3 out of 5

So Brubes swept through late-2000s Marvel and crimed things up a bit with Captain America and Daredevil, choosing suitably shady artists / inkers (Epting for Cap and Michael Lark for DD) and – with an eye toward fan service of bringing in some classic names from each character’s run – dragging the lead player through the dirt and blood and mud.  Obviously Brubaker got mad daps for Cap and his involvement with Civil War (he done shot Cap, ya’ll, in case you weren’t around), but he made some equally swooping moves on his Daredevil run – supposedly killing off Foggy, and making Matt Murdock’s marriage to Milla go all sour, and even bringing in some acceptable new characters with Master Izo and Lady Bullseye.

Now when I was reading this month to month, it was great.  Daredevil seemed like a character just asking to get whatever goodness existed kicked outta him, which Brubaker does throughout almost the entire run, drawn with appropriate dirty gloom by Michael Lark (and given a dusty inking by the of-the-same-school Stephen Gaudiano).  Ed had a chance to plan the start of his run with Bendis’s end, so Matt Murdock in jail, suspected of being DD, allows us to open with prison noir, Matt trying to plan his defense from within, crossing the line back and forth between law-abider and rule-bender, and then once he’s free he goes through a long rigamarole of various villains trying to destroy his life by going after his friends.  I was sort of casually invested in superhero comics at the point I was reading this.  I was also in love with Brubaker AND Michael Lark, loved their Scene of the Crime series and Lark’s work on Gotham Central, and so was totally down with this depressing spin on Daredevil.

But history can cleanse the palate.  Taking a step back and reading this in one run, it’s just a lot of sturm and drang.  Lark weighs everything down (as was the desire) with Murdock perpetually in angst and unshaved, and Brubaker writes him from the first person going between two modes – slathered in guilt and declaring that he’s going to protect “his streets.”  Which means we’ve seen this type of thing before with Ed’s run on Catwoman.  That series was more noticeably shaky because Selina Kyle is sort of a thin character to begin with, and it didn’t help that Ed’s run started on a campy note and then quickly swung into heavy crime stuff, which just didn’t match within the run and didn’t really match the character.  Things stay monotone emotionally for his DD run, and the character is much more a match for this, but the emotional wallowing gets grating.  He successfully combines the gritty with the fun for one run 4-issue part of his run – which, hey lookit that, is co-written with Gotham Central partner-in-crime Greg Rucka – where he sets aside the whole over-arching agenda of ruining Matt’s life and just writes a short lil’ crime story.  Toward the end of his tenure, Ed seems to have gotten the big punches out of the way and settles into better territory – Lark also seems to get more comfortable with it, or Gaudiano and he came to a compromise with the inking, because the images start to feel more stable and flowing, the shadows cleaned up a bit – but, as is sorta typical, by the time the writer and artist start to really find the beat that works, they’re out for the next crew, and they manage to leave Matt in a similarly precarious spot as when they came in.

It’s nice to see superheroes dolled up a bit more seriously, and Ed was a good choice for Daredevil.  Unfortunately, the need to rewrite the book can make things pretty overwrought, and Ed writes better when his characters don’t have to express much beyond observation – especially with supers, where trying to to get into their fictional heads sort of exposes the silliness of the whole affair.  In general, yes, if you enjoy his Criminal and Sleeper, you’ll probably enjoy this.  But whereas those books hold up over time, I feel like DD’s charm wears off once you revisit it and try to read it as a story and not a week-to-week adventure.