Daredevil and the Holiday Season 4

[mrosa]

After Frank Miller finished his first run on Daredevil, Denny O'Neill took over the title. I think it's an interesting and underrated run. Particularly I loved the Micah Synn storyline. It may not be great, but at least it respects the time-honoured tradition of showing another hellish Christmas for Matt.

Micha Synn is like a Tarzan who was found in a jungle, living in a cut-off civilization. Brought to America, he hires Matt and Nelson to get hold of a fortune, being the oldest descendant of a rich family. Meanwhile, now a media celebrity, he starts hitting on Nelson's wife. Micah also wants to take over the underworld and tries to form an alliance with the Kingpin (who doesn't like him messing around with other men's wives; what a principled guy). Oh, and he's preparing to restart his worship of god Mow, to whom he sacrifices people. This was an insane, insane storyline.

Things start when Micah bursts into Matt's Christmas' party:



And things just take a natural turn from there:









From Daredevil #206.

Next issue Micah sued Daredevil for assault. It took a while for the public to realise he was a complete bastard.

Comments

[halloweenjack]

I was pretty underwhelmed by this run, although I'll admit that part of the problem was simply that he was following Miller, who was doing stuff that was just completely unlike anything that anyone in comics was doing at the time. Synn's visual look also reminded me too much of a cross between Kraven and Conan; this was not too long after the What If? that had Conan appearing in the modern world, and its sequel in which he fights the Avengers. There's also that thread of comic-book D.H. Lawrence-lite in the way that Foggy's wife starts doting on the big hunky he-man while ignoring Foggy. (I also have to admit that there's something about Denny O'Neill's comic work that doesn't seem to age well with me, despite having gotten quite a bit of it over the years--most of his Question run, for example.)

Speaking of creators, would you add a tag for David Mazzucchelli? A lot of people may not recognize this as some of his early work.

[marghammerman]

I'll admit, I found Mazzucchelli's artwork far outshining Denny O'Neill's writing on this run. His fight scenes are great (love the big, long follow-through on the punches), and he does some really breathtaking cityscapes.

Loving this theme, BTW; despite considering myself something of a Daredevil aficionado, it had never occurred to me to think of Christmas as possibly Matt Murdock's greatest foe, lol.