Daredevil Message Board

[Francesco]

I'd like to add something to the discussion. I have checked, and there actually IS a "precedent for an entire run to be retconned" and it is in fact relatively recent in comic book time (about 15 years ago).

It was The Incredible Hulk vol. 2 #34–76 (2002–2004), by Bruce Jones. It was a decent storyarc, but it got entirely handwaved as a dream induced in the Hulk by Nightmare (even though it made little sense, given that multiple viewpoints of the story were shown, not just Hulk's), essentially giving Greg Pak a clean slate to start the whole Planet Hulk/World War Hulk arc.

[Mike Murdock]

I'd also argue Waid's run didn't get retconned in the slightest. It got reset, but it still happened and has at least been referenced. It's like saying Bendis's run get retconned because people don't suspect Matt of being Daredevil right now and he's not married.
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Matt Murdock's cooler twin brother

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[Belfan]

I'm just going to insert a small comment here:

I absolutely abhor when a story, series, arc... whatever you want to insert here... is simply erased, because it didn't work. It is lazy and unimaginative.

While I wasn't a fan of everything that Waid did, it wasn't all bad. The Foggy cancer stuff was interesting. I thought the original concept, or reason, for Matt's happier demeanor was explained pretty well. I was wiling to give it a shot. Let us not forget that Waid wasn't really the writer that let the secret identity "out of the bag".

Mind you, I'm not some new fan of the character either. I've been reading the various ongoing titles of DD since the mid 80's, and have read nearly everything back before that.

We can't all agree on the way the character is written. I hated the celebrity stuff also, and the different direction the title was going. But I AM a Daredevil fan! I think that Soule is doing what he can, to undo some things to the character that never should have been aloud to happen.

Wow, that went on for a lot longer than I intended.

[Mike Murdock]

Once again, he didn't erase what happened, what he did was change the status quo regarding his secret identity (which, as you pointed out, started with Bendis). All those stories still happened. One of the characters created in Volume 3 was mentioned. However, there are stories for Daredevil you can't tell with his identity known, simple as that.
_________________
Matt Murdock's cooler twin brother

Not sure what to read next? Check out the Book Club for some ideas!

I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
Thomas More - A Man for All Seasons

[james castle]

[The Overlord]

[Francesco]

[james castle]

[jriddle]

[jriddle]

[james castle]

[Francesco]

Anyway, back to Soule's run and its quality.
The way I see it, so far he's doing okay. He got back the right atmosphere a DD comic should have. It hasn't been stellar, there hasn't been anything really special and some things have been definitely goofy.
For example, Tenfingers whipping out the gun with ten triggers and then going out like a wuss in that rushed ending to his storyarc
Also the whole "psychic fight" of the most recent issues, in which Matt, a non psychic, manages to knock out a psychic by just... I don't know what the heck he did but it makes little sense. Being able to resist psychic probing is one thing. Being able to knock out a psychic with your mind means you must also have psychic powers. DD doesn't have such powers.
The entire issue also was somewhat a retelling of the time where Matt went to Monaco in Brubakers' run, right down to when a girl goes to meet him to spy on him right after he has won a large sum of money.

About what Matt did to make everyone forget, I agree that it's about time it was revealed. The mistery has gone far enough and it's getting dangerously close to "Mapone Mystery" territory.

[DesignDevil]

[jriddle]

Spider-Man is, among other things, a fun character and a Daredevil team-up with the webhead should usually be fun as well. With Daredevil #9, Soule brings the pair together for the first time since DD performed his whatever-it-was mind-wipe on the world. There' s a lot of playful banter. Maybe a bit too much. It isn't really clear why DD needs Spider-Man along. It's always good to have some extra muscle, of course, but DD has ably handled these situations in the past. Spidey's presence seems an extravagance. That isn't really a criticism; I'll take a DD/Spidey team-up any day. There are some problems with this one, though, to which I'll return in a moment.

Soule continues to write the book as an adventure-of-the-month title--the issue is pretty much just two long chase-scenes punctuated by the occasional action sequence, absent any real depth. Like Spidey, the reader doesn't even know what the two heroes are pursuing until the end--it's just something in a briefcase that's supposed to be important--and Matt's explanation in the closing moments just sort of comes out of the blue, something on which he's allegedly been working for a long time but of which we've never heard until that moment. When, 13 pages in, they recover the case, Soule seems to realize he still has the rest of the comic to fill and finishes up by another long chase-scene, with Spider-Man fleeing with the case and demanding to know why his memory of their past association is so fuzzy before he's willing to turn it over.

Spidey and DD have an association that extends back through 50 years of comic stories. Peter and Matt have known one another's respective identities for about 30 of those years and that's an essential ingredient in their friendship, the point at which they became more than just a pair of guys in long underwear who occasionally flipped off the same roof together. In a sense, Soule is trying to have a particular point both ways with this story. Peter would certainly drop everything and go to the other side of the world for Matt without even needing to know why, which is what happens here, but it seems pretty unlikely that Spider-Man, his knowledge of that wiped, would do the same. Spidey only questions why he trusts DD so much while they're standing on a roof in Hong Kong, their adventure over. Quite a bit late in the game to be particularly credible. And it doesn't really make sense that Spider-Man would think DD could explain his fuzzy memory either, particularly to the extent of making such an issue over it.

DD tells Spidey that erasing everyone's memory was part of the project involving the material in the briefcase. This could explain why Matt went to work as a city prosecutor but it seems to contradict everything else we've seen in Soule's run so far. If this was why he mindwiped everyone--and to be fair, it doesn't say it's the ONLY reason why; it just suggests it was the spur for the action--what in hell has he been doing through the course of the rest of this entire run? Certainly not working on this.

[jriddle]

Just read the new Daredevil Annual #1 and the lead story on this one is a real low-point in Soule's association with this character. The return of Echo should be a pretty significant event--I'm not even sure how Echo is still around--but this reads like bad fan-fiction. Soule's habit of--class, repeat after me--treating DD like an adventure-of-the-month title without any real depth is taken to its most extreme here and this is also the sloppiest work he's done since taking over DD. This reads, no exaggeration, like a child stringing together a fast-paced story and everything is right where it needs to be merely because the writer wants it to be there and doesn't want to take the time--or doesn't have the sophistication--to get events from A to B in any sort of reasoned manner (or, alternately, like something that was dashed out on a lunch-break by someone who would rather be doing something else and just doesn't care).

Echo is at a concert, the music turns those around her into near-formless mutants, she suddenly realizes she's in Hell's Kitchen--no, I didn't make that up--then grabs an ipod and some headphones she conveniently finds (solely because she needs them) and runs across the rooftops shouting for Daredevil and hoping he's around. He is, just sitting on a chimney. He doesn't seem at all surprised to see her or have any reaction at all--just sits there like he sees her every day. She immediately tackles him (how does she manage that, exactly?), slaps the phones on his head and plays really loud music in order to drown out the sound of the song that turns people into mutants.

That's how every turn of the story plays out. At one point, DD just somehow knows how a particular piece of equipment works, one needed to reverse the effects of the pernicious sound. There's no substantive interaction with Echo. She could have just been any random deaf character (her deafness allows her to avoid being mutant-ized). And with those headphones on his head, drowning out the other sounds around him, DD would be entirely "blind." He certainly wouldn't be able to fight his way through sound-mutant hordes. It's a bad story. In its favor, I liked the artwork by Venesa Del Rey but I'll note it's utterly stylized and expressionistic and so probably something that will divide fans.

The second tale is somewhat momentous in that it features the return of Roger McKenzie to DD after an absence of about 38 years. He pens a short piece set in the past about mad Melvin Potter and the voices in his head. It's too short to have much room to breath but McKenzie approaches it with a lot of enthusiasm. Ben Torres, drawing the feature, does his best Johnny-Romita-Jr.-inked-by-Klaus-Janson look. After reading the book, I'll confess I'd have rather seen McKenzie given the longer lead feature. Not necessarily for a longer version of the Potter story but for whatever story.