1:23 pm
I sat down and read 89-93 last night (all for the first time), and I thought the arc as a whole worked very well. I had no problems with the “round-up” of the various plot points in the last issue–wouldn’t have even noticed it if you hadn’t pointed it out.
K
February 2, 2007 at 12:01 pm
You know, you’re entitled to your opinion and all, but I don’t think this chapter needs to be seen as an ‘epilogue’ at all. Last issue we had our climax (not the same thing as the ‘ending’), this issue we get our denouement, our falling action. It’s not really supposed to be the most exciting part of the story, so I don’t think it’s fair to criticize the arc for ‘limping to the finish line’ when it’s just following a tried and true plot structure.
Bryan
February 3, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Wow, I’m the opposite of you. I _really_ liked this issue of Daredevil, largely because it was showcasing the characters that will become the focus for the foreseeable future, and I had been pretty disappointed with the story arc so far. The stuff with Vanessa Fisk in the previous issue was pretty dull because of her go nowhere speech (”I killed my son. Blah blah blah. I killed my son. Blah Blah Blah. Don’t you get it? I killed my son.”) Even more surprising for me was how much I enjoyed this issue, considering I thought the final part of “The Devil in Cell Block 5″ was an almost completely perfect example of how _not_ to end a multi-part story, and almost made me drop the book.
Brian Cronin
February 4, 2007 at 9:39 am
But I address that point in the review, where I mention that it might work very well in a collected edition.
It’s not a novel, though. It’s serialized fiction, and serialized fiction can (and I think, should) be judged on each installment.
Therefore, if you want to spend an installment just on an epilogue, that’s fine, but make it interesting. I don’t think this epilogue was interesting - it read more like, as I mentioned, an Official Marvel Handbook to Daredevil than an issue of a comic book (Then this happened, then this happened, then this happened, then this happened, then this happened, then this happened).
Brian Cronin
February 4, 2007 at 9:41 am
I didn’t much like the Vanessa Fisk stuff, either. Sorry if I gave off that implication. I only mentioned the Fisk stuff to note that it was, in fact, the climax to the story, and that this issue was all tying up loose ends in a perfunctory “and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened and then this happened…” manner.