Daredevil vol. 1: Devil at Bay

…because then things like this happen.  That’s right, “Daredevil” has gone straight-to-softcover for its latest relaunch and that suits me just fine.  The title character is now working out of a new city, but Mark Waid and Chris Samnee are still chronicling his ongoing adventures.  So really, everything I said yesterday holds true here.

In addition to living in San Francisco, Matt Murdock no longer has a secret identity to protect after the events of the previous volume.  He’s out and proud as Daredevil and doing what he can to help those who need it in the city.  Whether it’s a little girl who has been targeted by superpowered kidnappers or a guy with shadow powers who straddles the line between hero and villain, Matt is there to lend a hand.  That proves difficult when one of his old villains Leland “The Owl” Owlsley sets up shop in the city to further his own villainous schemes.  Oh, and Foggy is dead.  Again.

There’s no mystery to that last part, but the explanation behind it is quite fun.  It involves a giant robot manned by the villain Leapfrog and Hank Pym destroying cancer cells with a laser while in Foggy’s body.  Only in the Marvel Universe, folks!  The main story is also quite entertaining in the same way Waid and Samnee’s run has always been.  Even if the stories may have the ring of the familiar about them, their execution bucks convention in just the right place and is done with enough energy to make them worth your time.  In this case, the involvement of a loose cannon known as The Shroud and his willingness to do anything to get back the woman he loves keeps Matt and the reader on their toes about what to expect next.

One thing that I forgot to bring up yesterday was how much the character of Kirsten McDuffie has brought to the title thanks to her interplay with the rest of the cast.  Though she was initially positioned to be Matt’s latest love interest, her relationship with the lawyer/superhero turned antagonistic after she found out that he was really Daredevil.  They’ve since managed to reconcile and she’s proved to be capable of matching Matt in arrogance and quips.  With Foggy sidelined due to cancer, she’s become the go-to support character for Daredevil in the field and done a darn good job of it so far.  I don’t know what’ll become of her after Waid’s run is over, but I certainly hope it’s a less awful fate than what became of Matt’s wife Milla.  (GOOD GOING THERE BRUBAKER!)

Also worth mentioning is The Owl, who makes an appropriately threatening and credible supervillain presence here.  This is in spite of the fact that his characterization here is at odds with how we’ve seen him be an aggressively unlikeable, rat-eating, Prius-loving, prick in “The Superior Foes of Spider-Man.”  I’ll admit that my tastes have me appreciating Nick Spencer’s irreverent take on the character on that title.  Yet Waid’s work here shows that there’s room in the Marvel Universe for two well-written takes on the same villain.

In addition to the first five issues of the relaunch, this volume collects issue #0.1, which collected the online comic “Road Warrior” that showed us how Matt and Kirsten made the trip from New York to San Francisco.  It involves a plane, a train, a super adaptoid, and the Mad Thinker.  The story is fine for what it is, but not really an essential read by any stretch of the imagination.  Art comes from Waid’s “Irredeemable” collaborator, Peter Krause, sporting a smoother and more appealing style here.

If you’re like me, then you ordered this right when vol. 7 of the previous run hit softcover (and then it arrived at your house the day before that volume showed up).  While the fact that this series has also succumbed to the relaunch bug, it’s actually a very worthy series that deserves the attention of such a stunt.  However, it doesn’t mean we’ll be getting another thirty-six issues as we did with the previous run since it’s been announced that Waid and Samnee will be wrapping up their tenure on “Daredevil” later this year.  It’ll be too bad to see them go, but they can do it knowing that they’ve left the character in much better shape than they found him in.