Daredevil #1 // Review
There’s a car being stolen in Hell’s Kitchen. It's the type of thing that could happen all the time. However, in the Marvel universe if it's going to be appearing in sequential art, it's going to be something that's probably going to be stopped by a blind lawyer in a red costume with horns. He might be blind, but he can hear of stolen car speeding around a corner from six blocks away. The car thieves don't really stand a chance. So it’s kind of an easy start for Matt Murdock in Daredevil #1. Writer Stephanie Phillips opens a whole new chapter in the life of Matt in an issue brought to page and panel by the art team of Lee Garbett and colorist Frank Martin.
Murdock has been wrangled into...teaching. He’s teaching law at Empire State University. So it’s a steady paycheck and...the classroom isn’t all that different from the courtroom, is it? In any case, he’s going to have his hands full with students, but he’s also going to run into a bit of trouble as a dark figure calling himself Omen has targeted Matt Murdock. Murdock DOES have a superhero looking-out for him, though. Both sides of Matt’s life are going to be busy...
Phillips is a big fan of Daredevil and it shows. She has an opportunity to bring-in some of the crime elements that she loves on the series while working with an artist that she’s always wanted to work with. And so she’s got a tremendous amount of faith in the artist...which shows clearly in the opening of the series as she allows much of the opening car theft sequence to stretch-out across the page with clever poise from Garbett. The idea of Matt being a professor is actually a strikingly clever idea. He’s going to have a unique take on law in Marvel Manhattan from a couple of different angles and the new milieu could open-up some really interesting possibilities for the series moving forward.
Garbett had been wanting to do a Deadevil run for a long time as well...and it’s really intersting to see what he’s bringing to the page as Murdock springs across the page in Hell’s Kitchen at night. There’s a strong sense of grit and grounding in an issue the firmly gives an appealingly shadowy visual atmosphere for the series. It’s a very promising opening for the series in the visual and conceptual angles.
Things came together on this series rather abruptly for both Phillips and Garbett. They certainly seem to be working together quite well under the circumstances. It helps that the both of them had been wanting to work with Murdock for quite some time. Over the years he’s really picked-up a kind of momentum that firmly plants him as one of the major characters at Marvel. It’s going to be fun to see what Phillips and Garbett manage to do with the series moving forward. Judging from the first issue, ti should be a lot of fun.
