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A Circus Spelled Sideways is Death

 
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Mike Murdock
Golden Age


Joined: 08 Sep 2014
Posts: 1750

PostPosted: Sun Jan 08, 2017 11:45 pm    Post subject: A Circus Spelled Sideways is Death Reply with quote

I've been slowly reading through old Daredevil with the goal of someday reading everything. Things have slowed down considerably with Steve Gerber's run. But that was at least cool in a too much acid kind of way. Once I got through it, though, I hit what might be the most astoundingly bad Daredevil issue ever. It's so bad that I had to stop reading just to write a review and post it here.

I'm talking, of course, about Daredevil #118 - "Circus Spelled Sideways is Death" written by Gerry Conway, pencilled by Don Heck, and inked by Vince Coletta. I've always loved the title of this issue because of its absurdity, but this is the first time I've read it. The title gives some hope that the story is so bad it's good. But don't be fooled. It's just bad throughout.

The cover page has the caption "The Most Off-Beat D.D. Thrill-Fest of All!" It's almost never a good sign when Marvel calls a story "off-beat." The best you can hope for is it's a trippy story even that they didn't know what it is. Unfortunately, most of the time, they do know what it is. And what it is is terrible. Unfortunately, while the story might be off-beat, thrill-fest it is not. The story starts with Daredevil fighting some random goons who are robbing an armored bank car. The goons are wordy as hell and full of such authentic dialogue as this:

Quote:

Hey, you're a real hotshot, ain'tcha, Horn-Head? A regular Henny Goodman. Dudes like you make me sick - with all yer' jokin', yer smart-mouth bunk. Me, I let my fists do all the talkin' - and Mister, they talk real fine.


In fact, everyone is so wordy, they can't keep up with the art.



After Daredevil knocks out Baddie Number Two, the other guy says:

Quote:

That Goon Always was an idiot - didn't have brains enough ta tie his own shoelaces before he met me! I was the one who thought up these costumes - all this was my plan, mine and nobody's gonna ruin it - not you, not nobody!


Isn't their plan just to punch out a security guard and start taking money? I take it back, I kinda like this guy. Too bad he is quickly defeated and is literally never seen again this issue. That's because the real point is for the Ringmaster to see Daredevil being a hero on the news. He realizes that DD is immune to his hypnosis and decides to kill him. When his crew see Daredevil go into Foggy Nelson's office, the great Gambonos bounce through the window with a blood-chilling ... “Hiiiiiii Yo!”?



Normally I'd nitpick how Daredevil's radar sense is handled. A particular pet-peeve is when you can replace "Radar Sense" with "Spider Sense" and have it act functionally the same. Since when does Matt's Radar Sense scream?

But, honestly, there's bigger fish to fry. After all, Foggy tells Matt that he doesn't believe in coincidences. These people who burst into their office must have done so because the Circus of Crime was released from prison and are doing a show at Shea Stadium. Yes, no one has any problem with the entire crew just showing up together with all their old equipment (including hypnotizing hat) to do a televised show not long after being released. And, in fact, that's exactly what happens. The Ringmaster hypnotizes everyone watching and orders them to give him his valuables. Those at home hand the valuables over to bats being controlled by a new character, Blackwing, to be flown back (honestly the highlight of this issue).

But, as pointed out previously, Daredevil is immune to his hypnosis so Daredevil beats them up. He also called the police, so they show up to. The Crime Circus are arrested and the issue ends. Literally, that's it. There's absolutely no tension whatsoever building to the ending. The whole plot is rehashed, acknowledged as rehashed, and then done anyway. It's truly uninspired all around. The sad thing is, I've done my best to call forth all the intentionally and unintentionally funny moments in the issue, but there aren't that many. It ends up being so completely rote. Too much in this story ends up feeling like fill-in. But it's fill-in for what's clearly a fill-in issue. Like they set this story aside for when they needed a story, but didn't even bother to put enough story into it.

I don't want to let this focus on the story distract from how bad the art is. And, as boring, uninspired, and overwhelmingly stupid as Gerry Conway's plot is, I honestly think Don Heck's work is worse. I think this page is a great example because it truly makes no sense.



There's a couple things I want to call your attention to. First, I'll give credit to the flip. It has an almost proto-Frank Miller quality of showing the character complete his action in a single panel (maybe coloring it a lighter shade like they did later would have vastly improved it). Too bad it makes it look like Daredevil jumps onto a building that's maybe a foot off the ground (or the goon leaped thirty feet into the air). I already discussed the dialogue, but the "Oh Lord My Hands" line is wonderfully bad. Then, go down a row to Daredevil throwing the billy club complete with motion lines going in completely different directions (I thought someone else threw a billy club the first time I saw it). Looking at the green building he's standing on, which does look maybe a foot above the ground, maybe he did only backflip a foot up in the panels above. Finally, the last panel isn't bad, but is very uninspired and makes it look like DD's trying to swing through the sky but is going to end up scraping his feet on the ground.

I don't want to put too many pictures (because the whole story is full of terrible art), but I thought this stood out for a different way.



There's nothing particularly wrong with the art here. However, as a matter of plotting, it came off as confusing what was happening. It's also worth pointing out that Conway plastered the entire issue with narration and dialogue, while this felt almost Bendis-ian in having long stretches of silence. But I kind of get the sense that this was entirely accidental. It really feels like Heck put this page in and Conway barely knew what to do with it so he more or less skipped it. Really, the only point of this page is to show that Daredevil was filmed and the Ringmaster saw it. Did they want to hide the reveal that it was the Ringmaster until the next page? Maybe they didn't think people saw the cover. Otherwise, it made no sense to devote all this time to this.

Finally, I had to post this one, which is almost Liefled-ian in its terrible understanding of anatomy.



Does Daredevil just not have a neck? Does he have some weird medical condition that causes his head to grow and shrink? Don Heck had been a Marvel artist for twelve years at that point. He helped create Iron Man. But this work is amateurish at best.

Look, I don't want to be too harsh to what is clearly a fill-in issue from a time well before Daredevil truly found his feet. God knows I've read plenty of terrible Daredevil stories from later that thought they were the greatest thing since sliced bread. But I don't think I've found a story that failed on so many levels. The plot makes no sense, it isn't enough to even fill an issue, it doesn't even attempt to have any twists or turns, it's full of terrible dialogue and overwhelming narration except when it's surprisingly not. It's got an extremely tepid ending. And the art is just confusing and ugly. Considering all I wanted was for it to be so bad its good, it's so disappointing that it can't even do that right.
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Dimetre
Underboss


Joined: 16 Feb 2006
Posts: 1366
Location: Toronto

PostPosted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 2:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've been collecting the Marvel Masterworks of Daredevil in hardcover as they've been released, so I'll have to wait until the next collection to have the pleasure of reading this issue. I found the Gerry Conway issues a real chore to get through. Steve Gerber is weird, but he's a step up from Conway. I'm looking forward to Tony Isabella and Marv Wolfman.
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Mike Murdock
Golden Age


Joined: 08 Sep 2014
Posts: 1750

PostPosted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 3:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm reading Isabella now. It definitely has more pop to it. There's also a Steve Englehart or Roy Thomas vibe of being super into continuity in a way that only 70s Marvel could be. There's a whole essay (complete with citations to the source material) about the complete history of Hydra. Almost all of that history has been tossed at this point (the idea that Hydra predates World War II has been kept, though). Although there seems to be a bit of the same relationship melodrama between Matt and Natasha that Conway did with Karen Page, I think it's handled it a much more mature way.

That being said, I do think Conway's writing improved when Natasha entered the scene. I honestly wish Gerber's work was better. I want to say "this is strange in a good way." I'm not the kind of person who rejects Daredevil stories as not being a certain type of story. But, unfortunately, it felt like Gerber's really psychedelic story with Angar, Ramrod, Dark Messiah, and Terrex just completely fell apart in the end. When life got busy, I more or less stopped reading for about two weeks.
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I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
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The Overlord
Paradiso


Joined: 22 Aug 2004
Posts: 1095

PostPosted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 9:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Is it me or should a criminal circus be a more awesome or creepy group of villains then what we see with the circus of crime.

I find an evil circus an interesting concept and their leader can mind control people, but these guys are just lame.

I think Batman Returns, for all its flaws, did the evil circus concept better.


Ringmaster and the circus of crime are the most basic greedy villain archetypes, nothing about them is menacing, despite the fact with a little work, they could be pretty sinister.
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Mike Murdock
Golden Age


Joined: 08 Sep 2014
Posts: 1750

PostPosted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 8:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Follow Up since I took a lot of shots at Don Heck. I didn't mention the inker much because, unless their name is Klaus Janson, I probably know nothing about them. However, I was listening to a podcast about the Fantastic Four and the name they mentioned as a terrible inker rang a bell: Vince Colletta. Obviously, he's the same inker as contributed to the terrible art in the story above (I'm not absolving Heck, though).

In fact, CBR wrote a whole article about him. The article is fair. It tries to emphasize that his reputation is vastly overstated and that he did some bad work. But it also confirms that his reputation may be as the worst inker in Marvel history.

Quote:
The real tragedy of Colletta was not that he was a hack, but rather that he turned others into hacks. Pencillers who had been putting in long hours at the drawing board and who were appalled to have their work butchered would start cutting corners themselves. Often it resulted in them slacking off because, as they’d say, “Vinnie will just ruin it anyway.”

But I do think it’s gotten to a point where it’s almost gruesome the way this man has been vilified. Vinnie was often the go-to guy when books were running late because he could work so fast. Editors knew he took shortcuts and gave him assignments with such tight deadlines that he couldn’t possibly do good work. Vinnie often did rush jobs and they often looked hastily executed because they were hastily executed. But Vinnie was a pro and he batted it out. He had to have known how much his work was reviled yet he carried on, saving the day (and many editors’ asses) time after time.

Vinnie was a hack, but he was hired because he was a hack. There would be jobs that needed to get done overnight and Vinnie would get the job done in the time that it needed to get done, hang the quality.

The willingness to sign your name to substandard work is where you separate the hacks from the artists. It’s also where many old timers might separate the professionals from the amateurs.

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I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
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Dayle88
Playing to the Camera


Joined: 25 Mar 2015
Posts: 140

PostPosted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 12:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This was a great read. I'd say the art is terrible story telling than actual bad art.

Is the rooftop meant to be another level on the same roof? When you see Daredevil swinging it looks like he is meant to now be behind the building they were all just on. That again seems to be story telling. He never sets the location which is needed in this case.

I'll give him a break (life long Iron Man fan) and say that he seems to have a neck in every panel of that page that you showed to mention the necks. In the last panel it seems a bad choice to have his motion heading in a different direction to where he is looking. That could then be argued that he doesn't need to be facing his direction but it doesn't make for a natural image.

Edit: wanted to clarify that your post was a great read, not the issue Laughing
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Pete
Fall From Grace


Joined: 29 Jul 2004
Posts: 417
Location: Liverpool, UK

PostPosted: Sat Jan 14, 2017 8:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Agree with pretty much everything that's been said about this one.

#118 is an awful fill in issue that isn't going to look or read any better when the next volume of the wonderful Masterworks series is released. The worst kind of fill-in is where the editor or whoever turns to the people he or she knows will just churn it out in record time with very little thought, and if that was the aim (as seems the case in this hinterland between Gerber and Isabella) then they went to the right people with Conway, Heck and Colletta.

I've given Conway a hard time on this site over the years for good reason. He's just a formulaic hack writer who got slightly better at formulaic hack writing as he went on. The problem with his DD work is that he's a formulaic hack writer who was just learning the ropes.
His run is memorable for one thing only, the wonderful Colan / Palmer artwork that alone makes the book worth reading.

Don heck was always 'bad' in the sense that compared to the dynamism of Kirby and the downright weirdness and gritty realism of Ditko, his work in the early days just looked lame. Lee liked him, and when the line expanded Lee needed him, but as the likes of Colan, Buscama, Romita came on the scene and adapted in their own ways to the Marvel 'style' his work began to look even worse.

Colletta was an awful inker, possibly the worst I've ever seen. He makes almost every penciller he works with look worse than they are, and i remember reading somewhere that many, understandably, refused to work with him. Compare his inking of Kirby on those earlier FF's around the #30-40 mark with any other FF inker of the period. He makes the most dynamic artist on Marvel's books, single handedly responsible for the look and feel and style of a line of comics that were nothing short of a phenomenon in the 1960's and makes it look like a three year old's stroppy scrawl.

Gerber was a great writer but not a typical 'superhero' scribe, more at home with the left-field titles such as Man-Thing or Howard the Duck. He learned how to 'do' superheroes whilst writing DD, and the first half of his run is poor, showing little grasp for the character. From #108 onwards though, he suddenly seems to 'get' DD and there's a dramatic improvement in my opinion.
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Dimetre
Underboss


Joined: 16 Feb 2006
Posts: 1366
Location: Toronto

PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2017 7:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I picked up Volume 11 of Daredevil's Marvel Masterworks recently, and I just finished reading this issue. This may be the most uninspired issue of Daredevil I have ever read. No one is trying here at all.

At least Roy Thomas added that note about how this issue precedes Princess Python's recent appearance in Captain America and the Falcon. I wish Marvel still included notes like that in their comics.

I remember when the Book Club reviewed "Playing to the Camera," I commented that I couldn't think of a time when the Ringmaster appeared in the pages of Daredevil. (I knew he first encountered the Circus of Crime in Amazing Spider-Man.) Well, this issue solves that mystery.

I don't know if Conway and Heck were poking fun at Batman with this Blackwing character. I'd like to think they were. His schtick is just bizarre.

Pete wrote:
Gerber was a great writer but not a typical 'superhero' scribe, more at home with the left-field titles such as Man-Thing or Howard the Duck. He learned how to 'do' superheroes whilst writing DD, and the first half of his run is poor, showing little grasp for the character. From #108 onwards though, he suddenly seems to 'get' DD and there's a dramatic improvement in my opinion.

Now that I've finished reading Gerber's run, I have to agree with the improvement that comes with #108. I think Daredevil gets a bit more broody, and the colour palette a little darker. I found the issues with Gladiator and Death-Stalker particularly strong. This issue, however, does nothing to restore my regard for Conway's Daredevil work. He has to be one of the weakest writers in the character's history, in my opinion.
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Pete
Fall From Grace


Joined: 29 Jul 2004
Posts: 417
Location: Liverpool, UK

PostPosted: Mon Mar 27, 2017 8:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dimetre wrote:
I found the issues with Gladiator and Death-Stalker particularly strong. This issue, however, does nothing to restore my regard for Conway's Daredevil work. He has to be one of the weakest writers in the character's history, in my opinion.


Yep. Although there were one or two half decent efforts inbetween, it's those Gerber Death-Stalker issues were, for me, the title finally begins to find its way again for the first time since Thomas stopped writing the book. Not only is Gerber getting the hang of things, but simultaneously Bob Brown's artwork moves up a couple of gears too. The stuff in the Everglades with Man Thing (#114 in particular) saw his best work on the title to date, in my opinion. I'm looking forward to checking this out in that new Masterworks too.

It's really only the majestical artwork of Colan (especially when inked by Palmer) that keeps me coming back to the vast majority of Conway issues.
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