Bendis' Daredevil Part 1: Underboss

[cyberghostface]

IMO, Bendis' Daredevil run is not only one of his greatest works but also one of the best runs on the title period. Granted, I haven't read every single issue, but I've read most of the essentials, and the only one I've liked better was Frank Miller's Born Again. During the time he was on, this was the title I always had to read first.

The first arc of the title basically sets up the 'status quo' that would remain in place for the rest of his run. It's a bit different in tone as well from his later stories. Daredevil doesn't appear a lot and Maleev's art is a bit more rougher and 'uglier' than it would be in the future. I think it's still a good story but it's not representative of how the rest of his run would be.

A note regarding the story's chronology: the story flashes back between the past and present. I'll do my best to explain so hopefully it will be easy to follow.

A bit of a history lesson: at this point in the title, Kingpin was blind after being shot by Echo/Maya Lopez.

First issue was #26...













We flash back to a week ago. Matt Murdock is making his case against a corporation that sold dangerous amphetamines to children. Outside the court, he is attacked by the supervillain called Nitro, who creates a large explosion that causes Matt's sense to go crazy. As Daredevil, he tracks down Nitro and demands to know who sent him after Murdock.

In #27, we are again following the events from 'last week'. Matt is with Foggy at the hospital, and the two discuss who could have sent Nitro. Foggy suggests that it has to be the Kingpin because no one else knows who Matt is. Matt is skeptical, being that Fisk has known who Matt is for a long time and hasn't attacked him in such a fashion. Foggy guesses that Kingpin's blindness has changed him.













#28 was part of Marvel's "'Nuff Said" event in which all of the titles would be silent and told without spoken dialogue.



Matt thinks back about Elektra, and in addition, thinks about Bullseye.





Daredevil discovers another assassin gunning for Murdock--Boomerang. He tries to find out who sent him but nothing.







I'll explain more of this later, but Bendis actually had big plans for Bullseye early on in his run (he had fled after killing Karen), so this was to foreshadow it. Kevin Smith intervened because he wanted to write the DD/Bullseye confrontation since Karen had died during his run. So he wrote one issue of a miniseries...and never finished it. He later admitted that he should have let Bendis write the story. Oops.

In #29, Vanessa Fisk has heard word of her husband's 'death'. It turns out he wasn't killed, but his consigliere leaked that he was to prevent Fisk's enemies from finishing the job.



Originally, Bendis did plan on killing Kingpin, but editor Ralph Macchio talked him out of it, saying that someone would just end up resurrecting him and it would cause a huge mess. Bendis is one of my favorite writers, but there are times when I wish that there were more Ralph Macchios holding his hand whenever he tries to kill off major characters.

So we flash back to three months ago, when Silke and Fisk first meet. Silke comes with greetings from his father, who also has a favor to ask. Seems there's a lawyer giving his father trouble, and he wants Fisk to take care of it.





We go forward to two days before Kingpin's attempted assassination. Daredevil is roughing up some goons to find out who put the hit on him, and he hears that it was the Kingpin who ordered the hit.







We go back to two months ago. Silke is with Fisk's men and brings up Murdock. The guys tell him to drop it. Richard Fisk is nearby, and asks Silke to come have a drink with him.

Flashing back to the present...



#30, Daredevil is discussing the Kingpin with Urich. Urich says that Kingpin's 'death' (as they're not sure if he is) may be connected to the hit being put out on Murdock...as if this was a way of showing Kingpin who's boss.







One month before the assassination attempt, Silke brings up the idea to Fisk's men to take down the Kingpin.











Silke tells the first step is to defy Kingpin's rules and put out the word that his era is over. Silke and Richard Fisk put an open bounty on Murdock.

We flash forward to today. Vanessa Fisk is having her husband taken out of the country. Vanessa is staying in New York to punish those who ordered the hit on the Kingpin.

#31...








Vanessa goes outside where Fisk's consigliere is waiting. She tells him to put the order out. All of Kingpin's men are subsequently killed by assassins.

Silke narrowly dodges his assassination attempt and calls his father for help.



With no options left, Silke goes to the FBI for protection.

Comments

[starwolf_oakley]

I still find it odd that Alex Maleev drew Richard Fisk to look like (IMHO) a young Bela Legosi. It is very different from how looked as the Rose.

[filthysize]

Absolutely. I remember reading this for the first time and I was absolutely riveted. I could not put it down.

Sometimes i casually pick up my Daredevil hardcovers from the shelf and try to read a few pages to kill time, and I always end up reading cover to cover.

This was just an exemplary run.

[blackruzsa]

I'm down on my knees kissing your hands right now. I was vying for some Bendis run Daredevil and here you are posting about 'em....
<3

And not to be cruel or anything but I think Vanessa was right. He had every opportunity. Cruel words aside, he should have worked harder to take those opportunities. I know what it's like to come from a family with influences and to be told I'm a disappointment. He should have just kept trying. He shouldn't have given up.

[kagome654]

Wow. That character doesn't look or act anything like the Richard Fisk I remember.

[kagome654]

Hey now, that's a former Supreme Hydra you're talking about there! I think you and Vanessa are being pretty hard on him, he was pretty darn ambitious when he wanted to be...he simply had a tendency to self destruct due to the fact he could never reconcile his love for (and devotion to) daddy with the disgust he felt over the fact that his silver spoon was paid for in blood.

I suppose in some ways this was a natural progression for the character, he had already become what he hated more than once, I just wish as a character with a fairly extensive history he had been treated with a little more...I don't know, something.

[proteus_lives]

Vanessa is a pretty disgusting character.

[proteus_lives]

Yeah, Bendis totally fucked the character for the story.

[lilacsigil]

This run was astonishingly good, and one of the few things I own in hardcover.

[shanejayell]

It's funny, I hear how 'well written' Bendis' Daredevil is, but I don't recognize either Richard or Vanessa Fisk in this story. It literally seems to have NOTHING to do with their previous characterization. That's pretty piss poor writing, you know?

If this had been another series or different characters, I might join the clapping, but this? Just not seeing it.

[shanejayell]

She's secretly a Skrull. That's about the only way to explain the off characterization.

[fifthie]

He had every opportunity.

Every opportunity from his abusive, murderer, crimelord father.

[fifthie]

I don't know, something.

Not-Bendisness.

[fifthie]

Originally, Bendis did plan on killing Kingpin, but editor Ralph Macchio talked him out of it, saying that someone would just end up resurrecting him and it would cause a huge mess. Bendis is one of my favorite writers, but there are times when I wish that there were more Ralph Macchios holding his hand whenever he tries to kill off major characters.

TBH I always thought he should have gone ahead and killed Kingpin in this story, or at least, after he had a bunch of guys who had decided to kill the Kingpin repeatedly stab him with knives, he really should have stuck to that and killed the Kingpin, because I mean, come on.

[darkknightjrk]

Well, I don't think we're supposed to root for any of the mobster characters, but I can understand her being supremely angry at her son for trying to kill his father.

[darkknightjrk]

Yeah, a Ceasor-like execution is a pretty good send-off for Fisk, I think.

[cyberghostface]

The point is, someone would bring him back. So even if it was a good send-off, it would only be cheapened when the inevitable occurs. I mean we've gotten to the point where classics like Kraven's Last Hunt are disregarded.

[darkknightjrk]

I'm not denying that, I'm just saying that, considering who Kingpin is, something like this would have been a good send-off for him.

[cleome45]

Yeah. Pretty much.

[randyripoff]

And who'dve thunk that?

[randyripoff]

Nah, typical Bendis.

[aaron_bourque]

Those glasses irk me.

[mrstatham]

The thing is, no Kingpin drastically changes the rest of Bendis' run entirely, given it removes his comeback and role in other stories. It might have been better, but in all likelihood, it would've sucked.

That said, I find the Kingpin's stock dramatically decreased in the modern Marvel Universe. I think it's partly the notion that when a crime-based villain fails too many times, they become less intimidating. There's also the fact Bendis has basically crippled the Kingpin's power base and made him worthless anyway, now he's finished with DD, by inserting the Hood in the same role.

Only, y'know, the Hood is a definition of 'joke character', under Bendis.

Double Post

[nefrekeptah]

You posted one page twice - the one where the new guy explains how Kingpin's underpaying his guys.

Thanks for posting...

[glprime]

God, Silke was an idiot.

I mean, how removed is Jersey that he never understood how powerful the metas of the Marvel Universe are? Even the street level guys who stalk criminals in the night, beat crowds of seasoned thugs at odds 20-to-1 or higher, and then disappear in an instant? These guys are nothing to worry about? Easily killed?

Guy must've been one sheltered mob son, and a "Made Man" in the loosest sense. Hell, I'd imagine to be "Made" in a superhero universe, you'd have to kill a low-power hero as part of the initiation.

On another note, I enjoyed the ongoing debate amongst characters as to whether "Matt Murdock is really blind." It only occurs to a few people, such as Richard Fisk, that maybe it's both; Murdock can't see, but his powers as Daredevil make up for it. Even Danny Rand tries to hold up and show Matt a newspaper headline, only for Luke Cage to inform him, he actually can't read from a distance.

There's a nice undercurrent throughout the run that Matt has kept himself so mysterious all these years, very few people really know what he's capable of doing, with all the good and bad that results from that.

Re: Double Post

[cyberghostface]

Thanks, fixed it.

[starwolf_oakley]

Bela Lugosi. Sorry.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmg9ir3Yxu1qf83cro1_500.jpg

[thehefner]

Even when J. Jonah Jameson shows up in this story, he doesn't sound like Jonah. Bendis writes one voice really, really well, and it irks me how no one else seems to notice this or be bothered by it.

[proteus_lives]

I know but it's always depressing to see a partner side with the abuser over the person he's spent a lifetime abusing.

[kusonaga]

Honestly, this reads a lot better with pages in between cut out. While I loved the story, I didn't necessarily care for the execution. Later stories from Bendis were a lot tighter (at least, as I remember them). The FBI guys were really really boring in this arc.

Of course, Bendis nails the mob stuff, even if he didn't adhere to Vanessa and Richard's characters very well (I wouldn't know). His Kingpin is brilliant though, especially when he makes his comeback. Brubaker gave him a badass comeback story too.

[kusonaga]

I don't know, I kind of got a Fredo feeling from him.

[fifthie]

See I think that's a big part of why I feel Bendis should have gone ahead and killed him. The non-death pretty much killed him him as a credible threat (and the coffin was well nailed shut by his attempted 'comeback'). At that point you might as well have the character die, give him a rest for a few years, and when you do inevitably bring him back, do it in a way that gives him some added villain cachet, like have him pull a Luthor and sell his soul to get his life back cause he just don't give a fuck about souls, or something decently villainy like that.

And like I guess the story could have turned out worse without him? But really I think the major plot beats could have stayed more or less the same with him dead. Like you just have Vanessa find out he's dead and then go all ghostface killa on her son and all his friends, then you do whatever happened before Kingpin tries to come back, then instead of Kingpin you have some other jerkoff trying to set him up as the Kingpin. Maybe Bullseye, maybe you have Bullseye go like hey I carved this dumbass target into my forehead, maybe I'm stupid enough to think I can be the Kingpin now! And then Daredevil kicks his ass and then flips a limo over.

[fifthie]

Man assuming that having his dad grab him by his skull and scream at him about how worthless he was - at age, what do we figure, ten years old there? - was like, a typical feature of this dude's childhood... it is pretty much the opposite of understandable for someone to watch alla that happen, AND THEN, go all stone-killa when the kid grows up and tries to kill his crazy-ass abusive father.

Or I mean sure it's "understandable", in the same sense that lots of repugnant shit is understandable, but not understandable in any sense that makes anything about it okay.

[fifthie]

The most charitable reading I can give that scene is to allow that Vanessa could be meant to have her own fucked-up problems from being married to a muderous abuser. Like without it being emphatically disavowed somewhere in-story - and at that it'd have to be in a Bendis story since it's p. clear he's not exactly tying himself to previous continuity here - I can't assume that a guy who does that to his child isn't ever going to direct the same awfulness towards his wife, and like, you don't know what kind of mess that's gonna make of a person.

It's still kind of a stretch, since it's certainly not something the story confirms, and it's not like Bendis has ever been that terrible subtle with this sort of thing, but I can't totally assume that Wilson himself doesn't carry some / a lot of the blame for Vanessa's actions here.

[fifthie]

I think Kraven's Last Hunt is a good example though of why a writer should go ahead with a story regardless of whether anyone reverses it in five or ten or however many years. Because I mean at least in my view, Kraven's Last Hunt is still a great story, for all the reasons it was originally a great story. That some subsequent writers a bunch of years later decided to do an ill-considered reversal of that story makes their story shit, but it doesn't change any of the reasons that Last Hunt was great.

Like if you were sent back to 1987 with the knowledge that Joe Kelly would write a shitty story bringing Kraven back, would you tell DeMatteis he should never have written it at all? I hope not, because Dematteis having never written that story at all would be awful!

[mrstatham]

I don't know. I just thought, personally, that with the exception of Bendis' Typhoid Mary (great visual from Maleev, shitty interpretation and understanding from Bendis), Kingpin's attempted comeback and Matt beating him down and declaring himself the King of Hell's Kitchen or the new Kingpin is one of the highlights of the Bendis era.

To me, if you replaced Fisk with someone else in that story, it lacks a good bit of the impact it has because it's not the Kingpin. Matt declaring himself as assuming Fisk's 'name' (if I remember rightly) after beating him down works so well because it's one of the few times that Matt has taken such severe action against Fisk, and because it reflects the start of Matt's downfall without going overboard like Brubaker or Diggle did.

[blackruzsa]

Man, I wish I could've seen the rise before the fall.

[blackruzsa]

I thought she forgot who she was for a while. What happened? If she remembers, wasn't she a decent, good person before?

[leoboiko]

I liked the art of this run, but man am I distracted by the lettering. Two hyphens instead of dashes. Double interrogation points. Comic-book swear censoring.

[greenmask]

I notice, but because I have noticed I steer clear of his writing and so rarely make note of it.

[hivemindcomics]

Just an absolutely fantastic run. A classic.
My two hardcover omnibuses or Bendis' Daredevil are probably my favourites in my far too big GN collection.

[hivemindcomics]

Probably gonna have to buy the Brubaker Omnibi (omnibuses?) as well now.

The fight with Bullseye is just perfect. So tense!

[don1138]

Okay -- this stuff has me hooked. I'm off to Border's my local used book shop to see if I can find the trades.

[hivemindcomics]

Someone who has Alias and a scanner (I sadly only have the first one), should follow this up with a series of Alias posts. The only Bendis series that comes to the same level of Daredevil IMO.

[hivemindcomics]

If Alias had Bendis-gangster stuff in it as well, I'd probably just read it on loop for the rest of my life.

[the_eleven]

Go check out the Roger Stern run on ASM in the '80s for the highlights of his career as The Rose, it's great stuff. Editorial eventually fires Stern (bad move) and makes a mess out of wrapping up the whole Hobgoblin thing (see Christopher Priest's blog for a lengthy examination of the editorial practices then that wound up leading us to Maximum Clonage etc) but one of the comics that originally turned me on was Web of Spiderman #30, which is iirc the first origin story for The Rose.

[cyberghostface]

I can't promise anything but I'll see what I can do.

[cyberghostface]

Going back in time is one thing, killing off characters nowadays is completely different. So I would prefer it nowadays if writers could find other ways to tell a good story. Kingpin is a perfectly good character and one of DD's few serious antagonists. Killing him off would accomplish nothing besides causing problems for future writers.