Now we reach an issue that is infamous, but not the good kind of infamy, like you want. The reason will become apparent directly. This time out, for an Echo-centric issue, Bendis has teamed with his dear friend and Echo’s co-creator, David Mack. It’s almost strange that he created Echo. He did almost no work for Marvel. As a writer, he did the Daredevil arc that introduced Echo. As artist, he drew Bendis’ first DD story. Then much later, as writer/artist, a DD arc that was about Echo, a story that should’ve been a miniseries but instead ran as 6 issues of DD, presumably to give Bendis & Maleev some breathing room. And that’s it, basically. Then a bunch of covers and this issue. At one point, either rumor or actual announcement had him taking over the X-Men, I forget, but that never happened. And instead, he… didn’t do much else, either. He did one more volume of his book Kabuki, in 2004-ish. I don’t think he’s done more. How’s he pay the bills? I don’t know. But, anyway, he’s here. Like Michael Gaydos, like Michael Avon Oeming, like Alex Maleev, he’s one of Bendis’ favorite people, and they get to do another comic together. But, while I don’t know what happened in private, obviously, based on what happened in public, I assume they came to regret it. Jose Villarrubia colors. Let’s get to it. Page one is a rather self-indulgent silent series of panels of Echo applying her white hand print to her face from her POV. That’s most of her “superhero costume,” a white handprint on her face.
The way people keep reiterating what’s been going on every issue is getting… a bit tiresome! It didn’t seem that way when these things were a month apart.
Ok, so, to begin. The original cover of this issue features Mack tracing a photo of some famous lady, getting caught, and Marvel forcing him to change it before it was published (I had to go look this stuff up, because it’s been a long time). On this last page, we see 3 images of Daredevil. 2 are traces of Alex Maleev. One is a trace of David Mazzuchelli.
Maleev, Frank Miller, Maleev, Maleev. And, see, Maya just figured out that DD is a Skrull. So, when people came for Mack for tracing DD in this book, his defense was he used other peoples’ art to make it clear the Skrull was “copying” the real DD. But then people started to realize most of the pictures of Echo are copies, too, mostly from Adam Hughes’ work on Gen 13. And then people started to go back and find swipes in a bunch of his older work, all the way back to the beginning of his Kabuki. His whole career was revealed as swiping. Somehow, he weathered this storm. It blew over and he kept being David Mack, beloved comic book writer/artist who doesn’t really write or draw comics anymore. Crazy thing. A few years ago, as I typed this, artist Joelle Jones was caught in a similar situation. And that, too, just kinda blew over, and she kept her gigs and is still working today despite a massive pile of swipes of other artists. People defend losers like Greg Land and Salvador LaRocca because they trace photos, not other artists’ work. “It would be different,” people used to say, “If they were tracing other artists.” Then Land got caught doing just that, and still people defended him. And then we get to this Mack bombshell, and the rules were just out the window. And this book being full of Alex Maleev Daredevils when he, Bendis and Mack were so tight caused some obvious friction, no matter how much they tried to hide it. A real mess. A real shame. And the only thing this comic is remembered for. Well, anyway, the Skrull turns into Echo, and then they have a fight. Getting rid of DD means most of the figures are now Adam Hughes, but there’s some other artists in there, too. The Skrull is trying to take Maya’s place, and the weird bit, the thing we’re supposed to be focusing on instead of the swipes, is the Skrull talking about how it’s studied her and it really admires her. Then, just as the Skrull is about to win, Wolverine shows up, and is a series of swipes.
Wolverine has now successfully convinced Maya of the Skrull threat, at least. He says he was following her because, if he was looking to infiltrate their team, she’s the one he’d pick, because she’s got so many fewer ties to the rest of them. Then we jump ahead a bit.
I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised to learn you could source every single figure in this book to some other artist. Just a real mess. But, look, a lil’ romance during the catastrophe. David Mack will not be returning to the blog.