For the last two years, this had always been the one Marvel Comic I could always count on enjoying. Part of this is because the creative team, Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark, were stolen away from DC Comics where they had an established track-record of being able to do good, gritty street-level stories. The other part of this was that Daredevil somehow managed to remain free of the contagious stupidity that infected almost every other Marvel title, thanks to countless, endless crossovers that promised to break the Internet in half.
I far these salad days may be over based on this last page.
I’ve only broadly been keeping up with what has been going on in New Avengers, but the short version is that relatively new criminal “The Hood” is making a bid to become the new Kingpin. So far, his plans have been limited to attacking Tigra (who, curiously, did not fight back against the man assaulting her, despite having always been one of the most temperamental of Avengers) and this apparent attempt to bring down Daredevil baddy Mister Fear.
I don’t know how this is going unnoticed in Tony Stark’s brave new SHIELD-run world. Perhaps The Powers That Be are too busy hassling the registered superheroes over paperwork and cracking down on unregistered superheroes to keep an eye out for this sort of thing?
Ignoring that, this issue is more of the same fine work that we’ve come to expect from Lark and Brubaker. I can only hope that The Hood’s time here will be brief and not a precursor to a longer storyline tying into whatever Brian Michael Bendis is doing with his latest man-crush character.
