First off, I finished the review of Without Fear, in case you stopped by before and noticed that it was a little, uhm, “stunted” the first time I posted it. As you may have noticed, my TPB reviews are more like full-blown summaries with comments, which means that people who want to get up to speed quickly could, in theory, skip reading the actual volume and just read the post. I don’t know why anyone would want to do that, but you could.

For reviewing current individual issues, I’ll probably go for a different format where I’ll try to be lighter on the details and as spoiler free as can be. Generally, I’ve found that the guy who really sets the standard for this kind of review is David Wallace over at Comics Bulletin (former Silver Bullet Comics), and I have no illusions of getting anywhere near that level of review excellence, but I’ll try my best.

In other news, if you have some time to spare this weekend and love to read, analyze (laugh at?) and just pick apart early Daredevil, you should read the below posts on the issues collected in the Daredevil Essentials, volumes 1 and 2 (issues #1-48). They are long, but funny as hell (pardon my French). Have you always wondered why the Fantastic Four picked the very blind Matt Murdock to do a visual expection of the Baxter Building for the review of their lease, why anyone would dream up a villain like the Matador, or who in their right mind would team up Stilt-man with Leap Frog? Well, you won’t find the answers here, but you will find someone who’s asked himself those same questions, and his posts are good for quite a few chuckles. The below posts, from the Comic Treadmill, were made in 2004 and 2006, so some of you may have read them already, as I did a few months back, but they are worth a second read.

The Other Murdock Papers