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Wheelie
Flying Blind
Joined: 10 Feb 2011
Posts: 37
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 Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2016 7:26 pm Post subject: |
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One more piece of advice.
Besides reading Miller's first run, ALSO read the graphic novel Daredevil: Love and War (by Miller) BEFORE reading Born Again.
Otherwise, the Kingpin's change in attitude towards DD in Born Again will seem drastic. See, towards the end of Miller's first run, Kingpin tells DD that they have a symbiotic relationship, that they are partners. Then, if you read Denny O'neill's run that came after Miller, Kingpin and DD were even teaming up to take on a bad guy, Micah Synn.
All of a sudden in Born Again, Kingpin wants to destroy DD? Love and War serves as a necessary bridge to explain why Kingpin all of a sudden wants to destroy "the only good man he has ever known," or however Miller phrased it. |
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jriddle
Playing to the Camera
Joined: 19 May 2011
Posts: 129
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| Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2016 7:37 pm Post subject: |
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| jeffreyhenry2 wrote: | | I've only read the two books - not the original Miller run. I was considering going in a different direction (hence my question a/b Waid, Bendis and Brubaker) as I didn't particularly like BA and TMWF. |
Forget TMWF. It's not bad, as these things go, and Junior Romita's artwork there is as good as he's ever done but it's not a particularly great piece of work. It's the point at which Miller began showing signs of the creative collapse that would sort of make him a walking joke some years later and is as different from his other work on the character as night and day.
I'd follow everyone else in suggesting you read Miller's original run but if you didn't like "Born Again," it's likely just the case that neither this character nor superhero comics in general are for you, because neither were ever better. Of course, it's also the case that, as was suggested elsewhere, "Born Again" was a deconstruction of the character that wouldn't mean as much if you didn't know what came before.
If you're going to continue, everyone has made pretty good suggestions. Pre-Miller vol. 1 is very hit-and-miss. There are hints of what DD would become throughout his history and some really good individual stories here and there. Some great artwork too--among others, Gene Colan drew the book for years. The character simply hadn't found his niche yet and for about 14 years, one writer after another was unsuccessfully struggling to give the book an identity of its own. Brubaker is a continuation of Bendis, so do Bendis before him. Ann Nocenti is great. In fact, DD vol. 1 is good-to-great from when Miller takes over writing chores until Nocenti leaves. After that, it becomes quite spotty--some occasionally really good DD work and a lot of rubbish to go with it. Vol. 2 is aces except for the Bob Gale run (someone apparently lost a major bet for that one to ever seen print) and up to Andy Diggle, where a severe creative decline begins that continues throughout Waid's run. Aside from just being awful (I've been trying, recently, to read straight through the whole thing and it's really hard to stick with it), Waid's DD is like a character and book dropped in from another planet--everything is way, way, waaay out of character and has almost no connection to anything that came before (or, indeed, anything since). One can just skip it and not miss a thing that matters. |
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james castle
Devil in Cell-Block D
Joined: 30 Jul 2004
Posts: 1999
Location: Toronto, Ontario
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| Posted: Sun Aug 07, 2016 12:01 pm Post subject: |
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| jeffreyhenry2 wrote: |
I've only read the two books - not the original Miller run. I was considering going in a different direction (hence my question a/b Waid, Bendis and Brubaker) as I didn't particularly like BA and TMWF. I liked them, but didn't love them as I thought I would (please don't judge  ). Maybe it's because I did not start by the beginning, but maybe it's because Miller does not resonate with me on Daredevil (I love most of his other books). Do you guys think reading the original run would definitely change my mind?
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Wait. Can you like Daredevil but not Born Again? Well, obviously you can if you really, really want to but I'd almost say that if you don't like Born Again you probably won't like the rest of Daredevil that much. For two reasons really:
First, Born Again really gets down to the essence of the character. In my mind it's foundational (even though it came so late in his history. It's sort of like saying "I like Batman except for all that 'his parents were killed stuff'".
Second, for better or for worse almost every Daredevil writer eventually just tries to do his or her own Born Again. So if you don't like the original you're definitely not going to like all the riffs that have come afterward.
Again, to each his own but it's sort of like the X-Men and the Dark Phoenix Saga. It's just so quintessentially X-Meny that if you don't like it you probably don't like X-Men comics. If you don't like Born Again maybe Daredevil comics, by and large, aren't for you.
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JC
So why can't you see the funny side?
Why aren't you laughing? |
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