Bendis and Maleev’s Daredevil
In a rare move, I read a superhero comic this weekend. The first year’s worth of Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev’s Daredevil. I don’t have a lot of superhero books on my shelves, but one of them is Miller and Mazzuchelli’s Daredevil: Born Again. That sequence always impressed as showing a very human superhero character, one who was more than just a guy in a suit beating up weird evil doers. The ending in particular always struck me as just right. I left Daredevil there and haven’t read anything about him since, until now.
Bendis seems to draw from Miller’s story and take up the concept (the hero’s identity discovered) anew, with a more serious state of mind. The story so far is very un-superhero-ish. Very little fighting, very little costumes, and a lot of concentration on people. There is a heavy noir influence (also like Miller’s run) that I find particularly attractive as a reader (and lover of films noir).
I plan on reading more of the series (though from reading certain blogs I know at least some of the ending) so I’ll return to write about it as a whole later. For now a few thoughts.
Maleev’s artwork has a nice angular quality to it, also a great use of texture, which one rarely sees in comics. I do find the style a little too photorealist. It saps the energy from the people and makes the whole thing look too stiff.
There is surprising lack of sound effects, which, for a superhero very reliant on his extra-powerful hearing, is odd. For a quite a while in the story Matt Murdock is suffering from a kind of heightened (even more than usual) hearing. He has trouble filtering it out. Instead of visually showing this with sound effects, word balloons, and such, Bendis has Matt’s interior monologue tells us. That’s missing out on a powerful chance at visual showing the overwhelming sounds.
The sense of pacing and sequencing of the story is also very unusual and interesting. The story jumps around a lot, especially in the beginning. It adds a sense of mystery and suspense that would otherwise be missing. The convoluted plot also adds to the noir-esque atmosphere. The pacing is slow, very slow at times. The twelve issues I read take place mostly over a couple days. This is effective, giving everything a more human scale, but sometimes it’s a little overdone. Bendis has a tendency to use a multi-panel sequence where the viewpoint slowly closes in on the object of interest: here’s a panel of Matt sitting looking serious; here he is, slightly closer; here he is, even closer; here’s his arm and hand. That type of sequence is repeated a few times, unnecessarily an attempt to be a little too filmic.
I love the lack of narration in the story. Other than some location and time cues there is no narrative voice, just dialogue.
More when I read more.
Tags: bendis, superheroes
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