Daredevil #2 // Review
Matt’s got a favor to ask of Foggy. So he’s calling him. At four in the morning. In a mask. From a rooftop in New York. (Foggy’s in Miami.) Matt wants Foggy to cover his classes at Empire State University. It’s only two classes, but Foggy would have to scramble to get up the East Coast in very little time. (It’s a three-hour flight.) Nevertheless, Matt DOES need the help in Daredevil #2. He drops the phone on the roof and he’s off on his adventure as he confronts Owl and a few of his associates. One is armed with a machete. The other is armed with a baseball bat. Writer Stephanie Phillips and artist Lee Garbett continue to delve into a whole new chapter in Daredevil’s life with colorist Frank Martin.
Lawyer to teacher. It has not been a good transition for Matt. He’s teaching classes at law school. He’s still patrolling at night under the mask, so it’s hard to imagine when he might find time for sleep…especially when he returns home on the late night to find a masked stranger in his home who claims to know something about the death of Matt Murdock. Then he got pushed out of a window in his own home.. Things are ever-so-slightly out of control, but it’s perfectly familiar territory for the man without fear. The doesn’t mean that it’s going to be easy.
Phillips gracefully allows the story to filter-in to the action with a sharp sense of execution in the drama. The real challenge with Daredevil lies in making him seem suitably disheveled and haggard while still maintaining an overall sense of superhuman skilll, reflex and prowess. Phillips manages a really sharp sense of brilliance about Matt that keeps him quite well-balanced throughout another satisfying issue. Phillips maintains a very tight control over the scope of.the story she’s telling…never allowing it to move quite out of reach of Daredevil’s traditional atmosphere while still challenging Matt to get outside of his traditional discomfort zone.
Garnett maintains a tight control over the sharp action that Phillips is carving into her story. There’s a sharp sense of mood and tone as Matt dives into the darkness to learn a little bit more about the state of his fate. There’s a sharp balance in Martin’s color pallets between the brighter reds of heroism and the darker shades of everything v that seem to surround it completely. The visual articulation of the hero and his journey are delivered to the page with poise and patience by an art team that clearly understands the hero and his strengths.
Phillips and company deliver a sourly entraining second issue in what is shaping-up to be a very promising run for the blind lawyer from Hell’s Kitchen. It’s sharp work that feels like it’s adding to the legend of Daredevil without alienating tgise many places his been before over the course of his six decades in the comics.
