The Non-Fan's Perspective: DAREDEVIL

This entry of The Non-Fan's Perspective is going to be fairly short, as are future installments most likely. I'm finding that I can't remember as many noteworthy incidents from the later classes as I can for the earlier ones. Whether this is because my own interest waned over time as the freshness of it all faded so that I paid less attention, or simply because there weren't as many interesting comments later in the semester, I can't decide. Whatever the cause, the effect exists.

Anyway, for Week Five we read Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN. Most of the students thought that out of all the TPBs we'd read up to that point, it was the best one yet. I strongly agreed. Frankly, I'm surprised Miller had it in him to write this. I mean, there are actually moments of genuine heart-touching human warmth in this book. How did that happen, yeah?

I *do* like some of Miller's other works, but none of them contain the sort of powerful, inspirational moments that dot this story. When Ben Urich says out loud, "Matt Murdock"... Man. Honestly, I wish Miller would write more in this vein instead of repeatedly mining the "mean people being mean to other mean people because it's a mean world" framework he loves so much. (Not that I don't enjoy some of his stories of that type either; I'd just like more diversity is all.)

One guy asked whether Spider-Man or Daredevil was first published, stating that clearly one must have "ripped off" the other. His reasoning was this Daredevil story featured the Daily Bugle in a prominent role, the Kingpin, and a villain discovering the hero's identity, all elements that can also be found in Spider-Man stories. Heh.

Apparently, despite how much my fellow students generally liked BORN AGAIN, there *were* numerous complaints about Captain America's sudden appearance in the final chapter. Well, maybe "complaint"'s too strong a word, but it definitely brought about head-scratching. Not being as familiar with how Marvel actualizes its shared universe, the surprise appearance in the last act of a character who was previously not so much as even mentioned and having that character play a pretty vital role... well, it seemed odd to them. And it kind of is, isn't it? Heck, I'm sure some of them didn't know that Marvel's character lived in a shared universe in the first place.

The next TPB we read was SPIDER-MAN: THE DEATH OF GWEN STACY. However, there was almost nothing that happened during that week's class that I feel like writing about, so I'll lump it with the TPB we read after *that*, which was either JLA: TOWER OF BABEL or whatever the first ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR trade was called. (Each student only had to read one and got to choose which.)