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[ty-talks-comics]

Best of Marvel: Week of February 6th, 2019

Best of this Week: Daredevil #1 - Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto and Sunny Gho

We now know fear.

I loved Charles Soule’s run on Daredevil. It brought him back to the cutthroat world of lawyering and fighting ninjas, but after a while, things just kinda waned, I want to say after we found out how people forgot who Daredevil was due to the help of the Purple Children. It got better again after Wilson Fisk became Mayor of New York, but fell off when Matt tried to figure out how Fisk cheated to win the election, only for it to be revealed to be a coma dream after Matt got hit by a truck.

Man Without Fear did a great job of deconstructing Daredevil, finding out what made him tick and what he would be like without the suit, without his ability to fight back his fear and pain.

Daredevil by Chip Zdarsky, however, brought back something that’s been missing for a while: Matt’s Catholic Guilt. It’s the central theme of this issue as we go through Matt’s life as he questions whether or not his actions are just or he deserves things that happen to him. From doing something against the law for a just reason, to him losing his eyesight for a greater purpose, to his (possible) first night as Daredevil being what will send him over the edge and out of the graces of God.

Marco Checchetto is doing the art for Daredevil now and his pencilling here is amazingly different to what he did in Old Man Hawkeye. Whereas there are still dynamic scenes that are cool enough to make posters out of, there are some that hearken back to the days of Alex Maleev or Joe Quesada with a noir feel and Sunny Gho’s colors are excellent in capturing these feelings. Gho uses warm tones in scenes where Daredevil’s in costume, roaming the city and cooler ones when it’s just Matt sitting in his apartment brooding. It’s a nice contrast to who Matt is when he is or isn’t in costume.

This issue also introduces an interesting new foil to Daredevil, a no-superhero-nonsense cop from Chicago by the name of Cole North. He’s a giant black man with a penchant for justice and law, not the violence for violence sake that he believes Daredevil to be about. I’m very excited for how he’ll try to capture Daredevil as the story goes on, especially after the climax of the story.

Daredevil has been on a roll recently and while that is likely just my bias talking, I wholeheartedly believe that Zdarsky, Checchetto and Gho’s run will live up to the standards set by Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker and every other amazing team that’s worked on Daredevil.

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This Over-Sized Issue has three stories and I thought I wouldn't like it.

Runner Up: Uncanny X-Men #11 - Matthew Rosenberg, Salvador Larroca, Rachelle Rosenberg, John McCrea, Mike Spicer and Juanan Ramirez

I thought Cyclops return in the Uncanny X-Men Annual was a fluke, but I was wrong. I was never into Cyclops as a character because he seemed too straight laced at times or even too naive and lovestruck and when he became nu-Magneto, I thought he was insane, but this Cyclops is a perfect mix of both. He’s a crusader for mutant rights, but he’s also still a hero for humanity as a whole.

In the first of the three stories, we see Cyclops trying to solve the disappearance of The X-Men and most of the world population of mutants with the help of “Multiple Man” Jamie Madrox  and a more melancholy than usual “Blindfold” Ruth Aldine who gives him cryptic warnings of the future. At an Anti-Mutant Rally where a cure for the X-Gene (yeah real original) is revealed again, Cyclops makes himself known after being attacked and is confronted by Captain America and instead of fighting him, he sends a message to anyone willing to fight with him. He is instead met by Reavers, Purifiers and members of the Sapien League only to be saved by Wolverine!

In a beautifully drawn fight, Larroca puts his skills on display in a few shots that highlight both men’s fighting styles. Wolverine’s brutality and Cyclops precision are fantastic.

In a story starring Wolverine, we find that he’s been following Cyclops and fighting ff those that are trying to kill off the rest of mutantkind. Initially, he just wants to make sure that Cyclops isn’t doing anything stupid, but upon seeing Blindfold himself, and having Black Widow and Bucky try and talk him out of helping Scott, he decides that he needs to.

I’ve never like John McCrea’s art much, but against the winter backdrop and Wolverine’s rough style, he really does a great job at bringing each scene to life, placing Wolverine at great distances or in shadows, obscuring him as he still doesn’t want to be recognized as being alive again.

The final story definitely requires a trigger warning as Blindfold shows many of the signs of someone suffering from depression and the “sweet” resignation of her fate as it leads to her suicide. Almost all of the color is dark or a deep red, denoting violent or distressing thoughts as Blindfold is seeing her past and present simultaneously, but her future isn’t there. Whether or not this is because of her killing herself or because of some impending doom that will destroy all life isn’t entirely made clear, but dear Lord did it make fo a powerful ending, especially for a character with such a tragic history in the first place.