And one of the best ways to do that? Let's re-gadgetify Daredevil's billy club!! Because back in ye olden days, it was nay so much just a billy club as a James Bond gadget full of Q-developed gimmicks.
Take, for example, Fantastic Four #40 (1965). Dr. Doom is trying to hunt down a depowered FF, and to that end he's taken control of one of Reed's inventions, the unmanned flying spy drone:
Well, Daredevil is no pushover like Taliban militiamen or Mexican drug lords--he knows how to deals with this--to the billy club!!
Yes, Daredevil had a sniper rifle concealed in his billy club!!! Shades of From Russia With Love!!Have we ever seen this again?? Couldn't Matt Murdock have used something like this against Bullseye??
But we're not done yet. Later, inside the Baxter Building, Doom is about to nail DD with shrapnel from a self-destructing rocket-probe thingie:
An Great Scott, is there anything the guy didn't have built in there? A pogo stick? Shark repellant?
So please, Mark Waid, take a lesson from Stan and Jack--enough nihilistic overkill. Make Daredevil fun again. At least let Matt Murdock smile once in awhile! And give him toys!!
I kind of like the thought of magic ninjas, done right. The Hand takes the fun out of things, though.
ReplyDeleteI don't disagree, Shadow, but done right or not, I think the magic ninjas been done enough, at least for now, at least for this comic.
ReplyDeleteWhile there have been many great runs post-Miller, there's been a lingering tonal monotony weighing down the Daredevil franchise for awhile...
There is a terrible tendency for writers to follow a great run with a pale imitation of it, rather than a new writer telling his own story. I'm not sure how much is editorial driven though. If Waid turns Daredevil into a good old swashbuckling super-hero again, facing off against the Stilt Man and other non-assassin non-ninja types, I'll start picking it up again :)
ReplyDeleteMind you, there are also the odd writers who do "imitations" bloody well, such as Busiek on the Avengers, which imho actually surpassed the originals. And Busiek's run just keeps looking better and better the more Bendis I read...
As I recall, there was a brief lighter period for DD back in the mid-90's courtesy of Karl Kesel and Cary Nord. Rumors were that their original plan was to have Matt run for mayor.
ReplyDeleteIn fairness to Bendis, though, while I avoid his Avengers stuff like the plague, he DID have a good DD run, especially since he actually made Foggy the intellectual equal to Matt he should be, at least on the legal and conversational end.