If you know anything about Daredevil, you know that he really came into his own as a character when Frank Miller took over writing the series.
I've reaIf you know anything about Daredevil, you know that he really came into his own as a character when Frank Miller took over writing the series.
I've read every issue of Daredevil leading up to this volume, and everything that makes him work as a character was already in place before Miller started penciling the series. There were good issues and bad issues before Miller got involved, but the formula was getting stale. Basically, there would always be a soap-opera subplot going on with blind lawyer Matt Murdock (Daredevil's alter ego), or with one of his romantic partners, or with his best friend and law partner Franklin "Foggy" Nelson. This subplot would string along for several issues, but each individual issue would be dominated by a colorful super-villain. Daredevil would do battle with this villain and crack wise like Spider-Man. That was about it.
The first half of this volume only showcases Miller's work as an artist. Roger McKenzie was still writing the series. Miller's first issue as both artist and writer is #168, and with that issue he ret-conned Elektra (the deadly Greek female assassin who is out to avenge her father's death) into Matt Murdock's life. Over the course of the next several issues, Miller created a dense criminal underworld with the Kingpin at its head and the vicious, psychopathic Bullseye as his most dangerous lieutenant. These issues are a joy to read. Plots and subplots are woven together seamlessly, and they have a great sense of griminess and nastiness, which suits the early 1980s NYC setting perfectly. ...more
This is an adaptation of one of my favorite Parker novels, and Darwyn Cooke doesn't disappoint. He has a great sense of pacing. Too many comic book wrThis is an adaptation of one of my favorite Parker novels, and Darwyn Cooke doesn't disappoint. He has a great sense of pacing. Too many comic book writers seem to assume that people spend as much time on the visuals as they do the dialogue, which leads to some choppy pacing. For this book, though, Cooke intersperses dialogue sections with speech-free action sections, and it really works. He also wonderfully evokes the '60s setting of the original novel without being cutesy or overloading the narrative. My favorite aspect of Richard Stark's Parker novels has always been the heists. The Score was the first big heist Parker ever pulled off, and for my money The Score is the best Cooke adaptation to date....more
Beautiful, sad, and soul-stirring. I think I'll hold off on writing a longer review until I've read more of "Sweet Tooth," but suffice it to say that Beautiful, sad, and soul-stirring. I think I'll hold off on writing a longer review until I've read more of "Sweet Tooth," but suffice it to say that I am deeply invested in this series after the first two collected volumes....more
I really love Batman stories from the '70s. I started reading the comics at some point in the '80s, but the issues from the late '70s are probably theI really love Batman stories from the '70s. I started reading the comics at some point in the '80s, but the issues from the late '70s are probably the first Batman comics I ever saw when I was a pre-literate little kid in the supermarket who was fascinated by the covers.
Unlike what a lot of people think, Batman was not the sunny, goofy do-gooder of the '60s TV show until Frank Miller came along and shook things up with The Dark Knight Returns in 1986. I've read random Batman stories from every decade, and while the issues from the '50s and '60s tend to be pretty silly, after Denny O'Neil took over writing the series in the '70s he returned the Dark Knight Detective to his sinister, pulpy roots. This was an era of beautiful Batman art and decent storytelling, and it saw the introduction of a number of memorable adversaries like Man-Bat.
Probably the most memorable of all was Ra's al Ghul (and his daughter Talia). This volume collects a bunch of Ra's al Ghul stories. A variety of artists penciled and inked these stories, but Denny O'Neil wrote all of them, so this collection is fairly consistent. Ra's al Ghul is cut from the same cloth as Fu Manchu (who also has a dangerously alluring daughter), but he's less racially specific. His name comes from Arabic, and Ra's does spend a fair amount of time in the desert, but he also seems equally comfortable in the snowy wastelands of the Himalayas.
If you're the kind of Batman fan who thinks a story isn't "dark" enough unless there's a child prostitution ring or a villain who wears other people's faces, then you might find this volume laughable, but I think it strikes a nice balance between sinister goings-on and a pulpy sense of fun.
I'd give this maybe three stars as an "objective" judgment, but I tacked on another star for myself, since I love the art, storytelling, and general mood of '70s Batman stories....more
In my review of Essential Daredevil Vol. 4 I said that I really didn't enjoy Gerry Conway's writing, and that his run on the series was hard for me toIn my review of Essential Daredevil Vol. 4 I said that I really didn't enjoy Gerry Conway's writing, and that his run on the series was hard for me to get through. It's not that his plots were terrible, but his purple prose just made reading the issues sort of a chore.
Well, ditto for Steve Gerber, who took over for Conway, and for the most part I read Essential Daredevil Vol. 5 just to get through it. Late in this collection Bob Brown and Tony Isabella took over, and they're not great, but their stories have a drive and an intensity that Gerber's lacked. (Daredevil's days in San Francisco were mostly slack, and involved "hippie" villains like Angar the Screamer, and those stories haven't aged well.) But at least Brown and Isabella moved the action back to New York, and their multi-issue story arc about the Black Widow and Daredevil helping S.H.I.E.L.D. tackle Hydra was fun and exciting, if not particularly brilliant.
On the plus side, Gene Colan shows up from time to time, and he's my favorite comic-book artist of all time. His art contains all the drama, grittiness, passion, and action that the writers' prose often lacks, so I bumped this collection from two stars up to three just for him....more
The "rough stuff" in the title refers to the fact that Eric Powell considers this, his earliest work on "The Goon," not nearly as polished as the lateThe "rough stuff" in the title refers to the fact that Eric Powell considers this, his earliest work on "The Goon," not nearly as polished as the later stuff.
This is the first thing I've ever read by Powell, so I can only comment on it. This volume contains the original three issues of "The Goon" that he wrote and drew, as well as some strips originally published on TheGoon.com. After his book was canceled, he self-published his material. Eventually, Dark Horse comics picked up the series, and The Goon is still going strong.
I'd never heard of The Goon until I read a feature in Rue Morgue magazine about the best horror comics. In short, The Goon is a hulking roughneck mob enforcer in a world that seems to be the '30s (although never explicitly stated ... and there are cultural references to later times). In the Goon's world, gangsters regularly employ zombies and other creepy-crawlies, which is mostly an excuse for The Goon and his sidekick, Frankie, to run roughshod over all manner of monsters and crack wise while doing it.
The Goon is just grotesque fun. There's nothing that serious or profound about it, which is part of the enjoyment. The first two issues here were pretty rough in the writing department, but the art is stunning from the get-go (despite Powell's protestations to the contrary in his introduction). By issue 3, which covers The Goon's origins in a carnival, I was hooked, and I'm looking forward to reading more....more
I read through the first 50-60 pages of this in one sitting, then stretched the rest of the book out over more than a year, reading a single strip eacI read through the first 50-60 pages of this in one sitting, then stretched the rest of the book out over more than a year, reading a single strip each day. Why? Because I'm a connoisseur of Dick Tracy. Reading them all in a jumble makes them seem too much like a haphazardly plotted comic book, which isn't fair, since Chester Gould designed them to be read in a daily newspaper. Gould was a master of storytelling in this format. He drives the plot forward each day in a fun or shocking manner. The reader never loses sight of the overall story arc, but also never gets bored with constant exposition to explain what's happened already.
This collection features one of Dick Tracy's most memorable nemeses, the low-talking, jazz-music-playing, expensive-clothes-wearing hood called "Mumbles." Mumbles does not look unlike Robert Mitchum, and has conversations with his henchmen that go like this:
"Star tover." "What did he say?" "Quits aying whadee zay." "What did he say?" "He said for you to quit saying, 'what did he say?'."
Mumbles is more than just a menacing hood who talks out of the corner of his mouth, he's a sadistic killer unafraid to murder police officers, punch his girlfriend Kiss Andtel in the face, or leave all his men behind to die.
Gould brought his right-wing social philosophy to the pages of the funny papers day after day, but he created such a brilliant phantasmagoria that readers of any political stripe could enjoy his violent fantasies, provided they could deal with his cheerful sadism.
Of course, there are some weeks in the Dick Tracy strip that are less exciting than others. For every brilliant creation like Mumbles, there's a less-than-brilliant creation like Coffyhead, who drinks a lot of coffee and whose head is shaped like a coffee pot.
With the exception of Coffyhead, Dick Tracy's rogues' gallery is pretty great in this volume: Acres O'Riley, who's an essentially good-hearted taxi driver, but whose enormous stature makes her a danger when she's enraged; her boyfriend, the tiny midget forger and hustler named Heels Beals (he wears lift heels in his shoes); Mrs. Volts, the gangster leader of an energy concern; Hypo, a twitchy drug addict, and Shoulders, a smooth-talking man with enormous shoulder pads for smuggling jewels. While Shoulders as a concept sounds kind of silly, his storyline here is really well-done. He's on the lam, hiding out as the husband of a woman who has a young daughter from a previous marriage. There's a sense of menace and unease in the scenes of Shoulders at home, and the story plays out in a suspenseful fashion.
Gould also presages the widespread use of security cameras. At the end of this volume, a new storyline is beginning in which the millionaire entrepreneur Diet Smith perfects a "television burglar alarm" which is officially known as the Dick Tracy Teleguard, allowing banks, homes, and government buildings to be watched at all times. There's even an option for motion-activation.
This is great stuff. I've loved Dick Tracy since I read a collection in high school, which was awesome, but being able to read a strip a day and get lost in Gould's crazy world has been a real treat....more
You know whose work really interfered with my enjoyment of chronologically reading Daredevil? Writer Gerry Conway, who wrote the title during the earlYou know whose work really interfered with my enjoyment of chronologically reading Daredevil? Writer Gerry Conway, who wrote the title during the early '70s.
I was glad when he finally stopped writing the series, but his replacement, Steve Gerber, was just as bad for all the same reasons. Here's a sample, from issue #100:
Low over San Francisco Bay swoops a sleek Avenger's Quinjet--its lone passenger--the sightless adventurer called Daredevil!
His hypersensitive fingertips read the dials and meters his eyes cannot see. And he knows that he is ... home?
No--not home. Just ... back ... alone, learning in that windswept cockpit the meaning of soulpain.
Comics fans could argue for days about whether today's comic book writing is better or worse than in the past, but one thing is indisputable--today's comic book writers have mostly eschewed description boxes like the ones quoted above, relying on dialogue and images to tell their stories.
For my money, this is a good thing, since description boxes were always where comic book writers did their worst work (see above). Conway and Gerber both come off as frustrated novelists, penning the worst kind of sophomoric drivel.
Gene Colan is one of my favorite comics artists, and these issues of Daredevil all look good, but the stories and characterizations are the pits. Also, this is the period during which Matt Murdock/Daredevil relocated to San Francisco, destroying one of the big things that always worked about the Daredevil series -- its gritty Hell's Kitchen setting....more
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