Reviewer: Tim Stevens
Story Title: Decalogue: Part 2 of 5
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
Art by: Alex Maleev
Colored by: Dave Stewart
Lettered by: VC’s Cory Petit
Editor: Jennifer Lee
Publisher: Marvel Comics/Marvel Knights
Reviews of issues like this are very difficult for me to do. From a writing standpoint (as you shall see) they are easy because there is much to talk about. However, from a numeral standpoint…ugh. So, for those of you who scan and then read the number at the bottom of this review, be aware: it’s just not the sort of issue that is easy for me to place a number on.
Moving right along.
My difficulty with this issue is this: there is a very good story here. I don’t mean that in a Ocean’s Eleven sort of way where you know there is a good story there and you see flashes of it, but it never really succeeds in becoming a good story. I mean a very good story is found, right here, in these pages.
In loose terms, it is the story of one man trying to understand and finally do his father proud, even if that means violating every principle that he has grown to believe in. Bendis, frankly, nails it. The scene of the husband and wife watching their son sleep while discussing the child’s grandfather, the husband’s father, is, without being too sappy, beautiful and quietly powerful. The wife’s lines about the nature of the husband’s father’s love are so simple and direct you almost ache along with her husband.
So why do I feel like this issue was so empty?
Maybe it is because, in a storyline about how Daredevil as Kingpin has affected Hell’s Kitchen, there is nary a sign of Murdock or Daredevil. Well, that’s not true, we see him once in the distance. Maybe it’s because this story of a good man doing very bad is one that could have been its own arc. Maybe it’s because this storyline seems so vast and is only being told in five issues that an issue like this that is good but doesn’t seem to move the story along makes me feel almost…I don’t know…claustrophobic. Maybe it’s because, with Bendis and Maleev’s run ending soon, that feeling is only amplified because I am waiting for that one knockout punch moment that I know must be coming but still hasn’t arrived.
I honestly don’t know what it is. I just know that while I loved the story, I didn’t seem to love the issue. It makes no sense and yet…there it is. The story seems like an 8 to me on the old 10 point scale. However, the issue seems more like a 6. Thus, the 7 you see at the bottom of this page. My apologies, again, to all you number nuts. I know that this one is going to put you into a tizzy, but…what are you gonna do, right?
