"Daredevil: The Murdock Papers"

 

            The following is a review of the graphic novel “Daredevil: The Murdock Papers” as presented in Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection format.

            Alexander Bont had been an up-and-coming mobster during prohibition. He went on to become the Kingpin of crime in New York City. He ended the career of a crimefighter who called himself the Defender. Matt Murdock/Daredevil helped play a part in Bont’s arrest. After Bont got out on bail, Bont turned to Melvin Potter/Gladiator, one of the people on his payroll. Bont offered Gladiator ownership of Gladiator’s shop in exchange for the demise of Daredevil. Bont turned to Matt Murdock and his law partner Franklin “Foggy” Nelson for legal representation, but Nelson and Murdock were already involved in a case that qualified as a conflict of interest with Bont. Daredevil fought and defeated Gladiator and learned the Bont had enticed Gladiator into attempting to end Daredevil. Bont was found guilty in court and sent to jail. Following this, another up-and-coming mobster named Wilson Fisk took Bont’s place as New York City’s Kingpin of Crime. Years later, Daredevil defeated Wilson Fisk and declared himself the Kingpin of Hell’s Kitchen. Bont was released from prison and wanted to take his position back. He started taking the street drug Mutant Growth Hormone to temporarily obtain superpowers and ended the life of one of his former underlings, Slick Saul. Matt had been outed in the press as Daredevil and Bont wanted revenge on the hero who put Bont in prison. FBI Special Agent Angela Del Toro was assigned to the cases of investigating Matt Murdock as Daredevil and of following Bont and was able to connect Bont with Slick Saul’s ending. Del Toro had inherited the White Tiger amulets from her deceased uncle Hector Ayala, the former White Tiger. Daredevil began training Del Toro in using the powers the White Tiger amulets granted. Bont once again procured Gladiator’s service and had Matt abducted. Del Toro came to Matt’s rescue and fought Gladiator, and Matt faced Bont for the final time.

            Reverand Bob Cumeo led a support group for the people of Hell’s Kitchen to come discuss the effects of Daredevil on their daily lives. One woman was present the night Daredevil took down Fisk and shared the story of how Daredevil’s cleansing of crime in Hell’s Kitchen changed this woman’s life for the better. One man in attendance had planted a bomb in an attempt to destroy Daredevil. One woman shared a story of how her husband was talked into committing crimes by a demon and defeated by Daredevil. This led to an outbreak of violence between this woman and a victim of the woman’s husband who came to the meeting just to have a confrontation and was furious to hear such an outlandish story. Just as the group about to disband, another woman in attendance pulled out her daughter’s drawing of the demon. The supervillain Jonathan Powers/Jester had this demon inside him, and it spurred him into holding a bank full of people hostage, including this woman’s daughter. Daredevil had defeated Jester and the demon had escaped. To the group’s surprise, one of the members in attendance was Matt Murdock, who had come to the group looking for the man who had conjured the demon that had been inside Jester and was inside a man in attendance of this same group. The man escaped and Matt had a confrontation that ended both the conjurer and the demon.

            Wilson Fisk spoke to Daily Bugle reporter Ben Urich from Fisk’s prison cell. He wanted to make a deal with the Federal Agents: he could leave the country with all of his assets unseized in exchange for proving Matt Murdock was Daredevil. Agent Del Toro had a conversation with the Director of the FBI, where the Director revealed he was planning to take Fisk’s deal. The two argued, and Del Toro was fired. Natasha Romanov/Black Widow went to S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Maria Hill to try to bargain for Hill to squash the deal, but Hill refused. Matt reconnected with his ex-wife Milla Donovan. Elektra Natchios, Matt’s ex-girlfriend, came to Matt after news about “The Murdock Papers” broke. Fisk told the FBI director he had documented evidence proving Matt Murdock, and Elektra wanted to help Matt get to it before the FBI did. Black Widow agreed to help Daredevil and Elektra get the papers. Del Toro also offered her support. Leland Owsley/Owl hired contract killer Bullseye to kill Daredevil to prevent Fisk from getting his deal. Daredevil and Elektra beat Bullseye, but Daredevil was shot by the mercenary Paladin, hired by the FBI. Fisk revealed that there were no Murdock Papers and that it was all just a story he told to keep his underlings and associates in line. Elektra brought Daredevil to the Night Nurse, a nurse who secretly treated superheroes. Fisk surmised thar Daredevil was taken to the Night Nurse, and Ben Urich, who had been brought along on the deal, knew the location of the Night Nurse’s clinic, and to not reveal this information would be an obstruction of justice that could get Urich arrested. As Night Nurse struggled to save Daredevil’s life, Black Widow brought Milla to the clinic. The ninja clan the Hand arrived and used their magic to heal Daredevil. Luke Cage and Danny Rand/Iron Fist tried to prevent the FBI from finding Daredevil. As chaos ensued, Daredevil revived and surrendered to the FBI.

            Okay, now that we’ve got the synopsis out of the way, let’s move on to the Tim Cubbin segments of this review. We’re going to start, as we usually do, with my personal opinions. First off, I will say that I found this book to be pretty enjoyable. I found the stories to be relatively interesting. I enjoyed “Golden Age,” the rise and fall and attempted reprisal of Bont was entertaining. I really liked “Decalogue,” the support group stories and the demon made for a compelling read. “The Murdock Papers” was engaging, the deal with Fisk was a shocker, the twist that Fisk sent everyone on a wild goose chase was a huge surprise, and the ending was just unbelievable. I feel like Bendis did a very good job finishing his run. That said, I was not a fan of the artwork done by Alex Maleev. I can compare his artwork to looking like a colored sketchbook and it’s just a style I don’t like. As far as the title choice for this book, there were the options “Golden Age,” “Decalogue,” “The Murdock Papers,” or make up a title, and I feel like “The Murdock Papers” was the best choice for this collection. While “Golden Age” could have worked, I think it doesn’t sound as appealing as the title the editors chose, and “Decalogue” would not have worked as a title for this collection in my opinion. I think the editors picked right with “The Murdock Papers.” And it also was the longest story arc in the book, although both “Golden Age” and “Decalogue” were five issues and “The Murdock Papers” was six issues, so it’s not hugely a significant dominance, but it still was longer even though only slightly. I do have to complain about the choice of the cover. The cover chosen for this book depicts Daredevil swinging in his original yellow and red costume, which is only seen in flashback sequences in “Golden Age.” As such, I don’t feel it was an appropriate representation for the book as a whole as it was seen briefly in a story arc that made up less than one third of the book. I feel there were plenty of other covers in this collection that could have been chosen that would have made a much more accurate front cover for a book with this content. As far as story goes with this book, I was generally satisfied, it was just the artwork that I found to be disappointing.

            Next up, we’re going to discuss accessibility. Now I know at this point I have explained my usage of this word over seven dozen times in my vast amount of reviews on this blog, but since every time I write this review I have new readers, I have to explain myself again each time because there are the newbs who might not understand what I mean by my usage of the word. So when I’m posing the question “is ‘Daredevil: The Murdock Papers’ accessible?,” what I’m asking is, can a person who knows absolutely nothing about Daredevil or Marvel Comics in general see this book at a bookstore, online retailer, comic shop, library, or friend/relative’s collection, be intrigued by it, decide they want to read it, obtain it, read it, and understand everything they’ve read without context? The answer to this is a huge no. This book is marketed as Vol. 5, and it culminates a story that has been running since Vol. 2 straight through. Not having read the previous three volumes in the series is extremely detrimental to comprehending these storylines as these stories continue directly from Vols. 2-4. If you have been following the series, however, this volume is one-hundred percent accessible as it contains content from only one series in order with no gaps, and it does not cross over into other series or tie into any ongoing events. But if you have not read the entirety of Bendis’ run prior to the start of this volume, I will tell you not to attempt to read this volume at all, you have missed so much backstory and grasping all the content will be extremely difficult. If you’ve never read a Marvel Comic book before and are looking for a place to start reading, this is not your jump on point. If you want to tackle this book with no other Marvel Comics history, first read the Marvel Daredevil Modern Era Epic Collections “Underboss,” “Out,” and “King of Hell’s Kitchen,” then you will be all prepared to dive headfirst into this volume, but outside of that, I would not recommend reading this graphic novel without consuming the previous three sequential volumes in the series first. Some of my previous readers may recall I already wrote a review of “Daredevil: The Devil in Cell-Block D,” which is actually Vol. 6 and was released out of sequence, and if you read this review, you may recall my great displeasure in this choice of marketing. Were they to have been released in order, “The Devil in Cell-Block D” would probably have gotten a better review as this volume leads directly into the next volume and this release plan makes no sense and was very detrimental to my enjoyment of the story. I will definitely tell you to read the Modern Era Epic Collections by volume numbers and not by release date order.

            Next up, I’m going to give this book a numeric score. While some people read these reviews to know exactly how good I think a book is, I can’t say this paragraph is the single most important segment in my reviews, but it is very essential to my reviews. So, let’s discuss my scoring system really quick. I score on an extremely basic scale: my scale is a system of exact numbers ranging from one to ten. One is the lowest score I can possibly give, and that means this book is awful, and that if I ran the world, every unsold copy of this book would be rounded up and put on a massive pile, then ignited and burned until they are nothing but ashes, then every possible way to reprint this book would be wiped so this affront to the literary world can never be reproduced and it will be extinguished from existence forever. Ten is the highest score I can possibly give, and that means this book is sheer perfection and that I will never understand if this book does not become a bestseller that goes out of stock and has to be reprinted every three years. So, when I’m scoring a book, I’m looking at four things: story, art, title, and cover. All of these factors are taken into consideration when I make my scoring verdict. So, with this book, we had a story I found generally enjoyable, art I found entirely displeasing, a title I feel represented this book well, and a cover that did not depict the overall content contained in the pages of this graphic novel. This makes churning out a score somewhat difficult. But when mixing a score for this book as a whole, taking everything into account, the score I’m going to give out is… a seven. For the most part, I found the book to be literarily enjoyable, just not artistically enjoyable.

            Next up is going to be my recommendation segment. Here I answer two questions. The first is, do I, Tim Cubbin, personally recommend this book to you, my readers, or to anyone unfortunate enough to get caught up in a conversation with me about this book? The second question is, regardless of my answer to question number one, who do I think, beyond the regular fandom of Marvel, Daredevil, comic book fans, or fans of the creative team would most enjoy this graphic? To answer my first question, I would answer yes with a caveat: read Vols. 2-4 first, then read this volume. If what I’ve been writing for the past few hours has you interested in reading this book, I tell you to go for it, as long as you read all of the previous parts of Bendis’ run first and read it as an entirety of his work on Daredevil. As for an audience whom I think might enjoy this graphic novel, I would say that fans of crime graphic novels would find this appealing, especially the mob, as the Bont flashback sequences pertain to prohibition and mobster fans would probably find those segments particularly enjoyable. “Decalogue” actually hold religious connotations, so Catholic or Christian graphic novel fans might enjoy it as it is framed around the Ten Commandments and features a satanic presence. Espionage fans would also possibly find this enjoyable, with the FBI going after Daredevil and the Black Widow getting involved. And fans of legal dramas might find this interesting as Daredevil’s alter ego is a lawyer and “The Murdock Papers” has a huge focus on the law.

            Okay, we’re at the point where we’re just about finished. There are a few more things I have to say before I log off and click post. First off, I’ve been doing this blog for over five years and have accumulated over 180 posts. Over seven dozen of them are reviews of Epic Collections just like this one. I’ve also reviewed prose novels and manga in the past. I’ve also drafted short stories, poetry, essays, articles, and editorials, so there’s a variety of content on this blog if you’re looking for a change of pace. My current main focus however is to review Marvel Modern Era Epic Collections and Ultimate Epic Collections. I purchase each one as soon as I can after it is released and review it as quickly as possible. If you liked this particular review, feel free to search for my reviews of “Daredevil: Underboss,” “Daredevil: Out,” “Daredevil: The King of Hell’s Kitchen,” and “Daredevil: The Devil in Cell-Block D” for more Daredevil content. My next review is going to be “Ultimate Spider-Man: Hunted” you can expect to see this post within the next two months from the date of this posting. I plan to keep doing this blog for as long as possible, which will be until I am no longer capable of typing, so expect this to keep going for quite a while. That’s all I have to say for now. Until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!