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8/13 - Curious Cat Asks...

Which title has had a higher percentage of great stories told in that title, Amazing Spider-Man or Daredevil?

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  • Posted on August 13, 2006 @ 08:44 PM

16 Comments

Amazing Spider-man.

I'm not very familiar with pre-Miller Daredevil, but if we were to judge from the 80s on, it's gotta be Daredevil hands down. Has Amazing Spider-Man had a great story since Micheline/McFarlane's first Venom story? In that time, DD's had Brubaker, Bendis, Smith (I liked it, anyway), Chichester had one really good arc, and the Nocenti/Romita Mephisto storyline.

Good as in a good story, independent of when it was published or other qualifying variables, or good as in 'classic' stories?

If you want classic, Spider-Man has it hands down. If you want consistently good storytelling, I have to go with Daredevil.

Daredevil, no question asked......

from the miller's run to born again to the Anno nocenti's run to kevin smith, david mack, bendis and now brubaker, that's very little that's not good. The only black mark in DD's career i guess it's the armoured Daredevil and it's not even as disastrous as Clone Saga or Sin's Past.

Jesus, Daredevil. ASM may have more classic stories, as someone said, but Daredevil totally wins on consistency. Volume 2 has been excellent from top to bottom, I even enjoyed the Bob Gale run, it was fun. (Although David Mack's second run on the book was... well, it wasn't *awful*, it just should have been a separate miniseries. I guess if it were, then it would have tanked, though).

I love Spider-Man much more than Daredevil, but Amazing Spider-Man had a lengthy Michiline run, almost 100 years, and everuy issue was godawful, then a long Mackie run, so that's two significant chunks of awfulness. I'd have to go with Spidey.

T., you have no soul. Michelinie was keen.

I gotta go with Spidey.

I don't think it's fair to say things like, "Well, from Miller's run onward," or, "Well, if you're talking classic..."

I think Daredevil is more consistent. Spider-Man tends to have higher peaks and lower lows -- when Daredevil is bad, it's just bad. When Spider-Man is bad, it's excruciating. Likewise, when Daredevil is good, it tends to be, well, pretty good. I like Bendis, I like Miller, but I don't think I'd single out anything as GREAT except maybe "Born Again." But I could rattle off a dozen Spider-Man stories I'd rank as great.

Really I think Spider-Man has the harder job because the strip broke a lot of the ground FOR Daredevil. The book really only came out from under Spider-Man's shadow in the eighties when Miller started his first run, and then there was a long line of faux-Miller stuff, then Miller again, and then Bendis gave it some real direction. If the question was about quality runs or overall consistency, instead of great stories, my answer might be different. But I think you have to give it to Spider-Man simply because more people have worked on it, and more of them hit it out of the park than the Daredevil roster did.

It's all opinion anyway. I daresay there are a dozen Daredevil fans lining up to yell at me right now. But that's MY opinion.

...Neither?

So yeah, Daredevil was never good until the 80's. Spider-Man was good for its first few years and had some spots of awesomeness and spots of utter crap.

I'm really not an expert on either series...

Daredevil wins, though, because it has Stilt-Man.

Most of these responses don't seem to try very hard to answer the question. Which title has a higher percentage of great storylines? The two characters have been around almost exactly the same amount of time, so the percentage game seems to work out to "who has more great storylines"? Spider-Man has to win that game under most sensible definitions of "great".

Hawk and Dove. Hey, strictly on a percentage basis, 100% of their 28-issue series was great. Both DD and Spidey fall below that mark. :)

No, it's a question of percentage because Spider-Man has four times as many books in which to try for great stories. If two writers have great Spidey ideas at once, well, put one on Amazing and one on Adjectiveless. If two people have great DD ideas at once, well, if you wait five years maybe the first guy will leave the book and then guy two can take his shot.

Of course, the fact that there are so many Spider-Books is also what contributes to the huge percentage of sucky stories, when you have 88 pages a month to fill with one character and you just need filler...

Daredevil, no question in my mind. The only really really abd run was Chichester's after the Fall of Kingpin. DD had plenty of caretakers in Kesel, Thomas, Smith, and plenty of great runs with bendis, Bru, Gerber (Well, I have a soft spot for Bru), with a completely not-defiled past like JMS', so a bunch of caretakers and sub par stories make up for long runs of dreck and character butchery with an *ahem* amazing first 100 + issues.

Daredevil.

Amazing--hands down.

Amazing Spider-Man. Though I'd say that both are at probably less than 20% at this point.

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