I’m going to hold off on adding my voice to the ever-growing chorus of people analyzing The Dark Knight Rises until I at least see it a second time and the urge to engage in hyperbole is a little less. Those of you who know me know that my love for Batman is such that the character’s mythology is pretty much religion to me, so you can probably imagine that I have a lot to say about Christopher Nolan’s third and final Dark Knight film as well as the trilogy as a whole. Stay tuned to this space for that post, which is sure to be long and intense.
For now, I want to talk about arguably my second favorite superhero character of all time behind Batman – another street-level, noir-based hero whose modern adventures also happen to be based on the visionary early work of Frank Miller. I’m talking, of course, about Daredevil: The Man Without Fear. As will be the case with pretty much everything comics-related I write about on this blog, I’m going to deal with why I love the character as well as where to start reading if you’re interested in what he has to offer.
Before Frank Miller created the two Batman works – The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One – that would go on to inform the vast majority of Batman comics, television shows and films to come out in their wake over the next three decades, Miller was busy coming into his own as both an artist and storyteller in the pages of Daredevil, a comic and character who had until then languished to catch on with Marvel readers thanks to his standing as a swashbuckling street-level character derivative of Spider-Man in more than a few ways. Handed the reins to the character with little expectations on Marvel editorial’s part that he would turn the series’ sales around in any significant way, Miller turned Daredevil’s title into a place where he could blend the myriad genres and influences that interested him into a wholly original comic of his own creation. In fact, the result worked so well it would help convince DC Comics to hire the young write/artist to reinvent their most prized character, Batman, for a new generation.
Tinkering with and in many instances throwing out entirely much of what came before in Daredevil’s comics, Miller essentially started from square one with the character, transforming him into a hard-boiled crime anti-hero of sorts with far more in common with the grizzled noir protagonists of Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett than Peter Parker. On top of those noir sensibilities Miller added in heaping doses of the Japanese manga comics and kung fu films that inspired him. This brilliant yet bizarre mash-up of kung fu and noir would of course later become even more pronounced in Miller’s creator-owned Sin City comics, but it was in the pages of Daredevil that they first took shape as what we now know as the quintessential Miller voice. In Miller’s Daredevil, the lead character was just as likely to encounter dangerous femme fatales and mobsters as he was deadly ancient ninja death cults, possibilities that almost immediately made the character unique and exciting to readers of the time.
As groundbreaking and inspired as Miller’s decision to infuse Daredevil with noir and kung-fu/manga sensibilities was, the way he reworked the central character of Matt Murdock was even more important to giving the character more legs and potential than he ever enjoyed. Miller’s biggest breakthrough came by zeroing in on Daredevil’s religion, reworking him as a man defined by his repressed catholic guilt and the endless contradictions and hypocrisies inherent to Catholicism. In Miller’s deft hands, Murdock became a lawyer unflappably dedicated to justice yet still intent on dressing up as a red devil vigilante and fighting crime on the streets of Hells Kitchen each night; a man torn apart by the guilt caused by past mistakes yet completely incapable of avoiding more of the same sort of tragic missteps in each of his three separate lives – private, professional and vigilante; and finally, a guy who was, in all possible ways, completely emotionally fucked up beyond belief.
If all of this sounds interesting to you, come back tomorrow to find out where exactly to start in order to experience the magic of Miller’s Daredevil comics for yourself. I’ll get into which comics to start with, which are absolutely essential reading, as well as why and how Miller’s vision for Daredevil went on to inspire each and every Daredevil write to follow him.
As I imagine will be the case often with this blog, what I imagined as a one part blog entry has already ballooned into a multi-part epic. Stay tuned.
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