I'll be honest... I've kind of gotten tired of the all talk, no super-heroics style of so many Marvel comics these days, brought on in large part by the stylistic tics of Brian Bendis being repeated ad nauseum across the line. The reason this general tiredness doesn't extend to work by Bendis himself, however, is because he can pull this off and keep it interesting, and Daredevil #56 is a perfect example of how it works. Bendis has taken Daredevil into a completely new direction, he's loosed the character from the shackles of "nobody will ever do the character better than Frank Miller" and he is telling a story that is not just a Daredevil tale but which examines the larger role of the super-hero from a more realistic view.
As long as we're being honest, part of me thought we wouldn't be seeing this story. Bendis has a lot on his plate, and I thought that the ending of his previous Daredevil arc might serve as the end of his run. I've never been happier to be wrong, because Bendis's Daredevil is quite possibly his strongest Marvel work, and this issue reminds me of how much I liked it and how much I missed it. There's a tough setup to this arc - How do you show a hero becoming essentially the new Kingpin of crime in an area of New York? - but the execution is terrific. The use of Ben Urich as a narrator, the skipped time so that we get the effects but don't have to wade through numerous stories of Daredevil intimidating thugs, the notion that Daredevil has become a political power as much as a super-hero... it's all terrific stuff.
I loved the first half of this book, where it shows that Bendis put a lot of thought into the restructuring of Hell's Kitchen according to Daredevil. Tying in Milla's job to Daredevil's new role was a stroke of genius, and the notion of a super-hero doing more reconstruction and less butt-kicking, while potentially dull, comes across instead as an exciting new direction. Plenty of stories have explored the idea of heroes changing the status quo instead of protecting it, but they tend to be on such a grand scale that they become either Elseworlds or the world becomes so alien that we can't relate to it anymore. The notion of a social crusader cleaning up a section of a city? Hell, that's happened in the real world. And just as in the real world, that kind of thing brings political attention. It's kind of funny to think of Daredevil as Mayor of New York, just as Iron Man becomes Secretary of Defense and Captain America runs for President. And yet, in terms of this particular issue, it works, it gives a sense of reality to the story.
However, much as I enjoyed the political maneuvering and history-making of the first half of the book, the really strong scene comes when Daredevil is confronted by his friends. Through heroic icons like Spider-Man, Doctor Strange and Luke Cage, Bendis raises the points that are crossing the super-hero reader's minds, about whether or not this kind of thing can really work, or whether fighting for the status quo is really what heroes are about. Bendis does an excellent job of capturing the frustration and anger of a group of friends who all want the same thing but can't agree on the best way to do it.
My only worry about this book actually comes from the art. Which is not to say that I don't enjoy Maleev's work, because I do. Immensely, for the most part. Though there's a certain stiffness to his photo-referenced style, it also gives the book a sort of gritty reality that is necessary for the type of stories that Bendis is telling. I just wish that he could keep that sense of reality while still having some stronger skills in some aspects of storytelling, notably more subtle and effective facial expressions and much better action storytelling. Maleev's work tends to look like posed snapshots rather than giving the illusion of motion, and while he can pull off the occasional action moment, such as the clever reveal at the end, I think it is the stiffer elements of his style more than any failing on Bendis's part that sometimes makes me feel like all the action has gone out of this book.
