Volume 17: Daredevil: Guardian Devil

Daredevil: Guardian Devil

Author: Kevin Smith | Illustrator: Joe Quesada

"I've been blind since I was a child, and as a result,
I've never actually seen the woman who cried herself to sleep in my bed last night."

Guardian Devil isn't a direct sequel to Frank Miller's Daredevil: Born Again story (Volume 08 of TUGNC), but Kevin Smith's version of DD, his treatment of one of the more tortured heroes of the Marvel Universe, was clearly influenced by Miller's work.

It opens with a handwritten letter, a heartfelt confession exposing someone's inner feelings. Ink on paper can be a powerful modifier of a reader's emotional state; comics are ink on paper, too.

The text speaks directly to Matt's inner demons, a part of him that's never far from the surface thanks to his catholic upbringing: the unique feeling of guilt that the Catholic Church creates and nurtures in an individual, requiring them to feed it for life lest they fall from God's grace. For many of the lambs, the tether of conditioning the Church attaches stretches but rarely breaks, strengthening each time the individual is forced to confront their own mortality.

When someone is feeling lonely, lost, or underappreciated, when there's no-one around but they need acknowledgement of their feelings, who else but God can give it to them? Furthermore, just because someone wears a mask, is a symbol of hope for others, it doesn't mean they themselves aren't ever lonely and lost.

A new element is introduced and presumed to be either a form of divine salvation or its opposite, damnation. It's something that either ought to be protected or destroyed. The uncertainty, the pressure on the hero to choose one side or the other, is laid on thick.

Credit where it's due, Smith has some excellent ideas — delving beneath not just the spandex but also the character's skin, into their psyche is a solid basis for storytelling — but his heavy-handedness often undervalues the good work. When the text is being wholly subjective, such as the aforementioned letter, it's not a problem. When it's required to be objective, however, it can feel forced and melodramatic. The finale, in particular, was that way for me. It left me unfulfilled and resolute that, while I feel it was a book worthy of the score given below, I've no desire to read it again.

The book collects together Daredevil (Vol 2) #1-8.

Verdict:

Volume 08: Daredevil: Born Again

Daredevil: Born Again

Author: Frank Miller | Illustrator: David Mazzucchelli

'I shouldn't call him Matt. Give the man his due. He's wearing the tights. He's Daredevil. The man without fear.'

Frank Miller returned to the series that he'd worked on years before to give Daredevil a new perspective. To do that he dragged Matt Murdock through a hellish descent into paranoia and destitution, stripping the much-loved character of everything that was important to him so that he could be born anew.

If your only experience of Daredevil is the steaming turd filmed version, then you won't know how deeply profound his struggles can be. Murdock exists in a world of darkness, literally. His costumed side, Daredevil, strives to combat the evil that arises from the darkness in men's hearts. The religious aspect of the light at the end of the hero's struggle plays a key role in his journey through hardship.

Even though it's mostly self-contained, the Born Again storyline isn't the best place to jump on board because it's really the ending of a larger story, a string of events that are all now meeting in one place.

Interestingly, it's more akin to a crime novel than a superhero comic. Outside of Miller's own Sin City his affectatious hard-boiled dialogue can seem awkward and ill-fitting, but not so with Daredevil, it fits beautifully - except for his usual excessive use of dashes and unnecessary ellipsis points that drive me crazy.

It's a well-crafted story with only minor flaws, the most prominent being the themes that Miller wants to comment on tend to overshadow the characters. With the exception of Matt, the story isn't happening to the characters. Instead, the characters are shuffled around within a rigid framework to advance the writer's goal, and when it comes to the crunch Miller backs down a little. 

Perhaps he was unsure of the answer to the problem and hoped the act of writing would clarify it for both him and us? Unfortunately, it doesn't, at least not in the way I'd hoped for.

Of course, you can view it from the other perspective and say that what he did was shift from the personal to the public. But either way, it robs Daredevil of the intimate resolution that I craved. If the ending had been as gripping and as satisfying as the build-up, then I'd have scored it a perfect 5 out of 5; it misses out on that narrowly.

The book collects together Daredevil #227-231.

Verdict: