What a good pair of comics I've pulled out of my comic pile to read tonight. First X-Factor and now the most recent issue of Daredevil. This issue of DD is the third part of the "Return of the King" storyline and is written by the stellar Ed Brubaker.
-This issue begins with the Kingpin breaking the Owl out of custody. Fisk tells the Owl that he has a job for him. The Owl takes a second to weigh things before he agrees to hear the Kingpin out.
-Master Izo bitches at Matt for making a deal with the Kingpin. Matt tells Izo that they all have the same objective(taking down the Hand), so what does it matter who he works with. Izo tells Matt that making a deal with a man like the Kingpin will taint him, but Matt blows Izo off and leaves.
-Kingpin arrives at an abandoned church where some of his men battled some of the Hand ninjas. Fisk walks among the dead bodies and sees the ghost of his dead wife Vanessa. Vanessa taunts Fisk and he begins to argue with her. Turk walks over and asks Kingpin if everything is OK and Fisk gets pissed off and storms away.
-We also discover that since Dakota quit her investigating job at Matt and Foggy's law office, Matt hasn't returned to work. Foggy is angry that Matt has been skipping work without giving any reason, but he is really furious over the fact that Matt didn't even bother to show up to for the settlement hearing with Milla's parents.
-Foggy heads over to Matt's house and decides to wait for him, reasoning that eventually Matt has to return home. While waiting for Matt, Foggy overhears Kingpin leaving a message on Matt's answering machine telling Matt that he has brought someone else into the picture(The Owl), and that Matt will know who it is when he sees the guy.
-Eventually Matt returns home and he is confronted by Foggy who is completely enraged by now. Foggy rips Matt over his actions with Dakota, Milla's parents, as well as working with the Kingpin. Matt asks Foggy if he should quit the law firm and Foggy tells him not to bother, since he's fired. Foggy then exits Matt's house, leaving Matt behind holding his mask.
-This issue ends with the Owl trying to contact Lady Bullseye and the Hand. Lady Bullseye meets up with Owl on the roof of a building and he tells her he wants to hire her and the Hand to kill some people in order to re-establish himself as a major player in the New York crime scene. Lady Bullseye decides to hear Owl out and this issue comes to a close.
Whew, what a great comic! This storyline is really picking up some steam now! There are so many things I enjoyed about this comic I don't even know where to begin. Matt's conversation with Master Izo was highly entertaining, especially after Matt leaves and Izo calls him the whiniest super hero he ever met. I have to admit I wasn't really high on Izo when he first showed up a few issues back(I remember thinking, "just what we need, some elderly Asian guy who is, of course, a master of the martial arts"), but he has grown on me to the point where I wish he had his own series! I know I'd buy it!
The Kingpin's conversation with his dead wife also goes to show that Fisk is not playing with a full deck anymore. Apparently, Kingpin's fight with the Hand back in Spain did more psychological damage to him than anybody realized.
For me though, the best part of this comic was Foggy's temper tantrum. Foggy stole the show every time he showed up in this issue. From his scene in the law office, to the scene where he fired Matt, Foggy was dead on here. Ed did a fantastic job with Foggy's dialogue in this issue. Everything Foggy said was 100% on the money. He had every right to rip Matt, especially upon learning that Matt was secretly conspiring with the Kingpin, a man who had destroyed both of their lives several times over.
I really struggled trying to give this comic a score believe it or not. Lately it seems like I've been giving out an inordinate number of perfect scores, so I wanted to be sure this comic deserved that lofty honor. After thinking on it for a while, I've decided to give this comic a score of 10 out of 10, a perfect score. I was close to giving this comic a 9 1/2, but this issue really was just about perfect, and it wouldn't have been right of me to penalize this comic just because I've already given out a couple of perfect scores this month. I seem to be saying this practically every month, but once again this was a marvelous job by Ed Brubaker.
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I really enjoyed this issue as well. Aside from the action with The Owl at the beginning, this book was almost completely dialogue driven. I think my favorite parts were Kingpin's conversation with the ghost of his deceased wife, as well as Foggy's tantrum.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the most important part of any comic book is the dialogue. Good dialouge can mask bad artwork and a lousy story. That's one of the reasons I can barely tolerate Brian Bendis writing, his dialouge is often times atrocious!
ReplyDeleteKingpin's conversation with Vanessa was great, as was Kingpin's reaction to Turk overhearing him. Foggy's tantrum was even better though. Master Izo's talk with Matt was also well done. Master Izo always seems to get a smile out of me.