Daredevil Message Board

[Isaac]

I didn't like the last issue so much. It seems to be drawn in a hurry or something, since the backgrounds during the fight are inexistent, like in the mangas, and it is not good for the ambientation. Damn, today I can't speak English. I don't find the words. It has remind me of Bendis, since this issue is decompressed. And there is no mistery anymore: the Purple Man is behind it all. Just look at the arm of the guy in the last page. Which color? So I'm looking forward to the next arc, which will be Brubaker original and not a continuation of Bendis' work. I'm pretty deceived. Maybe because of the scans. Not so good as they used to be. But worse is to wait a year for the trades... I don't know what to say.

[The Overlord]

It may not be Purple Man. There is one other villain who has access to pheromones and a grudge against DD:

Larry Cranston aka Mr. Fear III. His nephew Alan Fagan was able to distill a pheromone from his fear gas that would make him (almost) irresistible to women. Want to bet Cranston could do the same thing? Cranston could have created seduction based pheromones, then given to Lilly so she would mess with Matt's head. Cranston hasn't been seen since 1998, so he could have gotten sick in that time, plus Cranston has been nursing a grudge against Matt for a long while now and has engaged schemes to hurt Matt before (framing Karen Page for murder in 1998).

Besides last I heard Purple Man was in good health and was in Canada.

[Forrest]

Right, and from his last DD appearance, Fear was in very close contact with Karen. It is reasonable that Fear still has something of hers to extract her scent from.

I hope the mastermind behind all this is someone that we have never seen as a significant villain before, or a villain we haven't seen for decades (e.g. pre-Miller).
_________________
"Flash is back. Worlds will die again!"

[The Overlord]

[Lundonj]

I do think the pace is a bit slower than the last arc, but it would take a lot to top that first storyline.

That said, I have had no problems at all with the art, I've really enjoyed the varied settings, from "Mike" playing poker to the backdrops in France.

The 'purple' arm may yet be a 'red' herring. Still, I'm interested to see, whoever it is that has been pulling the proverbial strings.


-Don

[The Overlord]

[hekate32]

Daredevil 92: "Yes, it was I 'The Purple Man'/Mr Fear/Leapfrog/Starr Saxon/any rogue's gallery villain you can dredge up since the 1960's' who killed Foggy, hired a fake Daredevil, dragged you across Europe, sought to reinforce your sense of abject failure by killing a Karen-smell-a-like before your eyes!' .. lots of cackling.. "and now you're mine, ruined.... I'll kill you!"

I've only known Mr Brubaker from this current run but I give him a lot more credit that that. At this point we know Daredevil knows, it was nicely done, and we too will find out, albeit in four weeks. The first question I'd put to any of you is would the reveal of any supervillain at this juncture however well scripted have any dramatic or emotional impact? Would it hell is my personal answer. You could put every single one of them in a hat, pluck out a name and dress it up in the usual thwarted villain revenge spiel and create an ending ultimately as satisfying as any in Scooby Doo.

At this juncture, I have no idea who is responsible, with every installment Mr Brubaker succeeds in muddying the waters further. I do believe Daredevil's penultimate comment to be the most pertinent one 'and I can almost feel the knife twisting in my back.' Perhaps I want to believe it because the emotional weight of betrayal has far greater impact and would be a far more satisfying reveal/resolution to this noir tale than some hammish megalomaniac from the past and I honestly don't know who to point the finger at, yet I still find it an infinitely more satisfying closure than any random rogue gallery pick.

A side note - there is no 'scent of Karen, eau de page'. As Lily herself explained, it is odourless, it's a pheremone. It induces a reaction - in Matt for Karen's scent, in the Matador for his mother's scent. I postulated last month, Cranston could've been involved in its manufacture, but is he pulling the strings? Not a chance. You only need to look at the dialogue - they, they, they - 'they' is an organisation, a cartel, a family. Who are 'they'? I have no idea but I've spent the last few days reading and re-reading and trying to figure the damn thing out and that's a tell-tale sign of damn good book.

[The Overlord]

[Clayton Blind Love]

[Clayton Blind Love]

Nick Fury?

Maybe the hit on Foggy was never seriously placing his life in danger. Stab him and have the best medical resources standing ready. Have key contacts force Foggy in witness protection for his own good and separate Matt and Foggy indefinetly. Matt believes Foggy to be dead. Separate this duo and it allows Nick to offer/force the protection of Foggy and denies Matt his most trusted ally and source of information.

Have Danny Rand in place to be Daredevil not so much to confuse the press and public, but to set up his wildcard piece for Civil War events. A hero disguised as another hero. Smart thinking. Matt is out of the picture, but Matt suddenly escapes!

Send Matt/DD on a wild goose chase in Europe looking for Foggy's non-existant killer. This is to keep Matt/DD away from the superhero registered authorities in America. This would allow for Iron Fist/DD to be intentionally placed under arrest (at the right time) to go to a prision cell designed to hold Matt/DD, but obviously not Iron Fist/DD. Have Iron First escape and free the prisoners to swing the war back in their favor. Nick Fury and Cap's team benefits most for having Matt in Europe of all places.

Civil War #6 - December 20th
Daredevil #92 - December 27th

C.
_________________
Love is blindness, I don't want to see
Won't you wrap the night around me

[fox_limbo]

Firstly, great posts hekate32 and Clayton. Good, intelligent, speculative and analyzing stuff.

The current arc slightly, slightly pales to the previous one. But there are some neuances in "The Devil Takes a Ride" that are incredible. Ed Brubaker is definately weaving a great tapestry. He has been adding a texture to the noir that has not been seen in this title since (early) Chichester (up through "Last Rites"), Nocienti and Miller. While I greatly loved the work of Kelly and Bendis, they relied too much on "their" voice and making it "their" book (much like Mister Smith made Karen's death "his" crowning achievement on the mythology). That's not saying that Brubaker doesn't want to do the same thing, but the execution of these yarns pales to no one. He is blazing a new path for Daredevil (both the mythology and the character, and these 10 issues, I feel are only the opening acts!!), yet he is acknowledging the rich history (something that Bendis, try as he might, quite struggled at; "Don the Bomb", anyone?). His strokes of sheer brillence, as Clayton pointed out, bringing back Becky Blake (which might very well have been a way to fill the void left in the wake of Fogggy's "death", but it worked... and it is great to see her back on the title) and the short time where Matt dons the "Mike Murdock" identity (granted, it wasn't a true "homage" of the outlandish character that Matt tried to orchestrate during the early Stan Lee issues, but it was a great, great touch. Sheer brillience!!). Ed masterfully penned the prison epic beautifully. I felt that the prison stay should leave a mark on Matt, and Ed yanks it another level higher than that as Matt begins to lose control of his own moral equilibrium. And the tour in Europe is a wide open, refreshing repreive from Hell's Kitchen (no matter how much Hell's Kitchen has become more of a character on this title than a backdrop, THAT being something Bendis really, really nailed); which has been complimented very, very well by Michael Lark in his illustrating the spaciousness of Europe in comparison to the claustriphoiba that was powerfully rendered in the arc before. Michael Lark has truly sculpted the visceral sense accompanied with Ed Brubaker's words.

Still, there are some hiccups. The Danny Rand reveal was, to me, very underwhelming, and (as Dave Wallece had so aptly pointed out in his reviews) Matt being in costume in Europe seems greatly superfluous and honestly, do you really think Matt would, arguably, do this given the turmoil of his "identity crisis"?

The punctuation to the prison arc (DD# 87) was lacking on an arc that was absolutely blistering, but the final stanza in that issue: Foggy Nelson (along with the "Mike Murdock" homage that I discussed earlier) was a wonderful way to end the arc / issue and really make a very real and palpable emotional pay-off.

As hekate32 had pointed out, whether you plug in "villain A" or "villain B" as the "mastermind" behind the developments, it really would be a "Scooby Doo revelation" (I love the analogy, by the way, hekate32.). That kind of revelation really would be flat and would, in the readers' eye, would undo the momentum that he has built for 10 issues. There has to be more than some cranky culprit with a grudge. As other people have sited, it has to be an organization (given the "they" that has been thrown around... and also the fact that another organization, of sorts, has their Hand(s) (uh, yeah, crappy pun intended) in the batter, assisting Foggy during his plight.

Clayton considered Nick Fury and SHIELD. Which is an intriguing idea, but given the mess with "Civil War" (both figuratively and literally), it would put a rather rancid stain on Brubaker's work. But it is an intriguing idea, nonetheless.

If that is the case, would it make sense that SHIELD would harbor such thugs as Tombstone and the Matador (who, truth be told was much, much more of a matador than the ghastly cherade (is that how you spell "cherade"?) in early issues of the series). I'm not up on the whole SHIELD organization, and I never have, but THAT detail makes me believe it isn't.

But who else would "put the knife in Matt's back"? Who else would have Matt feel betrayed by their involment in puppeteering all the recent developments??

Elektra and the Hand? Do they play a larger part than we realize? And to what gain??

Then again, there is the identity of the person with the I.V. Tombstone was talking with about "baiting Matt Murdock" in DD#89. So, there is the disappointing reality (as hekate32 had discussed) that there is a singular culprit (insert "villain A").

Given all that, I fully believe that Ed Brubaker would weave a legitimate "twist" (like Foggy Nelson at the very end of DD#87) and add to the tapestry he so masterfully is delivering. Even if there is disappointment (i.e. MY feeling on the execution of Danny Rand as the "other" Daredevil). Sure, there may be that Marvel hype playing a factor on this "brillient reveal" (maybe not to the Bendis degree, mind you, but it may very well be present), but I have absolute faith in Brubaker's storytelling genius to truly buck the traditional comic book supervillain / "Scooby Doo" (again, a nod to hekate32) reveal.

There will be a "twist" of some sort. I am absolutely positive of this.

[Solid Snake PAC]

Yeah...Bru is giving a heavy nod to old school DD. Is it me or was DD more swashbuckling in this ish than previous issues. I kinda liked that aspect of DD at the moment. Not to fun loving but fun enough to see DD make a genuine smile here and there *during the fight with the Matador and Tombstone*. Great ish, grade A material for sure. And the best since Miller and Mazzucchelli? Daresay it..but maybe that is true. We'll have to greatly discuss this when Bru and Lark have been on it a bit longer. For the start of a new team on DD they're really amazing, long run who knows. Plus weren't Miller and Mazzucchelli on it only for Born Again?

[The Overlord]

[Clayton Blind Love]

I don't really believe its Nick Fury. I just like the thought though. The whole objective for Nick would be to keep Matt away from the war. The death of a lawyer and death of Lily (which was to happen) would seem to be a fair trade to Nick in order to preserve his wildcard, of which, will no doubt unfold in CW #6. Anything to keep Matt/DD on this wild goose chase Remember, he is no longer with SHIELD. So, he would have to rely on other contacts since SHIELD is pro-registration. The use/hire of Tombstone and this new Matador would seem possible still. And since Nick has read the "file" on Matt/DD, he would know exactly how to drive him crazy (dames in trouble). Again though, I can't say I'm buying this. The only thing that scares me that this could be right is that the motive is clearly there.

I do think we should be considering someone who isn't known as a villain at this point, but will obviously be the villain revealed. Someone is 'stabbing Matt in the back' and Bru gave us these choice words to let us (the reader) know. Purple Man, Mr. Fear, or some other known villain doesn't "stab the hero in the back." The choice of words brings the notion of betrayal to mind. This is someone switching sides from good to bad or at the very least switching sides with Matt/DD.

C.
_________________
Love is blindness, I don't want to see
Won't you wrap the night around me

[The Overlord]