A Refreshing New Take on an Old Trope: A Review of Miles Morales: The End

written by Saladin Ahmed
drawn by Damion Scott
colored by Dono Sanchez-Almaral

Since Marvel started publishing its post-apocalyptic "The End" books at around the turn of the millennium, I've picked a couple of them up, namely the Punisher one-shot and a reprint of the wildly popular Hulk one-shot. I had no interest in following the others, which seemed less like canon and more like the bleakest vision possible that the writer could imagine for that particular character. In terms of tragic characters like Hulk and Punisher, the endings crafted for them by Peter David and Garth Ennis, respectively, felt quite appropriate, and while the endings were exceedingly bleak, as someone who grew up with Mad Max and other works of fiction set after the imagined apocalypse, I was okay with that. Also what else could one expect from a book with "The End" on the cover?

When I picked up Miles Morales: The End, therefore, I was somewhat stunned by what I actually saw, and even more so by th3e fact that despite a radical departure from some (but not all) of the usual tropes of a "The End" story, it actually worked.

So, like all "The End" stories, MMTE takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting. Here, the world has been overrun by what are only described as "germs," and few places have been spared. One of them, fortunately, is Brooklyn, where a diverse community manages to thrive in an environment that has been, through the efforts of Miles Morales and the late Ganke Lee, been rendered impervious to the germs. Even though Ganke has long since given his life for the community, an aged Miles now presides over it as mayor, with Ganke's daughter serving as his right hand. Even living in the apocalypse, however, doesn't get Miles' spirits down, though the group of white supremacists known as One America emerge and pose a threat to the peace that Miles and Ganke have sacrificed much to obtain.

As "The End" stories go, this was one surprisingly brief compared to the other two I'd read, but was an enjoyable read just the same, and, oddly enough, managed to give a new flavor to such stories with Miles' inexhaustible optimism as conveyed by the script and Damion Scott's energetic illustrations, ably supported by Dono Sanchez-Almaral's vibrant colors. Ahmed, who's been writing the Miles Morales monthly book for over a year now, wisely eschews some of the more overused tropes of the "The End" subgenre and gives us a lead character who refuses to lose hope in the face of an unrelentingly bleak situation, to the extent that, even though plot-wise, the story plays out like a "The End" story tends to do, the overall tone of the book feels like something altogether new.

This was a pleasant read that should go down fairly well as a "The End" story with its own distinct identity.

8/10

Back from the Abyss: A Review of "Daredevil: Through Hell"

written by Chip Zdarsky
drawn by Marco Checchetto, Francesco Mobili and Jorge Fornes
colored by Nolan Woodard

I'll be honest; I have not been the biggest fan of Chip Zdarsky's run on Daredevil, which began a little over a year ago. Picking up where Charles Soule left off, Zdarsky continued the tradition of putting Matt Murdock, who had just come back from the brink of death at the end of Soule's run, through the wringer. I was vaguely disappointed by his first five-issue arc, which left Matt a wreck yet again, but what Zdarsky did in his next arc incensed me so much that I didn't even bother to review a single issue. Long story short, the arc ended with Matt having sex with a mobster's wife.

Now, Matt Murdock (and other superheroes for that matter) have done some pretty crappy things over the years as a reflection of the reality that comic book creators face. Heck, Hank Pym was a wife-beater at one point, which Marvel either explained away with a Skrull impostor or bipolar disorder syndrome (I forget which) but having Daredevil, an avowed Catholic who, for all of his bad decisions over the years, has avoided from truly egregious ones, do something truly heinous and antithetical not only to his religion but even his ethics as a lawyer is just so far out of character that I was just well and truly turned off to that story and the overall direction Zdarsky was taking with this book. This is on top of the fact that under Zdarsky's watch, Daredevil has gone from reckless to just plain incompetent, which has been a bitter pill to swallow after Mark Waid's sublime run on this book and Charles Soule's engaging one. Having Daredevil walk away from his identity, only for a bunch of copycat vigilantes to pick it up, was an interesting enough idea, but I was not a fan of how Zdarsky executed it, especially since the artist he was working with at the time was not very good at all.

Fortunately, after all of this, Zdarsky recovers a little bit with this arc, with the help of the returning Marco Checchetto and newcomers Francesco Mobili and Jorge Fornes. Here, after walking away from everything that once mattered to him, Matt gets back into action, with the help of his old flame Elektra, no less, after having retired his Daredevil identity. Interestingly, of equal if not greater focus in this story is the one-time Kingpin of Crime and present Mayor of New York, Wilson Fisk, still desperate to shed his life of crime, who hobnobs with New York's "old rich" only to discover they are every inch as corrupt and powerful as the man he hopes to no longer be,and have no compunctions about unleashing this power on him even despite his stature of as mayor. It's an interesting bit of comeuppance from an unexpected source, but as with the case of Daredevil, the story only works by having Kingpin act a bit out of character.

That, in a nutshell, is the problem I have with Zdarsky's writing. Although he's pretty good at capturing the voices of these characters, he's still a noticeable step down from Mark Waid and even Charles Soule because in the service of his story, making his work a bit plot-driven for my taste. Waid brought a much-needed breath of fresh air to the book after Andy Diggle's gruesome "Shadowland" storyline which was ultimately explained away by mind-control, but even in spite of the complete change in the book's tone, Waid always stayed true to the character. The same could be said for Soule, even as he revisited the character's more popular gritty, noir tone, and he even went a step further by applying his knowledge and training as a lawyer to Matt's skill set, making for some really interesting stories that went behind chop sockey action and gritty crime drama. He knew what made Matt who he was.

To my mind, the same cannot be said for Zdarsky, who to my mind has taken quite a few liberties with Matt Murdock and even Wilson Fisk to advance his story which, while not bad in its own right, definitely feels disrespectful to these characters. In particular, having Matt screw the mobster's wife is gratuitous and while it's not a complete surprise, coming from the co-creator of a book like Sex Criminals, it still feels like a distinctly false note in this character's history. Fortunately, while Matt's indiscretion is now canon (until otherwise retconned) Zdarsky appears to have walked it back a bit, and hopefully he and that character will part ways for good, as Matt has done with just about every other woman in his life bar Elektra. Also, Zdarsky's humiliation of Wilson Fisk, while satisfying in its own way and not nearly as out of character as his complete demolition of Matt, also relies on the meticulously prepared Wilson Fisk being completely out of his element, which feels distinctly out of character for someone who's spent most of his life manipulating people and having fingers in everyone's pies. There may be some justification to it, but it still feels off.

Honestly, I really hope Zdarsky moves on soon, as I think there are other writers who could do better with this character.

6.5/10