I've had a bit of a funny on/off relationship with Daredevil comics. I first heard of Daredevil back in the late 90s, when I got a Chistmas present that brought young me hours of entertainment: a big giant hardcover book about the history of the Marvel Universe. Still on my bookshelf to this day. At the time, I was still a young kid, and though I'd always loved superheroes, I'd only recently got into going to comic shops and looking at the comics there. The only Marvel comics franchises I had any real familiarity with were Spider-Man and X-Men, though I had some awareness of the likes of The Hulk, The Punisher, Fantastic Four and Iron Man from their appearances in other mediums. So, this big book really was like my introduction to the Marvel Universe proper, and to this day I remember the section on Daredevil being one of my favourite characters. Just reading his history was fascinating for me. And it was in reading that section that I believe I first became aware of acclaimed comics storylines, and, in Frank Miller, of superstar comic creators. It made me want to go back and check out some of those stories. Thanks respectively to the death of Elektra comic and Born Again (to this day one of my all-time favourite Marvel comics), Bullseye and The Kingpin have been among my favourite Marvel villains for well over a decade.
Those are characters I've always loved. Even in the period in the early 2000s when I wasn't really reading or following comics, I'd make exceptions for when Bullseye appeared - Bullseye: Greatest Hits and Punisher VS Bullseye were two of the only comics I got in that era. When I did get back into regularly reading comics again around 2005, at first it was only Batman comics, then it was only DC comics, but when I did decide to get back into Marvel again and bought a random bundle of recent issues from various titles, Daredevil was one of the first I picked up. As it happens I happened to jump into buying the title during Ed Brubaker's run, the "Lady Bullseye" story. That intrigued me, but what made me stay onboard was learning about the approaching "Return of the King" story with The Kingpin. I ended up reading right through to the end of Brubaker's run. Diggle's run interested me a lot less. Perhaps Daredevil himself interested me less than his top two villains, he just seemed a bit mopey and morose. And so I dropped Daredevil, and instead focused on reading Bullseye's exploits in the likes of Dark Avengers or trying the relaunched PunisherMAX because The Kingpin was appearing in it - which, incidentally, introduced me to writer Jason Aaron, which in turn got me into Scalped, which would become possibly my favourite comic ever.
I first started hearing the acclaim for Mark Waid's run on Daredevil from issue #4. The events of Shadowland left me thinking the Daredevil well had been poisoned, so it was nice to hear the book was supposed to be great again. I tried issue #4, with that amazing Marcos Martin artwork, and loved it. I immediately went to try and get issues #1-#3 at my local comic shop, but they were all sold out. That put me off buying any more, because I wanted to have been reading from the start. And the longer the series went on and the more it got acclaimed, the more it niggled at me, as I wanted to get into it, but felt like it had been going on too long to jump on. I always seem to be the guy who jumps on a book late, and when I jump on it stops being cool. But I finally put the bullet and started buying the series monthly when, you guessed it, Bullseye re-emerged around the issue #25 mark. I really loved Mark Waid's writing and Chris Samnee's art, but just didn't feel a connection with the book. I just couldn't shake the feeling that I'd jumped on too late and had missed too much, and so when I heard the series would be ending at #35 decided to just drop it there. Of course I then kicked myself when I heard it was being relaunched, but that came at a time when I was trying to be ruthless in cutting books and so didn't take advantage of the jump-on point. I did eventually read issue #1 on ComiXology and loved it, which made me even more annoyed about not jumping on back at the time.
But with this Netflix series coming up, I felt now was the time to have another go at getting back into Daredevil. I picked up the four most recent issues of Waid and Samnee's Daredevil, thought they were great. I then picked up the Volume 1 hardcover of Daredevil by Mark Waid for my birthday in September, and Volumes 2 and 3 at New York Comic Con, meaning I now have the whole series pre-relaunch. And I've just been storming through it.
On one hand, I regret waiting this long to get into the series. But on the other hand, I'm glad I waited to read the book in this luxurious, oversized format with lovely paper stock..And the storytelling is just so good. Best of all, they've managed to make me actually really like Daredevil, and think of him as the most interesting character in his own book. I don't feel like I'm waiting for Kingpin or Bullseye to show up: Matt Murdock himself is a fascinating character, one of Marvel's most fascinating heroes actually.
I'm now up to issue #18 of Waid's run, near the end of the Volume 2 hardcover. And I'm wanting to immerse myself in more of the Daredevil I've missed. I bought 2 volumes of the Bendis Ultimate Collection while in New York too, looking forward to get stuck into that once I'm done with Waid. I also picked up The Man Without Fear and read that, really good stuff. Daredevil is fast becoming my favourite Marvel character. And that may make me a "fake geek guy" for Daredevil or a bandwagon jumper because it took the approach of the Netflix show to prompt me into action, but better late than never... I'm loving it!
And it isn't like OMD here where the whole dynamic of the character changed. It's still the Daredevil I love, I just don't care for how Waid writes his comic. And it isn't like the title is bad, it just isn't as enjoyable or me as a darker toned Daredevil. But I do need to make space and there isn't much else I want to get rid of.
