Daredevil #6 // Review
The Owl has a problem. He’s going to need help. Powerful help. It's not easy for a guy like him. He's a new one. Not a very powerful one. Not very high in the underworld or anything like that. If he's going to find help, he is going to need to and places he'd rather not look. And he's going to have to do things he'd rather not do in Daredevil #6. Writer Stephanie Phillips and artist Flaviano Armentaro continue an appealing run with the devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Color comes to the page courtesy of Rico Renzi.
Matt Murdock isn't doing very well. It was hard enough juggling work as a lawyer worked as a masked crimeighter at night. The complex nature of teaching the law at university the stress of a day job to a whole new level. He's going to try to meet someone about it. At a bar. After work. Probably before you get the costume on later on in the evening. And, sure enough, there’s something that pull him away. An emerging hostage situation. Everyone’s more than a little tense until Daredevil enters the scene and sees The Owl doing the one thing that he’s able to do to get the attention of the one person who might help him out.
Phillips fuses the university of professor with a life of a crime fighter. It's fun to see a couple of some of the better writers. Like all of the best writers to work with him, Phillips does a particuarly good job drawing the distinctive personality of Matt Murdock to the page. The first person narration once again vividly renders the mind of someone with a profoundly altered way of perceiving reality. That's tricky to work with. Because if a writer points into that too much, Matt comes across his being kind of alien Phillips is doing so in a way that all the more human it's impressive.
Flaviano Armentaro very fluid and lost understanding of the connection between action and drama. He's really important because both need to work really well with Phillips script being what it is. The unique context of what could come across as being Monday backgrounds need to be captured in the right way. And, of course, Matt’s distinctive personality has to meet the page in a way that distinguishes his personality apart from any other hero. Flaviano does a particularly good job of that as well.
Beyond all of the subtlety and nuance, there IS a wild sense of exaggeration that feels painfully obvious. If the reader can climb beyond it deeper into the panels, there IS a lot going on that feels distinctive and unique. There’s kind of stylishly blinding glare of visual stud that has to be worked through in order to reach the more subtle end of everything, though. Phillips clearly has a very interesting handle on Matt and his surroundings...but there’s so much stylishness in the foreground that it might be a bit difficult for most readers to get to it.
