Daredevil Message Board

[Gloria]

[Steve Roberts]

Where do i begin?, jeezzzz.......Leap frog, yeah that's it, I'm not counting the plunderer 'cause that was a one off, ok two. It's not like he was a regular or anything, and anyway he didn't dress up as a frog and leap around with springs on his feet, so I guess that even if i was counting the plunderer, he simply just couldn't be as bad as LEAPFROG!!!!!!

[Francesco]

Yeah, in fact. In his short career Leapfrog has been:

1) Considered useless to ally with by Stilt-man.
2) KOed by the Matador.

And both said supervillains in turn are considered sucky villains, so I guess that puts Leapfrog to the sub-sucky level.

[Dare Devil 1]

why cant he.

[Jim B.]

I have to agree about some obvious choices like The Surgeon General (this character would have been more interesting if her goal was to stop people from smoking ) The Man Bull and Leap Frog. All very bad and laughable villians. Stilt Man is up there too but in a way he is almost meant to be terrible and you can kind of let it slide if you know what I mean.

I would have to go with the Owl myself, he is even more lame than the Penguin from Batman and that's hard to do. Also that guy from some of the Nocenti issues Shotgun. I mean the guy was supposed to be some cool looking guy from an 80's action flick but basically he was just a guy with sunglasses, slicked back hair and a couple of guns. That's all. He was not memorable and was a terrible villian that we saw for all of 2 or 3 issues and never again. Now that I think of it, as much as I liked Ann Nocent's DD run, most of her villians we're so bad. The Wild Boys(z?) especially.
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"This isn't hell, but you can see it from here." -The Crow

[Dimetre]

[Gloria]

Another poor villain, in my opinion, is jungle ganglord Micah Synn: not that he wasn't without potential... His origins werea mix of Tarzan and the story of the Pitcairn island descendants of the Bounty mutineers. And the subversion of the cliché of the good and noble savage was interesting, too.

However, I think that the stories failed to make something really memorable out of Mycah. His saga became over-long and the art wasn't precisely stupendous until David MAzzuchelli got the pencils at the end of that story (and most of the time his work was undone by inadequate inking).

Of course I'm a bit partial in my dislike of Micah, because of his responsability in Foggy's sour divorce: Jungle Jerk!
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Gloria
Devuélveme el rosario de mi madre y quédate con todo lo demás

"Para la cuesta arriba quiero mi burro, que la cuesta abajo yo me la subo"

[Dimetre]

Denny O'Neil's Micah Synn story is one of my favourites in the entire run of Daredevil. The fact that all of New York was ga-ga over him made it that much more of an obstacle for Daredevil. Marvel didn't do O'Neil any favours by interrupting the story every other issue with single-issue length villain-of-the-month stories. Perhaps that's why the Micah Synn story seems over long -- because it ended up taking a year to pan out. I personally think the Micah Synn story is a perfect candidate for a trade paperback, simply because that would allow the story to be read consecutively in one collection for the first time.

[Neilan]

[Jim B.]

[Forrest]

I liked the Micah Synn story, too.
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"Flash is back. Worlds will die again!"

[Gloria]

I'm glad that my villain nomination (notice that I didn't consider him "worst") gave you food for thought

Thanks for your coments and views about Mycah Sinn, even though I still wouldn't consider a top-ranking villain: i don't believe he could successfully annoy the Kingpin... but then who could really annoy ol' Wilson even when he is in low form, LOL (apart, obviously, from our old friend Murdock)

My trouble with Synn is that, when I became addicted to DD (though my first exposure to the Devil was an old John Buscema Story with the Jester which haunted me for years) was during the first Miller Run: I was then only slightly older than Jim B was when he read the Synn saga. You'll have to admit that after Miller and his villains (Kingpin, Bullseye) it was a tough act to follow them... However, I kept buying the series, and I must say that I still keep -of course- my full Denny O'Neill run at home (and, I hasten to add, re-read it from time to time)

Re the Synn saga: While I think that the idea was interesting, I still am of the opinion that had even more potential that the stories we actually got. and I still think that the saga itself, as the O'Neill tenure, is

True, the saga suffers from the interruptions (interesting as some of them are), I still think it could get better, even without counting the one-shot stories intermingled, if it had been a bit shorter.

And the art in the first issues is not very attractive (or at least to me): While I d'idn't warm to Danny Bulanadi's inking, I am of the opinion that, until the advent of Mazzuchelli, Bulanadi was more or less finishing pencils which must have been little more than breakdowns: when Bulanadi inks Mazzuchelli, heavy as his inking style is, Dave's pencil is clearly recognisable.

Of course, it was good to see Mazzuchelli enter the DD series during the Synn saga, and grow from issue to issue, even if the final artwork was uneven depending of the final inker... but it was pleasing to see him develop, and pay homage to Colan here and to Miller there, while retaining a distinct style of his own: He's an artist ho really knows HOW TO DRAW. You might say that Lee Weeks (whom I also like very much) is as good a draughtsman as Mazzuchelli is, though Weeks sticks to a correct, academic drawing, and Mazzuchelli, as he grew as an artist, took bold stylistic choices, and would combine skillfully the realistic with the expressionistic.

Still, I think that in the Synn saga we still didn't get the best of him: the issue where I actually said "WOW! OMG WATCH THIS!" to DM's work (so far it was "this is really VERY good!") was in the "Fog" story about Heather Glenn's death... and the rest is history: later came "Born Again" or "Batman Year One" (enough said )... unfortunately DM seems more devoted to the illustration and the comic indie scene nowadays and I've seen little of him in the last years: one was the interesting Comic adaptation of Paul Auster's "City Of Glass", and then a weird story about a japanese salaryman with a weird sexual obsesion, which I read in an independent Spanish publication (Which lead me to suspect that DM has read Yoshihiro Tatsumi)

However, I think those of you who would like a reprint are right: even if, for me, it is not as good as other stories, it is certainly better than other which have been reprinted over and over: the Synn saga indeed ranks higher in my esteem than "Guardian Devil"
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Gloria
Devuélveme el rosario de mi madre y quédate con todo lo demás

"Para la cuesta arriba quiero mi burro, que la cuesta abajo yo me la subo"

[Neilan]

[Gloria]

[The Overlord]

But see we have to define what makes a good villain and part of that is are interesting enough to make repeat appearances. With Kingpin and Bullseye out of the picture for the time being, it is time revamp some of the existing rogues, to give DD new threats:

Villains that can make repeat appearances:

1. Typhoid Mary: duh.

2. Purple Man: post Alias Killgrave is scary enough to be a good reoccuring DD foe.

3. Mr. Fear: someone who is theory is DD's opposite and is one of the few villains who hated Matt before he even knew he was DD.

4. Bullet: I think if hilight the character of his son, you have the beginings of a sympathetic villain.

5. Bushwacker: I think if you hilight his religious fundamentalism, you get killing machine assassin who is different from Bullseye.

6. Mr. Hyde: a monster who theory should be pure evil, a brutal savage who would commit vile crimes simply for their own sake, plus someone who has skill in the are of bio-chemistry. In the hand of the right writer he would be very dangerous.

Let's look those that can't deliver repeat performances:

1. Owl: He is too much of joke nowadays, he can't compete with DD on a mental or phsyical level. He needs a major revamp in order to save his character.

2. Matador I, Leap-Frog and Stilt-Man: duh.

3. Ammo and Rotgut: I think they worked well enough as one shot villains, but I don't think they are interesting enough to be reoccuring ones.

4. Man-Bull: The poor man's Rhino, an uninteresting generic thug.

The question with Synn is he interesting enough to do more stories, in the present?

Also Matador II has some potenial, but he seems a bit generic, he needs to fleshed out. I also wouldn't mind seeing the Gale again.