Episode 58 - Daredevil by Charles Soule

This week we are doing Spoiler Free review of Daredevil by Charles Soule. 


Hosted by Vic 

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Transcript

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Beyond Podcast, we're here to demystify the weird parts of comics. Comics can feel weird and gatekeepy, and that sucks. You can start reading comics anywhere, but our goal is to point you to the good spots. Hey, and welcome to the Comic Books Beyond Podcast. On this show, we like to analyze books from a new reader-friendly perspective. We want to help you demystify comics and get your reading. You can really start reading comics wherever you want, but we just want to point you to some good spots. We're pretty spoiler-free unless we're doing a deep discussion. We'll let you know if we plan to go nuclear with spoilers. Alright everybody, my name is Vic, and we are going to get into today's episode. So we are doing two things, a couple things today. So I'm going to try to record this week's episode and next week's episode in one sitting. The reason being, um, well, I'm just busy for the next couple weeks and I don't really want to miss a week. Uh Garnet's wedding is coming up, so not going to have the normal recording recording time that I normally have, or the normal editing time. So I got to cram everything all together. So uh if the next year recording sound really samey, that's just the magic of podcasting. Uh also, if we miss any like major news that we uh should talk about, I apologize and we'll just get to it another time. We are going to have a guest on the 722 episode as long as all things work out. And I'm also going to encourage you guys to read Batman Under the Hood. Uh, that is gonna be the subject of that episode as long as we get that guest. And I think we will, just you know, you can never really plan for life. All right, before we get into today's episode on Charles Hole's Daredevil, uh, I just want to give a quick couple quick shout-outs. There's a lot of peeps on Blue Sky I've just been acting interacting with, and a lot of great people. You know, we have John Klein on there, IRMO's great follow, and he's honestly helped me a lot with figuring some stuff on the show. He also runs a lot of the daily cover challenges. Sometimes I do them, sometimes I just can't commit to it. Also want to give a quick shout-out to Intruder Timmy, who is a super nice dude, and two big shout outs to Banger, who has a great taste in music and fine taste in t-shirts. Uh, he also makes me laugh a lot. And finally, I want to give a shout out to Absolute Alex, who just had a baby, and we wish him well. Uh, he also gives some of the best micro reviews on Blue Sky. So if you dig comics, you like this show, and you're reading a lot of the same stuff that I'm reading, definitely give those peeps a follow, and I think you'll have a good time there. Now it is hot as fuck where I am, so I hope everybody is uh doing well out there. Uh I like the heat, but this is even pushing my limits. Uh I record from a closet that is not air conditioned. So this is uh this is gonna be a fun like 45 minutes to an hour of my life, let me tell you that much. Let's give a let's give a shout out to Lisa and Brad from comic book couples counseling. Uh now they recently interviewed Frank Miller, and I could tell just how giddy Brad was. He sent me a DM and basically said, hey, check this out. So the episode is hilarious, it's full of in good insight. And, you know, the um if if you followed Frank Miller at all, he's said some pretty problematic stuff. And he wrote a book called Holy Terror, which is pretty Islamophobic, and he's just said some kind of mean things to kids struggling with the Occupy Wall Street movement. And um, he has apologized for that stuff, and he he's he's promoting his new book, which is an uh autobiography, I believe. And uh one of the main takeaways that Leeson Brad had with the episode was that he didn't want to, he wasn't asking for forgiveness for anything. He just wants to admit to what he did. He wants to be better and he wants other people to be better than he was. You know, my thoughts on him aside, I think that's an admirable spot to take. If you're encouraging people to be better than you, that's that's important. So definitely give their episode a listen. It's it's one of their best ones, and uh they they are really excited to have him on now. I myself am not the world's biggest Frank Miller fan. His politics aside, which it again it seems like he's walked back on that a little bit. I uh I'm just not the biggest Frank Miller guy. It's just simple as that. I I I've read a good amount of his work. Sorry if you hear some clicking around here, uh, just kind of working through a couple things. Um, I I personally think Dark Knight Returns is a little overrated. I've never really connected with that book, and I've been reading it for 20 years now, or longer than that, maybe. Uh I remember I was reading that at a call center job when I was 18 or 19, and I'm gonna be 38 in a couple days. So uh I like the the narration, the overview. I like a couple of individual scenes, but overall it's just not really for me. Now we are talking about Daredevil, and it's really hard to talk about Daredevil without talking about Frank Miller. He probably has some of the biggest influences on that character as much as he does on Batman. Uh I again recently read his Daredevil this year, the most of it I'd actually read Born Again before, and that one I honestly didn't get when I read, so I am going to read it again with fresh eyes. I just think some of his Daredevil, I I read the Roger McKenzie stuff before that. Now it's better. I don't know. I don't want to say it's it it it's way better than the Roger McKenzie stuff. He did streamline a lot of the writing process, make it seem more mature. But I think comics were going in that direction anyway. I wasn't there. I I really can't be the one to say that, but everybody else likes it. It's okay if I don't love it. I really do like his Man Without Fear, with one exception, and you probably know what I'm talking about if you read that book. I think his best work with uh Daredevil is actually the Electra stuff. So but we are not here to talk about Frank Miller. We just kind of had to. We're here to talk about Charles Sowell's Daredevil. We're gonna do kind of the older style episodes that we do, uh, where you know I'll I'll give you a breakdown of the book since it's just me today. That's gonna be the old format or the format. I I like doing those episodes, just you know, we had cool stuff pop up a lot recently, and we just haven't been able to, you know, do those. But this is what I do want to do, and we're gonna get into it. Uh, so let us introduce this book a little bit. So now this book was written, I believe it started in 2015. Uh now I I'm a pretty big Daredevil fan. I have actually kind of fallen in love with this character this year. Uh I'm it's like right on the cusp of saying Daredevil is my favorite character. It's really, really close. I'm currently reading the Chipsidarski run, and I'm really liking it. Uh now, if that doesn't tip you off, I don't like this book a lot. All right. Uh so I read these actually in a combination of a few things. We're not going to go spoilery on this. Uh now, as always, it's hard for me to talk about a book without spoiling something. I try to keep it at concept level. It's really hard for me to say that this isn't about a blind dude who dresses up in a devil costume, who um has more Catholic guilt than I did growing up. And my church was the kind of church where uh we handed out fire and brimstone instead of holy water, and uh, you know, and he also has this uh habit of hooking up with insanely attractive women, which, you know, good for him. I mean, uh they actually kind of touch on that in uh the Zadarsky run, where you know, since he's not ogling them, it it tends to work out in his favor, I guess. So good for him. All right, so I read these, I started reading this on Marvel Unlimited, and I immediately fell in love. And they and Marvel put out some new versions of these books. So there are three new books. We have Daredevil Back in Black, Daredevil the Dark Art, and The Death of Daredevil. Now I measured these, these are a little bit bigger than the uh compact size editions, but they're a little stall smaller than a standard trade paperback. I was apprehensive on these, but these are 25 bucks a pop at cover price. And if you just know where to look on online, like cheap graphic novels and stuff trades, you're probably gonna get them at like a s 30% discount. So I think I paid around 17 to 18 for each one of them. I really enjoyed these series. Um, so I started reading these on Marvel Unlimited, like I said, then I jumped into these. I do really recommend these books just on dollar value alone. I had no trouble reading them. I think the presentation was just fine. And honestly, just the dollar value and the value of uh physical media is going up today. Uh, I'm sure you guys have heard some of the rumblings of like Sony taking away movies and not supporting and doing this weird 30-day luck, and you know, stop printing physical games. So, you know, I I do like owning my media, but on the same token, that's not forever. Physical media breaks down, like video games are starting to just rot, even if they're, you know, kept well. So the reason I picked this book as opposed to any other Daredevil that I've been reading, and I've read this year, I'm just gonna go through what I've read this year. I read the Frank Miller run, the original. I'm working my way through the Danny O'Neill stuff, just doing that a little bit slower. Uh, I started with Mendis and I did all of the Marvel Knights era. I'd previously read Kevin Smith's Daredevil Yellow, some of the Frank Miller stuff, a couple other mini-series here and there, and some random like one-off issues, but never full runs, including one or two of Charles Soles. Got through the Bendis run, I got through the Ed Brubaker run, uh, then I went through the Andy Diggle run. The Andy Diggle run isn't as bad as people say it is. I picked up the Shadowland Omnibus because like I'd already fallen in love with the character, and I just thought, oh, well, I've got credit card rewards points, omnibus time. And uh I won't say it was a mistake. I will say that most of the omnibus is not very good because I don't really like events. I will also say that uh there are better Daredevil stories, and I'm really glad that one was only like 18 issues I really needed to pay attention to. Then after that is the Mark Wade run. I read all of that. I mostly enjoyed that one. It's totally different, it's still really good writing, but uh going from such dark tones to that one was jarring for me personally a little bit, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. And it is kind of refreshing to see that. And honestly, when you look at uh what Kevin Smith started and then where Mark Wade finished up, I really think that is almost one giant story. And I mean it's all one giant story, but that's like an epic saga of like three, four movies where we're doing like a sequel trilogy almost, and and there was another trilogy of movies before that. That's the best way I can explain that. But where Charles Soule comes in, and what I liked about this run, I thought that this was one of the best starting points for Daredevil if you wanted to jump into the character modern wise. Uh now there are probably some better spots, like if you jumped in at the Kevin Smith stuff or even the Bendis stuff, you'd be totally fine. If you jumped in at the Brew Baker stuff. Uh it's not that you wouldn't be fine, it's that it picks up right where Bendis leaves off. And to a degree, Mark Wade is kind of like that as well, where it just heavily references the last two runs. Charles Sowell still does reference the last two runs, but to a much lesser degree. Let's talk about some of the issues of the run before we start really talking up the rest of it. But you know, let's do some credits first. I'm only going to read credits from the first book. Uh, Charles Soule wrote all of this. Uh Ron Garney, I believe, is the primary artist on most things. Matt Milla is the primary color artist. VC's Joe Caramani is the letterer. Sana Amant and Charles Beachman are the primary editors. Other artists include Gorin Suzutska, Arsudska, Matteo Bufagani, uh Vanessa Del Rey, Matthias Lopes, oh, Roger Mackenzie actually wrote a little bit in the annual. Ben Torres is another artist credited in the annual. Mirislava Mavira is a color artist credited there. Clayton Coles also did some lettering. Riley Brown and Mast, along with Simon Kryzowski and Jim McCara. Char Lampidas, Riley Brown and Andy Chung uh worked on Daredevil Punisher Seventh Circle, which is collected in here as well. Uh, we're gonna talk about Daredevil Punisher uh in a little bit. I kind of just want to talk about this run as a whole and what I like and uh some of the criticisms I have, and then we're gonna jump into a little more nitty-gritty, but still being as spoiler-free as possible. Let's talk about some disclaimers first. This is a pretty violent book. Uh, I would say that this is like a teen reading. Uh, I think you'll be for the most part okay. Uh, another thing just to be cognizant of, this does deal with some uh racial issues, specifically immigration, and it's coming at it from a place of we'll call it pre-pandemic politics. This one, while I still think it's one of the best places that I've personally read to jump into Daredevil, uh, even though I'm really enjoying Stephanie Phillips, which is current, there there is some dated values here. Now, tonally, this is a really dark story. It's still got some fun in it, but Matt is not in a good place in this. You can tell some stuff happened, but overall, he's pretty messed up. He uh he's he's doing okay, all things considered, like he's holding it, holding it better together than I would. And if you just heard a cat whine, I am so sorry. My kitties are outside my door whining, I suppose. Uh, so one thing I really like about this book is they introduce a lot of new characters. Um, there's a character named a blind spot, who you're going to learn about really quick. His power is that he's this kid's a genius. He's like got Batman level intellect. He uh designs his own invisibility suit. Uh, we also get a character named Muse. Muse is one of the main antagonists of this story. Muse is a dark artist. He uses a uh um his medium is blood. So he he seems like he's enhanced. I think I have some issues with his uh overall production. I think he just could have been um explored a little bit more. Then we also have a villain named Tenfingers who is a uh he he's uh in the same realm of villains as the hand. He uh is not directly tied to the hand, though. Uh he he I just don't want to give away too much, but let's just say like if there's a camp of villains, uh he his story is directly tied to the hand, which they're a group of undead ninjas who um Matt has a long sort of history with, created by Frank Miller. And pretty much the uh the the characters, if you're familiar with Daredevil, they're gonna show up. Like we get some Electra stuff, we get some Punisher stuff, we get some Kingpin stuff. If any of this sounds familiar to you and you saw the last two seasons of Daredevil on Disney Plus, basically what those seasons were adapting was this source material. And I believe now that I'm thinking about it, I saw this advertised as the source material for that stuff. And I I did enjoy the show. This is better. This is just overall better, but it's not perfect. Every arc for a while feels like it's independent and not part of a larger story until it gets to a point where you start to see that they're not building off each other, they're interweaving, and it really is cool. Um one arc may not lead to the next, but you'll get themes and ideas and breadcrumbs that are picked up. It's almost like a a basket. Like you'll see the interlocking connectivity about halfway through, and you see a bit of a time jump. And and after this time jump, you see uh that's basically where the back half of the story starts. And the back half of the story I don't think is quite as good as the the first like four arcs because you have the ten finger stuff, then you have the muse stuff, and then you get some fallout from that, and you eventually go into the stuff with a kingpin. The stuff with a kingpin, it's good, but I just liked everything else better. If I had to describe a theme to this book, it's that you can do everything right and you can still not win. Every arc in here, it doesn't feel like Matt's winning. It doesn't I'm not saying he loses, it's just I think it really shows that it's not about winning and losing. It's sometimes there's a status in the center where your enemy doesn't get to continue their plans, but you didn't save the day. And we see that exposed in different ways, and I really don't want to talk about a couple of them because it would really ruin a lot of this book. The ending of this, I still have mixed feelings on. I don't want to say it comes out of nowhere, it feels like bad writing. I think it's written in a way to feel like the writing is bad. And I know that sounds pompous and pretentious, but that's kind of what I do sometimes. But I think it's there to be representative of real life and be self-aware that the writing does not look good. But sometimes that's how stories end. If we're talking about our personal journeys, a non-zero amount of us are going to be are just going to make plans and then we're going to random die. And I'm sorry to bring you down, but you know, random bad shit happens. And that's kind of what, in a sense, this does, but it explores this idea in a bit of a deeper way than I'm talking about it. I'm not telling you what happens. Go read it for yourself if this sounds at all interesting. Now I want to talk about one other thing that I found interesting in here, and I I didn't actually read this in here. I'm just flipping through these pages now. Uh, so there was kind of this motion infinity comic, I think they call it, they're called Daredevil Punisher. And we all know Daredevil and Punisher have a pretty long history, and if you don't know, now you do. This is basically your standard. Daredevil wants to prosecute someone with the law. Punisher wants to take the law into his own hands. Their ideologies are in a huge clash here, and it's about what you would expect. It's nothing revolutionary. Though uh the coolest thing we get is that you see some you see Blind Spot has some stuff to say here, and you're kind of seeing this fight through his eyes, where you see a new character who's new to the Vigilante game, seeing this level of violence and having his own morals challenge. That's why I think this story is interesting for two reasons, for one of two reasons. The other reason is that Infinity Motion comic. I I think that's what it's called. I read that part on Marvel Unlimited, and it's really cool to see, you know, the uh to see the the motion of the comic. Like you'll see one panel, then you'll click to the next panel, and it'll be the same panel, but like the arm moves perfectly in a way where it it seems like there's motion. And I just thought that was pretty cool. So I think it is worth checking that part out on Marvel Unlimited. Uh, but honestly, you know, if if this, if you're apprehensive about this, the first mark on Unlimited is pretty much always the way to go. Uh like I I liked this enough to pick up physical copies. Basically, my structure of buying shit is if I like it on a digital version, I'll buy a physical version as long as it's affordable. I'm not buying Daredevil Volume 1, which is like $700. So, overall, my rating is that I do recommend this book, anyone who's interested in Daredevil. I think this is a great starting spot. You are gonna lose a little bit of context, but it's so well explained, and it doesn't come up that much where you are just going to be fine. Now, I haven't read a whole lot of other Charles Soul, but I do want to recommend his Swamp Thing and his Red Lanterns run. Both were a lot of front fun. Those were two of the standouts from the new 52 era. I think his Red Lantern run had uh Supergirl in it, which is kind of a uh segue to the next thing we're gonna talk about in a little bit. Uh and as far as other Daredevil runs, we kind of already covered that to a degree. But right now, Stephanie Phillips, which we have an episode on, which is uh episode 45, and my wife Katia was on that. I recommend that run as well since it's current. And from what I've read of Chipsidarski, also really good. Uh anything on Unlimited, you're probably going to. This is all on Unlimited. You're you're you're you should just be able to get to it. Uh so next week, or in like 20 minutes whenever I'm finished here, uh, we're going to be talking about Robin and Batman 1 and 2 by Jeff Lemere and Dustin to Wynn. It is utterly criminal. I haven't talked about this team yet, and I am really bummed out that I haven't. That episode might be a little bit shorter, but this one isn't, you know, super long. We try to keep our episodes generally under a half an hour. Now I want to talk about Supergirl a little bit. Uh, I just got back from seeing this movie more accurately. We got lunch right after, and now we're home. Cody and I both really enjoyed this movie. I'm not going to spoil anything, don't worry. I do need to just call out that the level of misogyny around this movie is bothersome. Like any misogyny is bothersome. But this is just really wrong. People are just saying that Millie Alcock did a terrible job, or she doesn't look good enough or buff enough or whatever. I'm sorry, it's just stupid. Or people are pointing out like it's terrible writing. And yeah, there's some writing issues. I'm not going to deny that, but there's writing issues in anything. Look for the flaw in anything, you'll find it. I did look for the flaw, and I found one thing that does actually bother me a little bit from the first act, which it might have just been me overlooking for uh a logic issue. There is a scene towards the end where I don't know if it's true to Kara's character, and it bothered me a little bit, but if that is true to her character, and I admit, I haven't read a lot of Supergirl. Uh last major thing I read from Supergirl was again Charles Sowell's Red Lantern that featured her a little bit in a like possess a zombie thing. Then before that it was Crisis on Infinite Earth where she fucking died. I didn't read Woman of Tomorrow. Uh, I'm not the biggest Tom King fan. I'm generally apprehensive on anything he writes. I'll give it a try, but he lost me pretty hard in his Batman stuff, and some of his other stuff was just not for me. But I really like that this was about processing trauma and more accurately processing loss. I think Kara had a pretty good character arc where she got to be true to herself and realized, you know, she's not perfect, but she can do more than what she's doing now. I do recommend going to see Supergirl. It was a good time. It looked great, it moved fast, it was character driven, and you know, it had a pretty solid plot. The the sidekick character, super fun. My biggest complaint is probably there's not enough crypto. I might take a look at Woman of Tomorrow now, because I am kind of interested or interested. And I do want to give DC a shout-out for naming one of the planets after the artist of that book. Uh that's they should do more stuff like that. They should be getting more credit and really making these books available. All right, so that's my rant on Supergirl. Uh overall, enjoyed it. It definitely had some writing problems, but they didn't take me out of the movie too hard. So we'll see you back here totally next week and not in 10 minutes when I'm recording this for Jeff Lemir's Dustin and Dustin Wynn's Robin and Batman. Alright, buddy, have a great week and stick around for closing credits. Thank you so much for listening, everyone. If you'd like to support the show, please consider leaving a comment or review. We ask for honest reviews only, and nice reviews and comments will be right on the air. If you're a creator and have something for us to review, or if you'd like to do an interview, let us know. Or if you'd just like to get a hold of me. I'm at comicbooksbeyond at gmail.com or comic books beyond on Blue Sky, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. I'm mostly hanging on Blue Sky though. I hope you're all safe and doing well. I hope you have a great week. Please remember to check in on your people. I'd also like to give a quick thank you to the following people: the crew of the Talking Comics Podcast, Brandon McNulty, Lisa and Brad from the Comic Book Couples Counseling Podcast, Alex Jaffe, Jeremy Whitley, Jimmy Gasparo and the crew of Comic Book Yeti, John Coyne III of Shadow and Flame with Magic, and David Peppos. Most importantly, we'd like to thank all of our listeners and supporters. Alright, everybody, have a great week.