Behold, the end of the Kevin Smith/Joe Quesada DD run. This is basically just a coda to that story, wherein DD found himself protecting a mysterious baby. It seemed, by turns, that the baby might be the returned savior, or maybe the anti-christ. Along the way, longtime on-and-off love interest Karen Page resurfaced in Matt’s life, announced she had AIDS, and then got killed by Bullseye. Which is why Bullseye’s appearance in PPSM 6 more or less at the same time seems slightly odd timing. Then Matt’s baby turned out to just be a regular baby, being used as a tool to drive DD crazy by… Mysterio. For no good reason. I revisited the whole business before this. When Mysterio’s antics leave Karen dead, Kingpin reads the news, knowing who was behind it all, and says, “Better than a nursing home scam,” a reference that meant nothing to me in 1999 but would have totally given the game away now. When DD tracks down his foe, Mysterio talks about how he’s never been recognized for his abilities, and then he got diagnosed with terminal cancer. He says he wanted to try to die in battle with Spider-Man, but the Spider-Man running around at the time was “not his Spider-Man,” since it was Ben Reilly. Despite the fact that he, you know, fought that Spider-Man, anyway. Twice! But since his last appearance on the blog in this period, which was way back in ASM 413 fighting that very “not his Spider-Man,” he said he didn’t want to fight, he’d had a run-in with Daredevil. And, remembering this, he decided to go after him instead, because he deemed they were both “second stringers.” None of that makes much sense. This was not a good story. So, he bought all Fisk’s knowledge of DD off him for a million dollars, and used that insider info to cook up his scheme, and then spent “a year” crafting this plan that drove DD half-crazy and got Karen killed. He wanted DD to kill him in a rage, but of course, he didn’t, so Mysterio then shot himself like Kraven (Calling that out, even). DD saved the baby, the end. A ridiculous mess. I found it such a cop out that Mysterio was behind everything. But this same story made Mysterio a friend of mine’s favorite villain, so what do I know? At any rate, it’s into the aftermath of all that that we find ourselves. And despite all that preamble, this isn’t going to be a very long post, because there’s not much Spider-Man in this book, cover aside. There’s some, tho:
Right on page 1! Quesada’s longtime partner, Jimmy Palmiotti, inks and Richard Isanove colors. Look at the size of Peter’s hair! And, of course, the Clark Kent reference. Quesada really made his bones at DC. He first worked at Valiant (Jim Shooter giving a future fellow Editor-in-Chief of Marvel his start) on stuff like Ninjak, then moved to DC to do The Ray and various things, designing the suit for the guy who replaced Bruce Wayne as Batman for awhile, some big things. At Marvel, he did a run on X-Factor with Peter David that’s well remembered, then went off to do a creator owned book with Palmiotti about a firefighter superhero called Ash. Then they were lured back to Marvel for Marvel Knights. Until Ash, Quesada’s art had a rough, jagged, raw feel. But since Ash, and here, it’s got what I would describe as a more “liquid” feel, more of a piece with Todd McFarlane. Which is not a good thing. Look back up at the cover. His superhero anatomy tends to look to me like a pile of mashed potatoes sculpted into a human shape. And, like McFarlane with his insane mile long flapping capes, Quesada loved to surround DD in a cloud of absurd, unspooling rope from his clubs whenever possible. All style over substance.
Attending Karen Page’s funeral, we have such luminaries as Dr. Strange, Peter & MJ, who is the purple-haired woman?, The FF, Captain America, I think Black Widow, I think Gladiator, Black Panther, Okoye, Nakia, Zuri & Everett K. Ross, Ben Urich, Stan Lee, co-creator Bill Everett, I think Frank Miller with his head down behind them, and in the back Smith, Quesada and Palmiotti themselves, among others. I’m not sure who Quesada is exchanging a look with back there, but one assumes it’s someone.
There’s a letter from Karen in there that makes Matt very emotional, obviously. Then he goes to see Foggy, who was framed for murder as part of Mysterio’s scheme, and while he didn’t kill the woman he was accused of killing, he was with her in a romantic capacity, while still dating our own Liz Allan. Foggy tells Matt about Liz coming to see him in the joint.
You can really, really see the McFarlane in Liz.
So, while that’s pretty tangential to our purposes, it’s an important change in Liz’s life, so good for us to see it. And now we come to the middle of the issue, but the last bit of note to this blog.
Dat’s a lotta text!
That’s our man. Matt goes to see Natasha, who gives him a pep talk, tells Foggy he’s come into some money and that they can re-form Nelson & Murdock, goes to see the baby he saved, who’s got no one, and tells them to name her Karen, and then goes to confession. I believe famously Catholic Kevin Smith is the only person to ever write famously Catholic Daredevil from personal experience. Then Matt hears a crime go and bursts onto the scene as DD in a 2-page splash, smiling and ready to meet the future. The End. The next story would be written by David Mack, who would introduce Echo, who’s… basically just a remake of Typhoid Mary, honestly, a character who works for Kingpin, romances Matt Murdock and battles DD without knowing they’re the same person. But she’s also deaf with photographic reflexes like Taskmaster. Mack being brought in leads to his dear friend Brian Michael Bendis getting brought in, and that… changes literally everything for Marvel, eventually. In retrospect, it’s interesting to me how the Marvel Knights books so completely preview Marvel comics as a whole once Quesada goes from running this line to running the whole thing. This storyline was 8 quite decompressed issues. We’ve seen stories that long and longer in older comics, but none of them had less actual incident in them. In 1989, this woulda been 3, 4 issues, tops. In 1969, maybe 2. But slowing down the story let them really get into Matt’s mind and mood and reactions during everything. Marvel Knights’ Black Panther had similarly longer storylines, and the Inhumans book was one story across its 12 issues. Another thing is Richard Isanove’s colors, which are so much more sophisticated, more of a piece with 21st Century comics than 20th. These 2 things will really help the Marvel line stand out in a couple years. In only a few months, Quesada will ascend to the big chair, the whole Marvel line will slowly but surely adopt sophisticated color and decompression, and so much of the material that’s inspired the Marvel movies will be created, from The Ultimates’ depiction of the Avengers to the creation of the Winter Soldier to all sorts of other things. In a way, it all started here, with these 8 issues of DD, written by someone who’s not even really in the industry. Funny how things go sometimes.