Two days ago I told Adam Stephanides that I didn't buy this little bit of mind-reading vis-a-vis readers of Brian Michael Bendis's Daredevil:
"Readers who buy Bendis's 'realism' can believe that they've been tough-mindedly grappling with real-world issues of crime and ethics..."
Frank Smith, who was one of the first to identify the inaccuracy, illegibility, and inconsistency of Alex Maleev's photomontaged Hell's Kitchen - although he said, bafflingly, "It's an inconsistency I can respect" and praised confusing page designs because they featured locations from The Sopranos - whatever - writes a promotional blurb for Daredevil in this week's Ninth Art forecast.
The blurb is noteworthy in that it seems faintly aware of last week's flap over Bendis, and it offers a wan defense of the comic. Or perhaps it's just well-timed; either way, Smith chiefly answers the least serious and least articulate criticisms of Bendis and Maleev.
What virtues does he enumerate to answer these scurrilous, woefully understated charges? Well, apparently Bendis's writing on Secret Wars has accomplished the herculean task of doing in two issues what the original series did in sixteen pages - leaving unanswered, unasked even, the question of whether doing what Secret Wars did is worth doing at all - and Daredevil itself is painted as a happy union of verbose dialogue and stiff art. If that's the defense, who needs critics? But the real kicker, the statement that proves Adam right and me so very wrong, is saved for the end:
What began as a series exploring the ramifications of secret identities has grown into an examination of vigilantism, and in effect superheroism itself.
In other words, the clumsy execution is redeemed by the examination of Serious Issues - perhaps not quite the political reading Adam spoke of, but close enough. Sadly, this defense suggests that Daredevil falls into the trap of genre self-referentiality that afflicts so many superhero comics: the hard-hitting commentary comments only upon other superhero comics. More sadly still, the Daredevil I read (is that present tense, or past?) doesn't even achieve that halfassed goal.
AAAH, I lose. Well played... "Examination of Vigilantism"... damnit... Yeah: that's game-set-and-match for me.
on a separate note: Christ, that little Mary Jane preview-thing is pretty much retarded.
Yeah, it was Dave Fiore's comment about the Mary Jane preview that got me looking at poor punching-bag Ninth Art again in the first place. Surely I'm not the only one who thinks de Campi is using her NA writing to (badly) promote her putative comics writing career?