You know those numbers you can call to have someone read your fortune or give you advice on a pressing matter? I’m not going to get into a discussion on whether psychic abilities are real, but I will take a look at how, in the Marvel Universe, you can call a trusted superhero colleague for guidance. At least if you happen to be friends with Matt Murdock, owner of the sharpest ears in town. Too bad this particular scenario, from Daredevil #38 (volume 2), by Brian Michael Bendis and Manuel Gutierrez, doesn’t actually work. Read the below scene carefully (click the images to enlarge), and we’ll get to all the ways it doesn’t make sense…
Matt hears heatbeats by phone, panel 1
Actual nonsense under the cut –>
Tagged as:
Brian Michael Bendis,
Daredevil science,
Daredevil vol 2 #1- 100,
Manuel Gutierrez,
Wacky powers
by Christine on December 13, 2009 in Humor
Because you asked for it (well, @kevbot217 did on Twitter), here’s the natural follow-up to the post about Foggy’s mustache: Foggy’s tattoo. Apparently, the mustache wasn’t edgy enough, so he had to go for the more permanent statement of getting a tribal tattoo more commonly seen on 20-year-olds. Was it deep enough to stay in continuity? I’m not sure. When we see Foggy shaving in Daredevil #82 (vol 2), only his right arm is visible. These panels, from Daredevil #59 (vol 2), by Bendis and Maleev, are part of a longer scene that is quite funny, also featuring Matt’s “It’s red? I thought it was yellow” joke, which I’m sure those of you who have read it remember.
Foggy shows off his tattoo, from Daredevil #59 (vol 2) by Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev
Tagged as:
Alex Maleev,
Brian Michael Bendis,
Daredevil vol 2 #1- 100,
Foggy Nelson,
Humor
I was quite delighted to see which issue was next in line to get the Random Reviews treatment as this is one of my favorites from the Bendis/Maleev run. It’s exciting, funny, and even sensual.
Background
This arc starts in issue #61 when the Black Widow comes back to town after being called in when out on assignment. Madam Hydra has been apprehended in Bulgaria and their government is refusing to turn her over to the Americans unless Natasha is turned over to them. Natasha returns to New York and decides to hide more or less out in the open and crashing the place of friend and former lover Matt Murdock. He, meanwhile, has his own set of problems in the wake of having his secret revealed to the world, and being separated from Milla who has filed for an annulment. In the previous issue, Matt has received a tip from Ben Urich that regular Punisher foe Jigsaw is involved in some shady business and that the police have decided to lay low, giving Matt and Natasha the chance to go out and play…
Description: Matt and Natasha are at the docks, both in costume. They are hiding from Jigsaw who is spraying them with bullets, but neither one seems worried by this. Jigsaw hysterically calls out “I saw you!” to which Natasha jokingly responds by asking Matt “Do you think he saw us?”
Read more under the cut –>
Tagged as:
Alex Maleev,
Black Widow,
Brian Michael Bendis,
Daredevil vol 2 #1- 100,
Reviews
by Christine on May 27, 2009 in Humor
While I’m busy, I thought I’d keep you guys entertained with a word balloon contest. The rules are simple: I post some panels with the original caption erased and you guys think up a new one. Do this for just one panel or all of them, just number your answer accordingly so we all know which suggestion goes with which panel. Of course, coming up with several suggestions for the same panel is fine too. A week from today, June 3, I’ll pick the five I liked the best and put them up for a vote, and I will let that poll run for another week. The winner will receive a cool prize. Of course, I’ll be updating while this contest is going as well and keep a clearly visible link under the menu so you guys can still easily find this post. Have fun!
1) Daredevil vol 1, #5
by Stan Lee and Wally Wood
2) Daredevil vol 1, #102
by Chris Claremont and Syd Shores
3) Daredevil vol 1, #182
by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson
4) Daredevil vol 2, #2
by Kevin Smith and Joe Quesada
5) Daredevil vol 2, #62
by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev
Tagged as:
Alex Maleev,
Brian Michael Bendis,
Chris Claremont,
Frank Miller,
Humor,
Joe Quesada,
Kevin Smith,
Klaus Janson,
Stan Lee,
Syd Shores,
Wally Wood
Okay, so this might be a silly post, but I thought I’d like to share it with you guys anyway. Yesterday, when I went through all my volume 2 hardcovers in search of some juicy comic book panels, I also came across the one below from Daredevil #46. This is a rather sweet scene of Milla receiving flowers from Matt in the wake of the date they had that ended with Matt being hauled off to a police station to be questioned for Rosenthal’s murder. Nothing says “Sorry I got hauled off to jail, and we didn’t get to do the deed” like a bouquet of flowers, right?
Along with the flowers is a note in Braille, and being the curious person that I am, I decided to try to figure out what it says. I was expecting something sweet and memorable. I wasn’t expecting the following:
kbkbkfbk
dnjfnkfmbj
hbjbkgfkjnaok
Wow… Gosh, Murdock. You really know what women want to hear, don’t you? I can just imagine Milla sitting there thinking “Okay, so he’s illiterate, but I need to remember he’s really hot. Very, very hot. And a superhero. Oh, and he’s a lawyer too. Wait a minute… How the
hell did he make it through law school?”
For a brief intro on Braille, I suggest instead the following links that I found somewhat enlightening:
Tagged as:
Alex Maleev,
Blindness/disability,
Brian Michael Bendis,
Daredevil vol 2 #1- 100,
Humor,
Random information
As I alluded to earlier, this is a look at some of the more sizzling images of Matt Murdock to come out of Maleev’s tenure as Daredevil artist. While Matt has always been portrayed as being at least moderately attractive, Alex Maleev’s realistic style managed to convey the kind of images that lets the reader imagine what the character would realistically look like. And some of the art he produced is of the kind that would literally make you drool. I’ll have to whip up some lady eye candy for the straight male readers too, but for now it’s all about the title character.
The first image below is perhaps my favorite. It’s the art from the cover to Daredevil #50 (vol 2), and I must admit to using this as the desktop background on my computer for a while. I removed it after doing some work-related stuff at my dad’s house. He caught a glimpse of it and, of course, asked me what it was. I answered truthfully by saying that it was Daredevil, my new favorite superhero. I left it at that, and to this day no one in my family has any idea about the extent of my involvement with this character. I suppose a girl should be allowed some secrets, right?
There is so much to like about this picture. Aside from the near-pornographic posing (not necessarily sure that’s a good thing, but it works here), it’s just a very attractive piece of art. We have Matt returning from a night on the town with cuts all over, almost passed out in a chair (or whatever that is he’s sitting on), but there’s also a hint of a smile on his lips. It’s like he’s exhausted, but content at the same time. Personally, I just want to run over and give him a shoulder rub or something. Maybe pour some iodine on those cuts… Is it just me or is it getting hot in here? 
Okay, moving on to a beautifully drawn sequence of panels from Daredevil #35, where Matt goes out in costume to defy the journalists camped out outside his home. I like the detail here, and how his emotions come through so clearly. Nice job, Maleev!
There aren’t enough good things I can say about this sequence. This is great work from Bendis, and Maleev captures what’s going on in Matt’s head perfectly. You can see how quickly defiance turns to fear. Modern Daredevil writers have done a pretty good job of debunking the “man without fear” myth to the point where fear has become a respectable and quite reasonable emotion for the most human of superheroes to experience. After all, you can’t really be brave if you don’t experience fear. But that’s a discussion for some other time. Let’s move on…
The next couple of panels are from the opening page of Daredevil #37 and shows a flashback to a younger Matt, lounging in bed with a certain college girlfriend turned assassin named Elektra Natchios. It’s a nicely drawn college-age version of the character, and I happen to know this is a favorite of a friend of mine.
Wait! Don’t turn that computer screen upside down or twist your neck trying to get a good look. Here’s the panel turned the “right” way…
Yeah, I can think of a couple of guys who would like to be in that position. At least before there was a risk of a sai to the chest. Speaking of bodily injuries, let’s turn our attention to another fan favorite. Below, from issue #48, we see Matt trying to heal from his close encounter with Typhoid Mary. Matt has the worst ex-girlfriends in comics.
Well, this journey into the smoking corners of the Daredevil archive isn’t really over, but I do need to get going, so you hungry (drooling?) readers are just going to have to be content with this for now. I might update this post later. I will see you then.
Tagged as:
Alex Maleev,
Brian Michael Bendis,
Commentary,
Daredevil vol 2 #1- 100,
Meandering musings
Daredevil vol 2, #26 is the first issue of Brian Michael Bendis’s long run on the book. He had written a previous story arc called Wake Up (issues #16-19) with art by David Mack, but this issue was the beginning of the “Bendis run proper,” with Alex Maleev on art duties.
Bendis definitely changed the tone of Daredevil while on the book, and you feel that change right off the bat in this issue. Daredevil comes across as a different kind of superhero book that appeals to the mature reader in both content and style. This is reflected in Maleev’s realistic-looking art, complete with a washed out and gritty feel.
You also get a taste of that typical Bendis style dialogue in this issue. While it tends to get annoying in his Avengers books and elsewhere, it works pretty well here and gives the reader a sense of the characters being real people.
Here, we are introduced to Sammy Silke, the man who will be instrumental in Matt Murdock’s subsequent downfall. A small-time crook with ties to an influential mob family, he gets his fellow mobsters together to “do a Ceasar” on the Kingpin himself, and the events of the first half of the issue show the fat man’s apparent demise. I like the Ceasar reference, personally, and this scene feels like it’s been cut from a classic gangster movie.
For the second half of the issue, we cut to Matt Murdock delivering his closing argument in a civil case against a shady drug company. It’s a great lawyer scene and a nice introduction to the character, even though I have a hard time swallowing the premise of the case he’s arguing (a drug company selling a form of amphetamine aimed at teens lies to the FDA about nasty side effects though it seems to me that the effects of taking amphetamines would be pretty obvious and that the FDA would never approve or even look at a drug made for illicit purposes anyway).
Matt wins his case, but gets in trouble outside the courthouse when a bomb – or rather, a person – explodes. He realizes immediately that he was the intended target for this hit, and with his head still in disarray he sets out after the bomber, finding him a few blocks away…
Bendis does a fine job of getting inside Matt’s head in this issue. He gets to the heart of his confusion, both physical in his senses being assaulted by the bomb, and the unsettling feeling of knowing that the attack was aimed at him in his then-secret identity, and not at Daredevil. This is a sign of things to come, and he knows that he has reason to worry.
The art is good. Maleev did great work on Daredevil from the very beginning, but I feel that his art got better and better and must admit to liking late Maleev much better than early Maleev. There are some great panels here, but some look a little odd to me, and the art is not as dynamic as it could be. Still, it adds to the overall quality of the issue, the first of many to come.
Tagged as:
Alex Maleev,
Brian Michael Bendis,
Daredevil vol 2 #1- 100,
Reviews
Christine is a thirty something Daredevil fan from Sweden who spends way too much of her free time writing posts for this blog. Check the
Everybody loves to hate Milla
by Christine on October 4, 2009 in Character Basics, Commentary
On a couple of occasions, I’ve come across people on message boards who have absolutely loved the character of Milla Donovan, the first and only woman to ever get Matt Murdock to tie the knot. One guy even went so far as to say that she was one of the best characters to be introduced in Daredevil in recent memory. However, when you look at past Daredevil reviews in various fora, the majority opinion seems to be quite the opposite, with people’s feelings for the character running from lukewarm to ice cold.
Personally, I would say that I have liked the character just fine. No more, and no less. I’ve never been attached to her in the way I am to Foggy or even Dakota and Becky, but I have a hard time fully understanding where the considerable amount of hatred is coming from. To me, Milla’s main weakness as a character has been that after her strong first appearance, even Bendis, the very man who created her (along with Alex Maleev who based her appearance on that of his wife), didn’t quite seem to know what to do with her. When Milla was (permanently?) retired from the book in Daredevil #500, she was, in my opinion, an under-explored character, despite her many appearances. The same thing goes for her and Matt’s marriage. I still have no idea what made them click as a couple or what they really saw in each other.
More Milla under the cut –>
Tagged as: Alex Maleev, Brian Michael Bendis, Daredevil vol 1 #51-100, Daredevil vol 2 #100-current, Ed Brubaker, Lee Weeks, Michael Lark, Milla Donovan
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