A comiXologist Recommends (some heat from Hell’s Kitchen)

Daredevil #3

Written by Charles Soule

Art by Ron Garney

I am so glad that I read a 500-page collection of Daredevil a couple of weeks ago.  It was like a crash course in the things that make Daredevil great!  Now take away about 400 of those pages but maintain the same tones and you have Charles Soule & Ron Garney’s run of Daredevil so far.

With the opening of issue #3 Daredevil is surrounded by his all-too familiar foes, the ancient ninja cult known as The Hand. Daredevil has his back to the wall, but he isn’t alone.  Daredevil is for the moment partnered up with a local crime boss, Tenfingers, and his cronies.  From this opening standoff we are given our traditional Daredevil brawl!  Daredevil, some crooks, a heck of a lot of ninjas, and Blindspot?!

Daredevil’s new sidekick, Blindspot, launches into the fray!  The action is fun and easy on the eyes without sacrificing any of the weight of the mean hits our heroes dish out.

Ron Garney’s gestural ink work makes it look like what he does is easy. Garney’s art is so heavy on black space I was half expecting a Private Investigator to breeze in from out of the shadows to explain how a “locked door murder” played out, and I adore that.  Instead, after the fight breaks up and the crooks head their own way, Daredevil and Blindspot chill out on a rooftop like they damn well should, and it looks gorgeous!

Admittedly I hadn’t read the first two issues of this run, but issue #3 had me go back and fix that problem.  It is certainly worth it.

I love the energy and pace of this current run of Daredevil.  Charles Soule writes a cleverly down-to-earth story for the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen while utilizing all the wild and supernatural elements most effectively.  It works well in that the level of incredulous doesn’t ever take me out of the moment and that’s in short supply nowadays.   Daredevil is still the best street-level superhero title ever and I’m confident this current run is going to stay this good as long as this team is on it.  

Matthew Burbridge is a Digital Editor at ComiXology and ideally he would like to discuss at length the politics and culture established in the crazy-as-heck science fiction novel he’s reading. But that would be problematic because he would have to explain the whole book in order to even get to the point where the need to bring down the status quo in the plot like the main character wants to do would spoil the entire plot and then I’d—I mean Matt’d be spoiling the entire plot.