Saturday, June 11, 2005

Fun Run for 6/11/05

Yes, I am slowly but surely assigning a shtick to each day...hehe.

The new Saturday shtick is that I name a run on a title that I thought was fun, and that not THAT many people talk about (for instance, I'm not going to be hyping Byrne's Fantastic Four or Miller's Daredevil here...hehe).

Today's fun run?

Karl Kesel and Cary Nord (and a few issues by Gene Colan)'s Daredevil.

It only lasted eleven issues, but it was great fun.

Kesel took over with issue #353, and he made the basic decision, "Okay, I can't duplicate the greatness of Frank Miller's Daredevil, so why not go the completely opposite direction?"

And that's what Kesel did, by making Daredevil a FUN book, not a dreary one.

After all, going "dreary" had not helped the book for the past 50 issues or so, as we saw stuff like Murdock faking his own death or Daredevil wearing armor, etc.

No, this Daredevil embraced life, and lived it to its fullest, while having a fun relationship with his girlfriend, Karen Page.

In addition, just recently, Foggy Nelson was let in on the Daredevil secret, and Kesel latched on to that and made Foggy an important member of the cast.

The art by Nord was strong, and the later art by Colan was great as well.

One of the highlights was the issue with Spider-Man (Kesel really should get a Spider-Man book someday....heck, Kesel should get ANY book someday!)

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Another one was Daredevil taking down the Absorbing Man - totally unbelievable, but totally FUN!

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Joe Kelly's run following Kesel wasn't that bad, but it was not as good as Kesel.

For his was a fun run!

4 Comments:

Blogger James Meeley said...

Actually, the best issue in Kesel's run of Daredevil was issue #358, where Mysterio attacks DD, simply because he wanted a challenge, in the wake of so many of the heroes throught to be lost in the wake of the Onslaught event. That issue was just pure brilliance.

6/12/2005 4:58 AM  
Blogger Brian Cronin said...

That issue, though, was partially responsible for Kevin Smith's Daredevil, so demerits!!!

6/12/2005 11:37 AM  
Blogger James Meeley said...

Yeah, but you can't hold that against Kesel's story, which was sheer brilliance.

I mean, if you gave demerits to every great tale, because of the cheap knock-offs, "revisitations" and the like, then there'd be NO good (let alone GREAT) story ever told.

Demerit Smith's story for what it lacks, but it's not right to pull down Kesel's work because of what someone did AFTER him.

6/13/2005 1:37 AM  
Blogger Matthew Brady said...

Wow, the Daredevil logo was kinda lame back then. Both the main title, and also the logo in the box in the upper left corner. If I remember right, all the Marvel books at the time had logos like that, sort of 3-D and computery. I guess they thought it looked futuristic.

6/14/2005 3:56 PM  

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