Book of Doom: Daredevil # 93

Not much new or interesting came out this week, so we fell back on ol’ reliable Ed Brubaker and his latest installment of Daredevil. As I mentioned previously, we’ve seen Matt Murdock pretty well run through the ringer over the past years (much of that during the extremely good Bendis era).

On the surface, this issue appears to be a pretty direct “reboot” by Brubaker. Daredevil isn’t the Kingpin anymore. He isn’t in jail. His identity isn’t public. Milla is back. So’s the “dead” partner. All of the loose ends Bendis left hanging are pretty well tied up. For much of the issue, it seems like we’re about to return to those halcyon days of care-free superheroing. Heck, I was ready for Stilt Man to pop in for a fight. (The most remarkable aspect of all this is that Brubaker accomplishes in a few pages entire storylines that Bendis would’ve spent months on.)

What made this issue stand up for me, though, is how Brubaker doesn’t just shut the door on what happened. Matt remembers all the heart ache and stress he went through, and both mentally and with the pending visit of an enemy, it’s going to be hanging over his head.

What did everyone else think?

Doominator says: “Daredevil” is the kind of book it’s easy to delve into – there’s nothing particuarly special about him, aside from the radar sense, and its always had a gritty realism, at least since Frank Miller.

Because of this, it has years upon years of mythos behind it, everything going back to the beginning. This issue tries to accomplish tying up some loose ends, encompassing many points in the past of the book. So to any of those with familiarity of the Karen Page or Kingpin dynamics, its not hard to navigate it. Having not read the book in a number of issues, I quickly found my orientation in the book, and throughout it was able to at least understand what had gone on.

One qualm is the way it all seemed to too neatly wrap up everything. While part of this may be to lead the series on to something new, it still gives Matt Murdock everything back – with a seed of doubt towards the end, of course.

Overall, it’s not bad, and I would probably at least pick up Daredevil TPBs, if not the individual issues.

B+

Fin Fang Doom says: What can I say about this week’s issue of Daredevil? It was good. Very good. But then again, every issue of Brubaker’s Daredevil run has been good so far. Everything’s back to normal for Matt Murdock and company now. In less than a year Brubaker was able to undo everything Bendis did to radically alter DD, although things are really only back to normal on the surface. Everything still happened to DD, so it will continue to affect him. It’s probably the best “reset” I’ve ever read in comic.

But really, this issue in and of itself wasn’t noteworthy. It was an epilogue to the story, and epilogues are really just there to tie up the loose ends. At that point the story is over. I honestly wish they would have kept Fozzy away from Matt for longer, but I’ve got no complaints other than that. Keep up the good work, guys.