Thursday 15 October 2015

(Comic) Baby Daddy....a look at Daredevil: Guardian Devil


While I knew that Kevin Smith had worked in comics before, I'd only been familiar with his films, so it was interesting to see how he'd interact with this medium.

Guardian Devil follows Matt Murdock as he encounters a woman who gives him a child that is believed to be the Anti-Christ.

Okay, first off, taking a superhero who typically operates in a small scale area and throwing him an apocalyptic curveball is a great move. So you have him trying to juggle this, along with a couple of his exes coming back to town all the while trying to keep his best friend and colleague Foggy Nelson out of prison.

After reading Hush and watching that play out, Guardian Devil lead me down a dark alley and then suitably beat me over the head with a plot twist.

From the get go you're immersed in heavy, introspective dialogue, which I'm told is a Daredevil standard. It feels less like a comic and more like a play on a page. Beautiful, grand and deep. After each issue I feel as though I need to take a minute or so to digest what's happening. Even though I read this in a night, it took the entire night to read and process. 

The art is a rich canvas of bright colours against the harsh yellows, browns and greys of New York City.

I think the only thing that bugged me was the fact that Foggy looked comically out of place. He reminded of one of those old 90's cartoon characters. Like a bumbling security guard or a administrative clerk with a weird voice. Having only witnessed the Netflix series (Which was awesome and I'll probably talk about it at some point soon,) and the 2003 movie (Which I enjoyed when I was younger, but now....I'll have to review that one next week and see how I feel about it.) I can only wonder if Foggy was always drawn that way or not. But it felt out of place and got on my nerves a lot. 

Overall, this was a fantastic read. I loved seeing Matt argue with himself and interact with people and sleuth his way to the truth. Such an excellent read.

4 and a half stars.





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