I'll readily admit it seems a bit prosaic to write something like this, considering I'm hardly the first person ever to come with a "top ten" list, but so thoroughly have I enjoyed the work of writer Mark Waid and artist Chris Samnee on Marvel Comics' Daredevil title that I cannot simply let them go without doing a little more than just eking out reviews of their last few issues. No, these guys fully deserve a proper paean to their creative glory, and as inadequate as this effort may be, it's worth taking just the same:
1. Kirsten MacDuffie - Strictly speaking, MacDuffie is a creation of Waid's and Paolo Rivera's. However, Samnee has really put his own stamp on easily one the most interesting non-superhero characters, male or female, appearing in a superhero book that I have seen in a long, long time. I have to say I am fairly disappointed that she hooked up with Matt, as I think the playful sexual tension could have played out a while longer, but considering that Waid held off on it for years I guess he waited long enough. The beauty of her character is that, even if they break up, there's still a way to keep her in his life (as she is, like him, a lawyer, after all) and the playful banter could go on and on. Kirsten is hardly a sidekick, and it is so gratifying that Waid has introduced such a powerful (and empowered) female into Matt's world. Kirsten is like an intellectual Elektra, really.
2. Classic characters and Some Interesting New Ones - Stilt-Man? Check. Leap-frog? Check. Jester? Check. Bullseye? Check. Elektra? Check. The Owl? Purple Man? Check. Kingpin? Double check! The duo's thirty-odd issue run reads like a virtual who's who of Daredevil's rogues gallery and his supporting characters. Samnee admitted in an interview that he and Mark really wanted a crack at all of the classic characters,and the nice thing was how organic all of these appearances were to the stories they were telling. I was particularly impressed by how Waid was able to handle Bullseye, a character who was apparently dead at the end of the last creative team's run on the book, and while I'm obviously spoiling things a bit by revealing that he wasn't dead, it's still worth checking out what Waid and Samnee did with him. The introduction of a new character, Ikari was pretty cool, too.
3. Smiling Matt - It was stated at the very outset that Waid's run would mark a return to a more lighthearted approach to the character, but the fact that Daredevil spent so much of the arc with a smile on his face was a welcome change for a character who had spent so much of his life enduring one ordeal after another. I have two of Frank Miller's seminal stories, Born Again (with David Mazzucchelli) and Man Without Fear (with John Romita, Jr.), and most of Brian Michael Bendis' run with Alex Maleev, and I'm pretty sure I could count on one hand the times Matt has smiled in ALL of those stories. The thing is, Daredevil has endured a lot in his life, but he's got a lot to be grateful for, and quite honestly, happy about, and it's nice to read a creative run that finally reflects that.
4. Hello San Francisco - I have never been to the United States, so one American city is the same to me as another, but the vast majority of Marvel comics I have in my collection has stories that take place in New York City, so it really did make for a refreshing change of pace when Waid and Samnee relocated Matt and his supporting cast with the relaunch of the title last year.
5. Ready...Fight! - When I read Man without Fear I had an inkling of how incredible a fighter DD was, but as much as I enjoyed his work, I felt a little let down by Romita,Jr.'s depiction of this fighting skill, which either didn't look very dynamic or resorted to the cheat of having close up panels of his foot or fist in someone's face. It didn't look terribly graceful. Some years later, Alex Maleev attempted to depict DD's fighting skills and they did look impressive sometimes, but they also looked extremely static. Fast forward to Samnee's run, and lo and behold, not only did he show Daredevil showing some serious martial arts skill, but also made it look quite dynamic, possibly the best-looking choreography seen in the book since Miller's days.
6. No More Questions, Your Honor - I have said this before, but one thing I really enjoyed about this book was the impression I got that Waid went to some effort to show that Matt is as comfortable in a court room as he is leaping across the New York City skyline. I may not be licensed to practice law in the United States but I certainly recognized citations of international law and rules of evidence, and appreciated both Waid's dialogue and Samnee's depiction of the inside of a courtroom. Also, this facet of Matt's character shows that he isn't all about recklessness and gambles; Waid emphasizes that at the end of the day, Matt is one smart cookie.
7. A Little Help from My Friends - although Daredevil has never been a completely isolated character from the rest of the Marvel Universe, he has been a bit of a loner. Even though he joined the Avengers for a spell a few years ago he didn't suddenly turn into a team player. It was nice, then, to see Matt getting a regular helping hand from a more "mainstream" Avenger in Henry Pym. The story introducing the cooperation was well-written, too: Dr. Doom had introduced nanobots that negated Matt's hyper-senses. Even after that story, Pym stuck around until Matt packed up and left for SF, and was even crucial to a story in which Matt had to fake Foggy's death. Also, there were quite a few Avengers who helped Matt out in his extended battle with Bullseye.
8. Waid's Crusades - I don't usually get or expect social commentary from my comic books, and the little I get often feels a tad heavy-handed, like Mark Millar's full-on diatribe against the Patriot Act in Civil War, but Waid's preaching is a little easier to digest. He has had things to say on racially-charged killings, gay marriage and even processed food, with this last one being a running commentary given Foggy's diet. In fact, having Foggy battle cancer, which was a new twist on the Foggy-in-peril trope that many writers have leaned on over the years, was a subtle way to rail against the evils of having so many chemicals pumped into today's foodstuffs.
9. Records will Show - One aspect of this story that I also liked was how, no matter how buoyant the tone of storytelling was, there was always an acknowledgement of where the character had come from and what he had been through, which made the storytelling on the whole that much more effective by adding that element of tension. The running question throughout the run was: how long can this last? How long will it be before Matt's life spirals out of control and he hits the skids again? Waid and Samnee didn't just let these questions linger; they answered them, and I was happy to see that they were kinder to Matt than most creators since the character's creation have been. They also demonstrated for their entire tenure that to tell great stories does not always mean having to be unbelievably cruel to the lead character. Sure, Matt's adventures under Waid and Samnee certainly involved a fair share of tribulations, but nothing on the level of having his girlfriend murdered in front of him or having his apartment blown to pieces.
10. Look Ma, No Gimmicks! - For better or worse, 2013's extended Spider-Man story arc called "Superior Spider-Man," in which Doctor Octopus took over Peter Parker's body, had readers hooked; sales were better than they had ever been. I can admit that I am one of the people who was sucked in; I have every single issue of that series. The thing was, the main hook for me was finding out how and when Peter Parker would come back so one could say that, with all due to respect to Dan Slott and his rotating roster of artists, my devotion was, in part, due to a long-running gimmick. This was not the case with Waid and Samnee. Apart from DD's moving to another city, there was no radical shift of status quo to keep me coming back, so my being hooked was just a case of two creators turning in their best work, month after month (though Samnee took occasional breaks) to give the best stories of the character that I had ever read.
I am happy to note that Waid and Samnee are already at work on their next project together, but it's entirely possible that this is the last time readers will see them together on Daredevil, and if that is indeed the case I would like to give them a heartfelt thanks for making Daredevil a book I just had to pick up every month for three years!
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