{"id":21897,"date":"2024-07-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-04T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=21897"},"modified":"2024-02-18T17:40:54","modified_gmt":"2024-02-18T21:40:54","slug":"dd-v2-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/07\/04\/dd-v2-8\/","title":{"rendered":"DD V2 8"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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\u2019s life, announced she had AIDS, and then got killed by Bullseye. Which is why Bullseye\u2019s appearance in PPSM 6 more or less at the same time seems slightly odd timing. Then Matt\u2019s baby turned out to just be a regular baby, being used as a tool to drive DD crazy by\u2026 Mysterio. For no good reason. I revisited the whole business before this. When Mysterio\u2019s antics leave Karen dead, Kingpin reads the news, knowing who was behind it all, and says, \u201cBetter than a nursing home scam,\u201d 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\u2019s 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 \u201cnot his Spider-Man,\u201d 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 \u201cnot his Spider-Man,\u201d he said he didn\u2019t want to fight, he\u2019d had a run-in with Daredevil. And, remembering this, he decided to go after him instead, because he deemed they were both \u201csecond stringers.\u201d None of that makes much sense. This was not a good story. So, he bought all Fisk\u2019s knowledge of DD off him for a million dollars, and used that insider info to cook up his scheme, and then spent \u201ca year\u201d 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\u2019t, 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\u2019s favorite villain, so what do I know? At any rate, it\u2019s into the aftermath of all that that we find ourselves. And despite all that preamble, this isn\u2019t going to be a very long post, because there\u2019s not much Spider-Man in this book, cover aside. There\u2019s some, tho:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Right on page 1! Quesada\u2019s longtime partner, Jimmy Palmiotti, inks and Richard Isanove colors. Look at the size of Peter\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s art had a rough, jagged, raw feel. But since Ash, and here, it\u2019s got what I would describe as a more \u201cliquid\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Attending Karen Page\u2019s 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\u2019m not sure who Quesada is exchanging a look with back there, but one assumes it\u2019s someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There\u2019s 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\u2019s scheme, and while he didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You can really, really see the McFarlane in Liz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So, while that\u2019s pretty tangential to our purposes, it\u2019s an important change in Liz\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dat\u2019s a lotta text!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That\u2019s our man. Matt goes to see Natasha, who gives him a pep talk, tells Foggy he\u2019s come into some money and that they can re-form Nelson & Murdock, goes to see the baby he saved, who\u2019s 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\u2019s\u2026 basically just a remake of Typhoid Mary, honestly, a character who works for Kingpin, romances Matt Murdock and battles DD without knowing they\u2019re the same person. But she\u2019s also deaf with photographic reflexes like Taskmaster. Mack being brought in leads to his dear friend Brian Michael Bendis getting brought in, and that\u2026 changes literally everything for Marvel, eventually. In retrospect, it\u2019s 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\u2019ve 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\u2019s mind and mood and reactions during everything. Marvel Knights\u2019 Black Panther had similarly longer storylines, and the Inhumans book was one story across its 12 issues. Another thing is Richard Isanove\u2019s 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\u2019s inspired the Marvel movies will be created, from The Ultimates\u2019 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\u2019s not even really in the industry. Funny how things go sometimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21893,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[113,387,744,19,60,58,49,1896,288,93,197,170,485,1890,1891,172,21,1894,1893,247,1892,2,6,1710,663,1895],"class_list":["post-21897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-ben-urich","tag-bill-everett","tag-black-panther","tag-black-widow","tag-captain-america","tag-daredevil","tag-doctor-strange","tag-everett-k-ross","tag-fantastic-four","tag-foggy-nelson","tag-frank-miller","tag-gladiator","tag-jimmy-palmiotti","tag-joe-quesada","tag-kevin-smith","tag-liz-allen","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-nakia","tag-okoye","tag-reed-richards","tag-ricahrd-isanove","tag-spider-man","tag-stan-lee","tag-sue-storm","tag-the-thing","tag-zuri"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21906,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21897\/revisions\/21906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}