Howard The Duck #9 - A Review

No sooner has Howard returned home and he's hit with another case. And a case from a big Hollywood actress! Well, so she says. Howard doesn't keep up on hairless ape culture. But his interest is piqued when this Lea Thompson says she's been having dreams of Howard. Dreams that seem oddly close to the events of Howard's life...

The artwork for this issue is more erratic than usual. It isn't bad but there's little sense of visual continuity from page to page. Occasionally, it isn't consistent from panel to panel. Blame it on the four inkers and two colorists.


Thankfully, while the look of this issue may be a little off, the writing is as funny as ever. Chip Zdarsky goes far beyond one could have been a one-note meta-joke in the mystery involving why Lea Thompson is dreaming of Howard. I'll be sad to see this series end in a few months but I'll be laughing every step of the way until the end.

Howard The Duck #5 - A Review

Disaster! The rogue Skrull known as Talos The Untamed has gathered the gems need to power The Abundant Glove - an artifact of moderate but ultimately limited cosmic power! Now Howard The Duck and his sidekick Tara Tam must race to get the heck out of there while the real heroes deal with it... or do they?!


Those who are as sick as endless cosmic crossovers as I am doubtlessly find Howard The Duck #5 to be an amusing treat. The whole issue is a send-up of every story-line that holds no other purpose than throwing a bunch of heroes at some random new villain in the hopes that you'll slap down your sheckles for a few pages worth of your favorite hero doing something awesome. And Chip Zdarsky milks the scenario for everything it is worth, complete with caption boxes telling you which comics the characters are referring to in their conversations- some of which are actually real!


This humor continues into the artwork itself.  There's a number of hilarious sight-gags built around various things the "real heroes" are doing in the background while the focus shifts to other characters.  Full praise to Joe Quinones, Joe Rivera, Paolo Rivera and Rico Renzi for a fantastic looking issue!

Daredevil, Vol. 2 - A No Flying, No Tights Review

The second volume of Daredevil continues the trend set when Mark Waid first took over the book and made it his own. Sick of the increasing amount of melodrama and tragedy in the life of lawyer/vigilante Matt Murdock, Waid only agreed to take over writing duties on the title if he was allowed to do the unthinkable: make Marvel Comics’ darkest superhero lighten-up, restoring the swashbuckling Man Without Fear that Stan Lee had envisioned fifty years ago.

The first chapter of this volume, which won the Eisner Award for Best Single Issue Story in 2012, illustrates just how much Waid has done to turn this title around. The usually dour Matt Murdock arrives at his law firm’s holiday party in grand style, wearing plastic devil’s horns and a red sweatshirt that reads “I’M NOT DAREDEVIL” in white print. His regular cane is replaced with an oversized red-and-white-striped candy cane with a bit of mistletoe tied on the handle. Even the cover of this chapter depicts Daredevil making a snow angel on the rooftops upon which he usually lurks menacingly. And all this occurs before the main plot begins, which involves Matt Murdock’s struggle for survival following a bus crash that leaves him and several blind children stranded in the wintery wilderness. Truly, this volume is worth the purchase just for that one story!

Before any long-time Daredevil fans get all huffy about this change in tone, let me reassure you that, while Matt Murdock may be sick of being miserable and the comedy quotient of the book has increased since Waid’s revamp started, the book still contains a good deal of drama. The main portion of the book is devoted to a team-up between Spider-Man, Daredevil, and the semi-reformed burglar turned hero, Black Cat, who must track down the crooks who framed Black Cat for the theft of a highly advanced holographic projector. The final chapters pit Daredevil against a blind supervillain – frequent Fantastic Four foe Mole Man – who has extended his criminal activities to grave-robbing and whose latest caper gives Matt Murdock a personal reason to see justice done.

Most of this collection is ably illustrated by the series’ regular art team of artist Paolo River and inker Joe Rivera. Their style is as fun as Waid’s script, being clearly penciled without seeming overly cartoonish in design. The inks are perfectly appropriate to each panel, with Joe Rivera seeming to know when to make the shadows thick or when to leave just enough light for the color to poke through the darkness. The Spider-Man/Daredevil/Black Cat team-up features artwork by artist Emma Rios and the artist Kano. There is also a brief story illustrated by Khoi Pham. All of it is good, though some of the poses Kano puts Black Cat in make my spine ache in sympathy.

In terms of content, there’s little to make parents or librarians nervous about this series. There are several moments of passionate kissing leading into something more intense between Daredevil and Black Cat, but there’s no nudity. Likewise, while the eventual reasons for Mole Man’s grave robbing are quite disturbing (i.e. finding the one woman who was ever nice to him and saying goodbye), Waid’s script keeps his intentions purely platonic and there’s no hint of anything else happening. The whole scenario is gross enough without THAT implication!

Daredevil, vol. 2
by Mark Waid
Art by Paolo Rivera, Joe Rivera, Emma Rios, Kano, and Khoi Pham
ISBN: 9780785152392
Marvel Comics, 2012
Publisher Age Rating: T+ (12 and Up)

Daredevil: Vol. 1 - A No Flying, No Tights Review

Even before Frank Miller put his personal stamp on Daredevil in the late 1970s and introduced many of the elements that made Daredevil one of the darkest books in mainstream superhero history, Daredevil was a character born of tragedy. His radar-sense superpowers were born of the accident that took his sight. He was abandoned by his mother and lost his father to violence. Some of his love interests were killed by costumed super-villains. Some of his love interests WERE costumed super-villains. His secret identity was exposed to the public on three separate occasions, requiring that he deal with it by creating a fake twin brother, fabricating a second separate legal identity, and then by simply denying everything and threatening libel suits. At one point or another he’s lost his job, his home, his mind – even his soul after a brief stint being demonically possessed. Yet despite it all, Matt Murdock perseveres.

When approached about creating a new Daredevil series for Marvel Comics, veteran writer Mark Waid reportedly had one condition. He did not want to start the book over by introducing a new girlfriend for Matt Murdock who would turn out to be a ninja assassin with a hereto untold tale of woe seeking revenge. He would not bring back The Kingpin with an entirely new scheme to ruin Matt Murdock’s life. He refused to add to the festering dung heap of tragedy that has been Matt Murdock’s life for the past three decades.
What he would do, instead, is make the book fun again.

From the opening chapter of this book, we know that this is a Daredevil not seen since the days of Stan Lee. Crashing a Mafia princess’s wedding to thwart a kidnapping, dodging bullets even as he steals a kiss from the bride – this Daredevil is a hero from the same school as Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn. He is bold. He is gleeful. He laughs in the face of danger. And under Waid’s pen he is glorious and truly worthy of the title The Man Without Fear.

Waid quickly establishes the world of Matt Murdock for those new to the characters. A brilliant lawyer by day and vigilante by night, Matt Murdock and his best friend and legal partner Franklin “Foggy” Nelson have recently revamped their law firm into a legal-aid clinic where they advise their clients on how to best represent themselves in court. This step proved necessary since Matt’s alleged superhero identity, while not publicly proven to anyone’s satisfaction, has caused enough mistrials to make it impossible for him to directly represent anyone in court. Waid also introduces a new foe/love interest in the form of Assistant District Attorney Kirsten McDuffie, who is determined to prove Matt Murdock and Daredevil are one and the same even as she finds herself falling for the idealistic lawyer.

Waid’s scripts are backed by some equally excellent artwork, provided by two separate creative teams with very different ways of showing us the world through Matt Murdock’s eyes. The first three chapters are illustrated by penciler Paolo Rivera and inker Joe Rivera. They show us the world from Matt’s viewpoint through a series of black backgrounds overlain with red lines highlighting the objects as Matt “sees” them. The last three chapters are illustrated by Marcos Martin, who takes a more minimalist approach to depicting Matt Murdock’s radar sight. Concentric circles overlay single-color silhouettes of the objects and people around Daredevil. Both methods are effective and the normal artwork is laid out with equal skill and detail.

Daredevil is one of those rare books that proves capable of pleasing both long-time fans and newbies alike. There’s nothing in the book that would be objectionable for the book’s target audience of 12 and up. Indeed, this series should be considered a must-have for any superhero fan’s comic collection or young adult library collection.

Daredevil, vol. 1
by Mark Waid
Art by Paolo Rivera and Marcos Martin
ISBN: 9780785152378
Marvel Comics, 2012
Publisher Age Rating: T+ (12 and Up)