Monday, July 21, 2003

DEPARTMENT OF NOTICING COMICS POSTS LATE & AXE GRINDING: Jim Henley wrote this on 7/17:

Yeah, Bendis is still dining out on the whole Kingpin-Bullseye meal that Frank Miller laid out twenty-five years ago and that a generation of Daredevil writers has been living off ever since.

Except for that one great beautiful period of Ann Nocenti and John Romita Jr.--the only time post-Miller that anyone has dared to write Daredevil in a different way. Tired old Catholic guilt imagery was shed for trips to a Hell that existed only in John Romita's head. Karen Page was a multidimensional character for the only time in her existence. There were like nine different bleeding-heart liberal causes advocated. Daredevil wandered with the Inhumans across upstate New York and it was great. We had a crazed feminist supervillain (Typhoid Mary) and a crazed victim of the beauty myth (Number Nine) and Karnak and Gorgon acting like the Two Stooges. Hell's Kitchen was practically a character, that's how well JR Jr. drew it. Just great great comics, and--like I said--Nocenti was the only writer to consciously not walk in Frank Miller's footsteps, and I remain appalled that the Miller version is somehow the "iconic" one today. I will prove it via a deep close-text reading and analysis of the Miller and Nocenti runs right after I finish rereading the Giffen/DeMatteis/Helfer Justice League. BOY! Those are great comics. Why, the Kooeykooeykooey issues are alone are the funniest superhero comics ever....

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