A review by crookedtreehouse
Daredevil by Mark Waid, Vol. 5 by Mark Waid, Mark Waid, Chris Samnee
4.0
As unbelievable and shockingly bad as the last volume was, it managed to help set up a really intriguing and well-executed follow-up.
Much of this volume is centered on the mystery of someone from Daredevil's past trying to recreate Daredevil by exposing homeless and destitute people to the same chemicals that gave Matt Murdock his Daredevil radar and other extra sensory powers. The mystery is ... easily solvable but the mystery isn't the point. The point is that someone is using ain intricate knowledge of Murdock's past to try and keep him from having a future.
At the same time Foggy Nelson has cancer, and Murdock has to help him power through it. It wasn't too long ago that Murdock, and Daredevil readers, thought Nelson was already dead back when he was put in Witness Protection, so seeing Murdock have to deal with the friend he thought was dead to come back into his life only to 1.) Turn into a huge jerk in the last volume, and now 2.) probably die slowly in front of him due to a disease rather than a villain he can stop, is pretty devestating.
What I'm finding interesting about Waid's run vs Bendis's and Brubaker's is that each of their runs had storytelling that transcended what most comics tend to do. They were dark and broody, sure, but they told the kind of believable hero/crime story you might read in a well structured novel or a tightly written TV show about real people. Waid's run is just an average comic book story but well written. I don't believe characters motivations much of the time, the story has characters motivations and emotions doing constant 180s for the sake of moving the story rather than a charcter behaving like a real person. And while that made the last volume nigh-unreadable, it's tightened up here. It doesn't excuse the events of the last volume, it just allows us to move on from them.
Much of this volume is centered on the mystery of someone from Daredevil's past trying to recreate Daredevil by exposing homeless and destitute people to the same chemicals that gave Matt Murdock his Daredevil radar and other extra sensory powers. The mystery is ... easily solvable but the mystery isn't the point. The point is that someone is using ain intricate knowledge of Murdock's past to try and keep him from having a future.
At the same time Foggy Nelson has cancer, and Murdock has to help him power through it. It wasn't too long ago that Murdock, and Daredevil readers, thought Nelson was already dead back when he was put in Witness Protection, so seeing Murdock have to deal with the friend he thought was dead to come back into his life only to 1.) Turn into a huge jerk in the last volume, and now 2.) probably die slowly in front of him due to a disease rather than a villain he can stop, is pretty devestating.
What I'm finding interesting about Waid's run vs Bendis's and Brubaker's is that each of their runs had storytelling that transcended what most comics tend to do. They were dark and broody, sure, but they told the kind of believable hero/crime story you might read in a well structured novel or a tightly written TV show about real people. Waid's run is just an average comic book story but well written. I don't believe characters motivations much of the time, the story has characters motivations and emotions doing constant 180s for the sake of moving the story rather than a charcter behaving like a real person. And while that made the last volume nigh-unreadable, it's tightened up here. It doesn't excuse the events of the last volume, it just allows us to move on from them.