Daredevil fans in the house?

[Colin YNWA]

I am/was a big Daredevil fan but havent read anything since the end of Bendis's run (10 years ago) would like to pick up some TPBs, so recommendations...

Jesus don't say the end of the Bendis run was 10 years ago, that's too scarey!

The trouble is with giving recommendations is there has been so much good stuff. He really is the must consustently well written character in comics since Wally West's Flash (and possible better than him). I think if you want the very best go for the Waid run, any of it. Or if you fancy going back a bit further I'd always recommend the Ann Nocenti run and as it happens there's a new collection of a nice chunk of that coming out in January.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Daredevil-Epic-Collection-Touch-Typhoid/dp/0785196889/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1447136254&sr=8-10&keywords=ann+nocenti

Which happens to include a punisher story come to think of it.

[JamesC]

If you're looking for good Punisher stories go for the Aaron/Dillon stuff.

[jacob g]

I am/was a big Daredevil fan but havent read anything since the end of Bendis's run (10 years ago) would like to pick up some TPBs, so recommendations gratefully received likewise the Punisher of which I have read nothing post Ennis.

Simplest answer, after Bendis start with Brubaker. In my opinion his run is great, not as good as Bendis run but... Still great. I loved the fact he used Dakota North, I loved his story with Rucka in "Cruel and Unusual" for being great reminder of how good this guys used to work together in Gotham Central.

Then ofcourse End Of Days by Benids cuz it's like epilogue to his run.

[Colin YNWA]

Then ofcourse End Of Days by Benids cuz it's like epilogue to his run.

I've just read 'End of Days' and while its pretty good I wasn't blown away. There were a couple of bits that I felt were a bit ham-fisted, all those ginger headed children. Everyone being so dark and mysterious about the underlying puzzle that Ben Urich is following. Its does form a lovely epilogue to Bendis run but didn't feel it was as strong as that run at its best.

[Greg M.]

I think if you want the very best go for the Waid run, any of it.

I would echo this. The Mark Waid run has been one of the very best things published by Marvel in the last few years - not least because the artists Waid has been teamed up with have been so consistently superb and innovative. Be interested to see whether lightning can strike twice when he and Samnee take on the new Black Widow title. I'm not convinced Natasha is quite as interesting a character as Matt, but maybe Waid can show me otherwise.

Re: Brubaker - run starts brilliantly, gets steadily less so with every subsequent story (which means it's still pretty good till round about the Mr. Fear arc), ends on a clanger. First story's better than any of the Bendis stuff though.

As for Punisher - it's the Mike Baron stuff for me.

[Citi-Def_Joe]

Thank you everyone for the recomendations plenty to get my teeth in to

[Colin YNWA]

Well I've started to do one of my favourite things in comics and re-read the Ann Nocenti Daredevil run. This really is the run that in many ways formed and defined what I love in mainstream American comics (in the way that 2000ad defined everything else I love in most media!). I adored it when I was first reading it as a teenager and everytime I go back to it I find more and more to enjoy.

The run is split into a number of distinct parts and I'm thinking I'll whitter on here about each section in turn, starting with the first the 'hodge podge' finding her (Ann Nocenti's that is) feet with the character... or at least thats how I always think of the issues at the start of the run 236 - 249. Reading the issues again I'm reminded how she found her feet pretty much straight away. This section is bookended by two quite brilliant stories detailing the Black Widows personal trailers against a shady Doctors 'super soliders' running amok (was the Doctor ever caught up with - in my head this happened but for the life of me I can't think where?). Both have fantastic art, as the vast majority of this section does, by Barry Windsor Smith in 236 and Keith Giffen in 247. Inbetween these two there a wonderful series of short stories one dodgy fill in issues aside (one good one too). The two, two part stories with Louis Williams, are particularly fine (whatever happened to Louis Williams? I don't remember seeing it elsewhere and it really was excellent), the Nameless One and the astonishingly good Rotgut story.

The entire section is a fantastic, evocative examination of human life trapped in the big city, the pressures and splinters it puts into the psyche. Contrasted by Daredevil a man set free by the crushing Born Again storyline that proceeded this run, pushing to keep his patch afloat and find himself in his new context. Ann Nocenti can be said to be wordy and heavy going, but I find the writing fluid and insightful. There's a lot said but none of it feels wasted.

The last two issues of this section quite possibly belong more naturally with the John Romita Jr run that starts in issue 250, setting up Matt Murdock's life back with the law. The art in these two issues is by the supreme Rick Leonardi however and so I always place it in this section. Two fantastic issues featuring Wolverine and some other brutal realities.

So there we have it Ann Nocenti doesn't start her run finding her feet, she firmly plans them square on the concrete ground and sets her stall out quite fearlessly.

[Professor Bear]

A dang shame that Nocenti and writers of her era have been pushed to the side lately by the Big Two.

[Colin YNWA]

A dang shame that Nocenti and writers of her era have been pushed to the side lately by the Big Two.

Well to be fair while I'll be turning this thread into a Nocenti lovefest for a while her recent work at DC was pretty terrible and man did I give it a try, but it was awful!

[Professor Bear]

I'm willing to be forgiving about that on account of she wasn't the first or last good writer to mysteriously start churning out garbage for DC in the last few years.

[Colin YNWA]

So that's why I always think of issues 236-249 being the 'hodge-podge' Ann Nocenti finding her feet stories, its cos whats to come is, simply put, the very best mainstream American comics have to offer. Forget Frank Miller, forget Mark Waid, forget Brian Bendis, issues Daredevil 250 - 266 are the definative Daredevil tale. Quite breathtakingly good.

Firstly, while those early Nocenti issues have some fantastic art in them these issues (a couple of very dodgy fill-ins aside) really benefit from having a consistant art team. In John Romita Jr the series finds its penciller supreme. The fact that he's never looked so good (I mean that quite literally) due to the exquisite inks of Al Williamson is just the icing on the cake. In Al Williamson, Daredevil as a series provides the very proof of why an inker is so very, very important to art in US comics. Klaus Janson makes Miller the artist he's remembered as being and Al Williamson similarly elevates JRJr's art to another level.

Storywise Nocenti takes the story from an exploration of the effects of New York on the human condition and examines far more closely Daredevil. His own relationship with the city and the people who define that city for him. She builds her own rogue's gallery for DD in a way that I can't remember being done so well since Stan decided some teenager from New York should fight a fella with bionic arms and some other folks. Nocenti's villians are all beautifully cast to reflect DD, no more so of course then the equisite Typhiod Mary one of the great Marvel villians of any time or character. That she does this while having the courage to use the quintessial DD villian in a more defining way than that man Miller,who introduced Kingpin as the very pinnacle of New York's crime set, is beyond respect.

The nuisances Nocenti creates with this cabal's calculated and chilling attack on a man's very heart and soul is quite sublime. That she weaves it all into a brilliant 15 part tapestry that hangs together so convincingly, without any scene that it referenial or even tired, as the tale of the fall of an utterly great led character whose fell so often before, by some masterful comic writers is her ultimate achievement here. She makes battering Matt Murdock into the ground feel fresh and new. Its been done before and since in superb stories. Its never been done as well as it is here.

Finally as if to prove her mastery of the form she produces not one, but two of the best ever uses of crossover tie-ins that I have ever read. Roger Stern's brilliant Avengers run with John Buscema suffered from two many tie-ins and that's on a book that should be able to handle them. Daredevil, when being done this way, really should suffer from such X-Men related shenanigans, but it doesn't, Nocenti uses both a Fall of the Mutants tie and an three part Inferno ties to perfectly enhance her story. In the former she explores the impact of the events on the people and the city she's exploring. In the later over three masterful issues she grasps the tail of this demonic story and whips it into shape as a lens through which to examine the effects on a man's soul of his own actions and to return to her previous theme of the impact of life in the city on the human psychology. Really its never been done close to this well.

So yeah after the 16 issues, we don't get a redemption, or return to form by sheer will power and guts as American comics so often give us, rather in an almost 2000adesque way we get a shattered man, trapped by the world, his own demons and the self destructive passion of others, desperately trying to escape both literally and mentally. Which sets up what's next.

If you haven't read these comics and like American Mainstream nonsense on any level buy them they have almost never been matched, if they ever have, before or since...

... can you tell I like 'um!

[Link Prime]

It's all about Daredevil on ComiXology this morning.
Waid's entire run for a Euro an issue as well as collections by Miller, Brubaker, Bendis & Smith for €3.99.
I've just blown my last Christmas iTunes voucher.

The Elektra collection by Blackman & Del Mundo looks absolutely gorgeous from the few pages I've read.
Been meaning to pick this up for a while.

[Fungus]

The Elektra collection by Blackman & Del Mundo looks absolutely gorgeous from the few pages I've read.
Been meaning to pick this up for a while.

It's gorgeous throughout, dive in 

[Colin YNWA]

So we get to the 'awkward' middle phase of Ann Nocenti's DD run, issues 267 - 277. Its my understanding that these issues are not as well regarded as the rest of the run (I might be wrong) and while I'm not as big a fan of these issues as those that preceded them they are still quite superb.

We start off with a beaten and broken Matt Murdock leaving New York, trying to avoid thinking of the things that have happened to him and the people he is abandoning. It sets the tone for this phase, about identity and what makes people (and others!) who they are, what shapes them and what influences define and even destroy them. Its all absolutely fascinating stuff.

A bit of me wishes the Matt Murdock stranger in a strange town stuff had carried on longer than it did, as issues 268 and 269 are quite superb, 268 in-particular, Matt hiding in the lives of others to escape his own, as he moves from town to town, Alas 270 kinda has him suddenly feeling more chipper in an issue that is more about setting up whats to in the future (in issues 278 - 282) before we crash into a supremely under-rated arc that can feel a little loose and ill defined until read as one.

There's a lot going on in issues 271 - 276 as Matt crosses paths with an animal rights activist, determined to bring down her father's dark government experimental farm, which releases the cloned 'perfect' woman Number 9, who is tracked down by a gun and hardware obsessed agent, while in the background the Inhumans bicker before turning up just in time for everyone to confront a Doctor Doom* revitalized Ultron, as Nocenti shows once again there's no one quite like her at using company wide cross-overs to enhance the themes she's creating rather than allow them to derail them... phew all that in just 6 issues. Yet it all fits together wonderfully.

Each of the characters, Brandy and her dodgy Dad, the Inhuman's, Number 9, Ultron serve to reflect the search for identity beyond those that make you or 'rule' you, just as Daredevil is trying to redefine his life shattered by others, well with a little helping had from the ever self destructive Mr Murdock himself of course.

It all ends magnificently with Ultron talking himself and us through those themes. Its said this phase is heavy handed, its not. Its said they are preachy, they aren't. They just have themes and ideas and use the glorious hyper-reality of superhero shenanigans to bring them to exaggerated life. So why aren't these issues as good as what's gone before, well simply as not every arc in this run can be the very best comics mainstream (well big two) have put out not written by Jack Kirby... so ya know they only fail by a facing a ridiculously high benchmark!

Its all wrapped up by a fantastic fill in issue, which sits with the Matt Murdock lone stranger stuff, drawn supremely by Rick Leonardi.

So yeah Matt seems to be finding himself again towards the end of this phase, but where does the devil truly have to go to redeem himself. Why Hell of course and so Ann Nocenti, John Romita Jr and Al Williamson decide to do just that, literally next and boy do these issues deserve their own bit of Taylorwittering...

*Love the way Doc D foreshadows how his plot to defeat DD using Ultron will ultimately fail in his opening monologue.

[Greg M.]

Enjoying reading your take on the Nocenti era, Colin - you're aware I enjoyed the run too, but it's been an age since I dug them out and read 'em. Is much of this stuff collected, bar the Typhoid Mary stories? I look forward to your next post, as it's the 'hell' stuff that's really stayed with me - Romita Jr's Mephisto is the Mephisto for me, and Blackheart is, like Sienkiewicz's Magus or Warlock, one of those characters that only seems to look right when drawn by his creator.

Issue 277 is one of my absolute favourites though. Reading that at the time (aged 13, I guess) it felt like it was coming from a very different place than many of the comics I was used to. It fascinated me, even if I wasn't totally sure I got it.