{"id":24399,"date":"2025-01-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=24399"},"modified":"2024-02-21T16:40:38","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T20:40:38","slug":"dd-vol-2-34-35","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2025\/01\/06\/dd-vol-2-34-35\/","title":{"rendered":"DD V2 34-35"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Now we get to check in, briefly, on one of the best Daredevil runs of all time. Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev and Matt Hollingsworth put on a masterclass for 5 and a half years on this title, putting DD through his paces like few had or have since. And it all kicked off with yet another exemplar of the Jemas\/Quesada, \u201cwe\u2019ll try anything\u201d era: After a first arc that saw Kingpin deposed in a coup ld by his lieutenants, Matt Murdock\u2019s secret is discovered by an FBI agent, who sells it to a tabloid. This puts him in completely new territory for himself and for any major superhero, really. That happened in DD 31, and since then, Matt\u2019s life has spiraled out of control. Issues 34 & 35 feature appearances by our guy, and more importantly, they give me an excuse to show off Alex Maleev\u2019s art. This man had a profound effect on me. I\u2019ll save it for the end of the post. Check this out:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So, Maleev did the photorealism thing that was becoming very hot at the time, but he did it in a completely unique way. His stuff is clearly referenced from photos, but it\u2019s angular; jagged. Sometimes it looks like a woodcut. It\u2019s not just tracing a photo. And unlike, say, your Greg Lands or your Mike Deodato, Jr.s, Maleev ws using his own photo reference instead of tracing random photos of celebrities, so it\u2019s internally consistent. JJJ continues to berate the Bugle staff for failing to catch the story that Matt Murdock is Daredevil until the one person in the room who knows Matt Murdock is Daredevil, Ben Urich, speaks up to say the story isn\u2019t true. JJJ stops in his tracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Oh, hey, look who it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What a crazy situation. JJJ counts to 3, amounting to nothing of course, and then Ben spins a tale about how DD\u2019s secret was entrusted to him, and has led him to various big stories, and he\u2019d lose that line if he exposed him. And also says outing DD isn\u2019t news, an it\u2019s no one\u2019s business who he really is. In reality, Urich figured out who DD was in the 80s, during Frank Miller\u2019s revered time on the book, but he\u2019s desperately trying to do damage control for his friend here. JJJ furiously orders Ben to get out of his office (But doesn\u2019t fire him).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What he\u2019s doing right now is being intercut leaping through the city in the rain as DD with him arguing with Foggy about what to do as Matt. Foggy says he can\u2019t keep doing this with the media camped out on his front door, that even the best ball players have to hang it up. Matt\u2019s neighbors are interviewed as both the conversation and DD\u2019s journey continue. Foggy keeps encouraging Matt to stop being DD and live a normal life, then Matt picks up his costume, almost catching up to the DD parts of these layouts. It\u2019s all very well constructed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I remember Alex posting the black & white version of this spread on the forum. Just stunning work. Foggy starts playing hardball, talking about how Matt\u2019s life is a cycle of pain, how the two loves of his life were both killed by the same man (Elektra got better), how he has to break the cycle, and it becomes clear DD is running from Foggy as much as doing anything else, and as #34 ends, he finds himself perched on a lamppost above the throng of media outside his home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Oh hey look at that. I mean, a tense Daily Bugle scene and brief appearance by Peter wasn\u2019t a bad reason to cover this stuff, but now we get Spider-Man, too. Unseen by the reporters, Matt takes his mask off, determined to make them understand before coming to his senses, pulling his mask back on and flipping away. Just as he\u2019s leaving, one of the newshounds spots him, and flashes start going off everywhere, but they\u2019re too late to catch Daredevil. Reeling at the damage done to his life, DD hears an assault beginning to happen in a nearby alley, and arrives in time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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DD is in a really bad spot, but that boom is coming from his house, so it\u2019s about to get worse. Foggy is there, calling the cops and begging for help, as we see Mr. Hyde downstairs smashing a whole van into the building, demanding that Matt Murdock come out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Legit funny. Hyde continues his ranting and rampaging\u2026 until a web yanks the van out of his hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The book then jumps ahead 26 days for its final few pages, and it pretty much stops being something to talk about on this blog. But I\u2019d love to! Matt calls a press conference to categorically deny the allegations that he\u2019s DD, sues the paper, hires Luke Cage & Jessica Jones to be his bodyguards to throw people further off the scent, and things just keep getting crazier. It\u2019s a great, great run of comics. And Spidey does appear again before it\u2019s over, so I\u2019ll get to check back in later. Alex Maleev was the first artist I was ever aware of who drew on a Wacom tablet. When I found out such a thing even existed, I set out to get one. I can safely say that, without Maleev, there\u2019s a real chance I never would have made any comics of my own. I was one of his most outspoken fans for years on Bendis\u2019 message board, which had long-since shut down when I finally got to meet Alex in 2015. Alex is known for being cantankerous, and I wasn\u2019t sure how he\u2019d react to me. I walked up and said I was a big fan, etc, etc, and he just kind of sat and listened, but when I told him who I was on the forum, his whole demeanor changed, he hopped up out of his chair and shook my hand. It was one of my favorite comics creator interactions I\u2019ve had. A print I bought from him that day is on the wall above my screen as I type this. Love that guy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now we get to check in, briefly, on one of the best Daredevil runs of all time. Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev and Matt Hollingsworth put on a masterclass for 5 and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864,1],"tags":[2006,113,1922,58,13,2020,212,2],"class_list":["post-24399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","category-uncategorized","tag-alex-maleev","tag-ben-urich","tag-brian-michael-bendis","tag-daredevil","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-matt-hollingaworth","tag-mr-hyde","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24399"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24553,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24399\/revisions\/24553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}