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DD Book Club - Hardcore
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Dimetre
Underboss


Joined: 16 Feb 2006
Posts: 1366
Location: Toronto

PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2017 6:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This issue seems to be one prolonged scene, and that's pretty cool.

As usual, there are things in this issue that I feel are unnecessary. We don't need to be told for what I think is the third time that Typhoid's part in this plot is a distraction. But, otherwise, I felt that the panels and pages were used rather well. I didn't feel there was too much wasted space this time.

My big problem with this issue is Daredevil's interaction with Bullseye. Yes, it sucks that his appearance is mimicking Colin Farrell's from the movie, but I guess the people behind the comics felt they had to do that. I disagree, but that isn't my big problem. I don't like how Daredevil suddenly says he knows Bullseye's identity. We never saw him look into this. What does knowing that his name is Lester get us as the audience? Nothing. It only robs the character of some mystique. Also, the background that Bendis does give Bullseye is nothing special, except that something happened to him in high school. We're not told what it is, but whatever. The Marvel Handbook mentions Bullseye's background in baseball, but Bendis makes no mention of that. I just think it's cheap that Bendis had Daredevil find out all of these things off panel.

Now, I'm aware of the bogus political reasons that Bullseye took so long to reappear in Daredevil following "Guardian Devil." (Quesada's idiotic agreement with Kevin Smith) I can't get too upset with Bendis that he couldn't write a Bullseye-centric story as early as he wanted to, nor could any other writer. Based on the 'Nuff Said issue, it's clear that he planned to bring in Bullseye earlier, and that Maleev even planned to draw the classic costume. Maybe an earlier Bullseye story would have shown Matt finding out these things. Who knows?

However, this is yet another classic villain who has been called "pathetic" and "nothing" in the pages of Daredevil. I understand why Daredevil gets so furious with Bullseye in particular, but the rhetoric he spouts in this issue makes me very uncomfortable. I suspect this is Bendis' way of making Daredevil seem badass, but this isn't my Daredevil. My Daredevil doesn't tell people they should kill themselves. And when Daredevil shouts "I don't care!" -- that is to laugh. I know that it's Bullseye he's fighting, but Daredevil's behaviour this issue comes mightily close to reflecting a bully's, and I never want to see Daredevil act like that. I believe Daredevil holds himself to a higher standard, and maintains better self-control. I can believe he wanted to kill Bullseye, but I don't believe he would ever have carried it out. (Let's pretend Shadowland doesn't exist.) Observe that he leaves Bullseye in FBI custody this issue. It's hard to believe a single thing that Daredevil shouts in anger this issue.

Maleev's work is okay this issue, although the fight moves aren't very spectacular. The model he's using for Milla doesn't give him anything special facially with which to work for when she's calling the FBI. Truthfully, I think whoever he got to model for Typhoid was his best model. Her facial expressions were amazing. A lot of his other models look bored a lot of the time.

I like the last page. I think this is the third time Milla has thanked Matt for saving her, and without saying a word, you can tell that Matt is uncomfortable with that realization. It makes me wonder why he ended up marrying her, but whatever.

As uncomfortable as the Daredevil/Bullseye fight makes me, I have to admit that this issue does what it does quite well. The pacing is actually good. I give this a 3 out of 5.
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Mike Murdock
Golden Age


Joined: 08 Sep 2014
Posts: 1750

PostPosted: Mon Mar 27, 2017 9:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The opening has a nice little sweet quiet moment. The colors look great with the blue sky. I like the little bits of humor when Bendis does it. This run has a reputation (deservedly so) for being very dark, but I like the beginning with Matt teasing Foggy and saying he can go out in the DD costume instead. It all comes to an end very quickly.

I've said before I hate this Bullseye outfit. I hate the lack of costume, I hate the leather jacket, and I hate the movie (OK, I'm indifferent to the movie at this point). I also think Maleev does a decent job with the action (I like the superhero landing when they both leave the apartment). It could have used a little more subtlety. Just Bullseye with the billy club would have been enough without having to sign it. This is very much evoking the idea of Bullseye killing all of Matt's girlfriends (which, in fairness, while he's killed an unusually high number, isn't all of them and one is currently alive). But it's definitely creating the idea that this could happen again. I don't know if there's been enough time to truly sell it (given Bendis's pacing), but maybe we have if we view it in real time.

I'm debating how I feel about the revelations of Bullseye's past. I certainly don't like giving him his real name. There was sort of a Dark Knight Joker vibe about him. On the other hand, I feel Mephisto referenced his mother being a prostitute in Guardian Devil, so I don't think that's a new revelation. While the fight started great, I thought it fell off the rails by the end. But I'm kind of torn. I know in the past, I've felt a certain catharsis with him just unloading on Bullseye, but there's something almost comically bad his Wolverine growls. Overall, I think this does a lot right, but I don't quite think it clicks perfectly.

Four Stars.
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Mike Murdock
Golden Age


Joined: 08 Sep 2014
Posts: 1750

PostPosted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 1:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Daredevil Vol. 2 # 50 - Hardcore pt. 5



Quote:

Celebrate DD's 50th issue with the startling conclusion to Bendis & Maleev's latest epic, featuring guest artist cameos by John Romita Jr., Joe Quesada, Klaus Janson, Lee Weeks, John Romita Sr., David Mack & Gene Colan. Featuring a series-changing surprise ending.


Thanks to Kuljit Mithra for archiving all the solicits (something I just realized). Makes these posts much easier to make.

Due 4/8
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I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
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Dimetre
Underboss


Joined: 16 Feb 2006
Posts: 1366
Location: Toronto

PostPosted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 7:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is the issue to which Bendis was building ever since #26. Two years of build-up to this showdown between Daredevil and The Kingpin.

Predictably, I have the expected complaints of decompression. The three pages of carnage throughout the Greater New York area could have been compressed to smaller panels filling one page.

Bendis seems to have acted as the Fisk model this issue, and that's okay. I would have rather he wore a more traditional Fisk-style suit, especially since the other artists drew him in one. Maybe Bendis doesn't own a suit?

A few issues ago I complimented Bendis for the scene in which Fisk was in Bolivia. In that scene he seemed to really understand Fisk, and got his speech down completely. With this issue, I'm not feeling it. It's little things. Fisk, when talking about MGH, says, "It's off the street. It's stupid and it's gone." I always thought that a word like "stupid" was beneath Fisk. He would say "insipid" or "ridiculous." "Stupid" took me out of the scene.

The last panel on that same page shows a man looking afraid through a window. I have no idea who that man is, or where he is. There is nothing early on the page or in the issue suggesting anything about this man. When you turn the page, you see the man unconscious on the ground at Daredevil's feet. Still, you don't know who he is, or where he is. There is nothing to suggest he's working for the Kingpin. He could have just been a motorist minding his own business for all we know.

Instead of Agent Driver, Bendis gives us Ming in this issue as the voice of people not impressed by the antagonist. This will forever frustrate me about Bendis. What is accomplished by a character who makes the antagonist look less competent? Why not just have everyone completely terrified of Fisk, and leave Matt as the only character who isn't. Wouldn't that make Matt more special in our eyes? Ming becomes an even more pointless character after Matt smashes the car into the warehouse, because all of Fisk's underlings magically vanish.

The banter between Matt and Fisk was pretty good. I have some nitpicks -- for instance, if Fisk is going to bring up the funny way a Swedish tabloid worded Matt's outing, why not tell us? It's kind of ridiculous to fail to tell us. (Notice I didn't say "stupid.") But I was, for the most part, enjoying the banter until Matt said, "Now I think I'm just going to beat the $%#@ out of you!!" I can't think of a writer who has depicted Matt Murdock with less class than Brian Michael Bendis. Matt, I believe, is someone who holds himself to certain standards when it comes to his actions and his words. It's not the profanity that bothers me -- it's the idiocy of the sentence. It's something a drunk bully says outside of a bar at two in the morning, not Matt Murdock. Wolverine or the Punisher, probably, but not Matt Murdock.

Given the way Daredevil and the Kingpin's first fight went as depicted by Miller decades before, I have serious doubts as to whether Matt could ever beat Fisk in hand-to-hand combat. But Matt did wear Fisk down successfully in "Last Rites," so he's going into this fight as a Kingpin expert. What bothers me about this fight is that it looks like Matt gets out of the chokehold by boxing Fisk's ears. Then when he gets him on the ground he leaps on top of him and then, schoolyard bully style, punches him across the face within an inch of his life. Throughout Bendis and Maleev's run, I have found Matt's fighting style robbed of all the grace that first thrilled me when I discovered the character in the mid '80s. I feel agility and grace are integral traits for the character. If you don't feel that way, you don't get Daredevil. At least Maleev draws a nice kick to finish the fight.

The next scene is the most puzzling for me. I don't have a problem with Daredevil behind the wheel of a car. I think his radar and hypersenses may allow him to drive, and Stan Lee said he could do it way back when Daredevil first met the Stilt Man. And how else is he going to move an unconscious Kingpin? So if he had just dropped Kingpin's body off in the middle of Josie's and yelled at the crooks, that would have been cool. But there is absolutely no reason for him to unmask in front of everyone. The only reason for it, in my opinion, is that he is so pissed off and his pulse is racing that he has no self-control. That, to me, is not Matt Murdock. He thinks before he acts. Unmasking is such a supremely stupid (I think the word applies here) thing to do, and I just don't think the character has ever demonstrated that level of stupidity.

The panels by the guest artists were a real treat, although I really wish Maleev had dressed Fisk in a suit like the other artists did. My favourite panels were by Colan and John Romita Sr. Those two guys have a style that you can still recognize decades after their heyday. I normally love Weeks' Daredevil, but his panel looked rushed and I was orignially convinced that it was by Phil Winslade. Klaus Janson's was nice to see, even if his work lacks the details of the others. Joe Quesada's panel was surprisingly bad. I loved his art at the beginning of Volume 2, and this panel looked like a mess. I was similarly surprised at the unpleasantness of David Mack's panel. That's not the kind of work you expect from Mack. As for Michael Avon Oeming, I don't know why he got to do a panel, since he's never had any previous connection to Daredevil, other than he's a close colleague of Bendis. Instead it would have been nice to see something from Cary Nord or John Romita Jr. But no, why not give a panel to Brian's friend?

In conclusion, this is the issue in which Matt declares himself the Kingpin of Hell's Kitchen. What, you ask, does that title entail? Well, this is what Matt says.

Quote:
I am here to say: if you people so badly need some sort of Kingpin, someone to lord over you-- Well, from now on... it's me. I am not protecting this city any more. I am running it!! And I say: the people of Hell's Kitchen are my people. This is my territory now-- And I say: GET OUT OR CHANGE.


How is Matt going to do this without doing what he already does in Hell's Kitchen? Are these just empty words? At the time, I didn't care. After this issue, David Mack returned to the title with what was originally conceived as an Echo mini-series, but ended up taking up four issues of Daredevil. I bought those issues, and they would have been better as an Echo title. But I was done with Bendis. The next issue of Daredevil I would buy was Volume 2 #82 -- Ed Brubaker's first issue on the title.

It's amusing to me, though, that there is still this confusion about what it meant, exactly, for Matt to call himself Kingpin of Hell's Kitchen, and it's fourteen years later.

Anyway, I enjoyed Matt's banter with Fisk, and I enjoyed the guest panels. I guess I'll give this issue a 2.5 out of 5.
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Mike Murdock
Golden Age


Joined: 08 Sep 2014
Posts: 1750

PostPosted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 8:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I thought I would do something a little unusual and give my thoughts on this issue from when I've read it before. When I first read Hardcore, I had just started reading comics and I thought it was interesting. The Bendis/Maleev combo stood out (and, to a degree, continues to stand out) as presenting a very different feel from other books. Also, not knowing much about Daredevil, this had Kingpin, Typhoid Mary, and Bullseye all in one story volume. But I didn't really have much context and thought it was alright. As time went by and I read other books, my appreciation began to fade. After all, the entire story is the Kingpin shows up, does a bunch of flashy stuff, and is then defeated. The second time I read the story, it was with the benefit of having read everything that came before. Then I understood that the Kingpin showing up was a build up from a long time back and the ending of the issue was both an expression of the stress and rage built in Matt and a commentary on both the idea of Matt's identity in the open and on how to end the cyclical nature of the criminal underworld. In that second reading, I appreciated it much more than the first. Now it's time for read number three. Let's see how I feel:

The issue starts with the Kingpin cleaning house. There's very much a Godfather feel to it. I'm not paying money for the issue (OK, I bought the trade a long time ago, I guess) so I'm not going to feel cheated on pages. I do think the large widescreen panels creates a now slow pacing that gives a good punch with that final "do I have your attention?"

What follows I like much less. I hate the "I just ordered the rape and murder of your wife" thing. It feels over the top and out of character. Maybe a bitter Fisk after Vanessa killed their son changed him, but he was more subtle and would appear more respectful even if he was just as ruthless. I'm not the one to point out Maleev's facial expressions, but Ming's husband seems surprisingly nonplussed about that news. On top of that, there's supposed to be a cool intercutting of Daredevil taking out Kingpin's men and ramming a car through them. It's in such cramped panels with next to no detail that it's barely possible to tell what's happening much less get excited about it.

The payoff of the issue is the big fight. As a longtime reader of Daredevil, the stories always go the same. Kingpin tries to manipulate Daredevil, Matt cuts to the chance to fight him directly, and Matt gets his ass handed to him. That's why I liked Last Rites, where Matt takes Fisk down with Fisk's own methods. This story flips it on his head by having Matt come off victorious when he cuts to the chase. The various artists used is undeniably cool from an anniversary issue perspective - I mean it's Gene Colan, John Romita Sr., Klaus Janson, etc. But it's also very distracting.

I really don't like that the fight ends up being that simple. That Daredevil's just had enough and overcomes it through sheer force of will. That being said, it is what the story needs. And it's not like this story just started. It's been building for two years real time. It's time to end it.

I do think it does a good job with the story it wants to tell. But I don't know if it pays off the amount of stuff that came before. Also, while I can intellectually appreciate why the story went the way it did, it can't help but be disappointed by the fight. And, if I'm disappointed by that, I'm just left with the opening scene. I think I'm going Three and a Half Stars.
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I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
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Mike Murdock
Golden Age


Joined: 08 Sep 2014
Posts: 1750

PostPosted: Tue Apr 04, 2017 6:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dimetre wrote:

Bendis seems to have acted as the Fisk model this issue, and that's okay. I would have rather he wore a more traditional Fisk-style suit, especially since the other artists drew him in one. Maybe Bendis doesn't own a suit?


Heh, that's pretty funny.

Quote:
Instead of Agent Driver, Bendis gives us Ming in this issue as the voice of people not impressed by the antagonist. This will forever frustrate me about Bendis. What is accomplished by a character who makes the antagonist look less competent? Why not just have everyone completely terrified of Fisk, and leave Matt as the only character who isn't. Wouldn't that make Matt more special in our eyes? Ming becomes an even more pointless character after Matt smashes the car into the warehouse, because all of Fisk's underlings magically vanish.


I think the intent is to show Fisk's ruthlessness since Ming is immediately put in his place. That being said, I don't like the scene either. It does fit the pattern with Bendis and Fisk going back to Underboss.


Quote:

After this issue, David Mack returned to the title with what was originally conceived as an Echo mini-series, but ended up taking up four issues of Daredevil. I bought those issues, and they would have been better as an Echo title. But I was done with Bendis. The next issue of Daredevil I would buy was Volume 2 #82 -- Ed Brubaker's first issue on the title.


Ouch. Well, if it's any consolation, we're done with Bendis as well (at least for the foreseeable future).

Quote:
It's amusing to me, though, that there is still this confusion about what it meant, exactly, for Matt to call himself Kingpin of Hell's Kitchen, and it's fourteen years later.


Yeah, when I wrote down my thoughts the second time reading this (as opposed to this time, which is the third), I said that I thought him declaring himself Kingpin was weird but might be better once I read more. Since I have read more, I can answer myself and say "not really." Maybe he has ruthless tunnel vision? It's not entirely clear. All I can tell is he took off his mask and growled at some people and because of the specific words he chose, other superheroes were pissed off at him. The time jump didn't help since it fudged over those details.

Regardless, next week we'll have Joe Kelly for a change of pace.
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I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
Thomas More - A Man for All Seasons
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