About Heroes

Author: Frank Miller
Artist: David Mazzuchelli
Colors: Christie Scheele and Richmond Lewis

I’m so glad that this is the first Daredevil trade or comic that I’ve ever read. This is the book that made me extend free reading time in my classroom; I just had to know what happened next. I even took it down with me to lunch in the teacher’s lounge because I wanted to keep reading. Matt’s old love, Karen Page, sells out his secret identity for some drugs, and the Kingpin ends up getting his mammoth hands on it. Does he want to flat out kill him? Of course not; that would take the fun out of evil! So he strives to take away everything from Matt Murdock’s life. How does he go crazy? With awesome scenes that made me gasp out loud, such as when he calls Foggy on a payphone, but the conversation ends with the phone hanging by the cord and a voice saying, “At the tone the time will be ten thrity-two...” We also find out about Matt’s past, and how a woman with a gold cross necklace inspired him to become a hero to begin with.

I love Frank Miller’s constant juxtaposition of what Matt, his ex-girlfriends, Ben Urich, and his arch nemesis, the Kingpin are thinking and going through. The reader is constantly shifted to not just both sides of the story, but the five other facets as well. First of all, Matt confronts the Kingpin in a fight near the beginning of the story, allowing the suspense to build up in terms of questioning Murdock’s sanity, not necessarily how he will physically fight back. There are so many examples of how Miller builds up the tension, so I’ll only delve into one. An excellent example is when Urich, in the newsroom, is talking on the phone to a cop bought out by the Kingpin, he struggles with his own need for safety and whether he should listen to him or not. Meanwhile, people are trying to get his attention because he hasn’t been doing his job lately, and the cop is trying to tell him the truth before the silhouette of a huge-ass murdering nurse enters the door to his hospital room. I was so nervous for Urich because I felt like I was there with him; it felt so real!

Things get creepy when Ben Urich’s life is threatened by the Kingpin’s men and Nuke is sent after Daredevil, and David Mazzucchelli’s artwork takes it a step further. There are chilling shots of people getting pimp smacked, women hanging from nooses, people stuck in a car under the bay… and the more tame panels still tingle with action. I also love his use of colors: Urich’s face is bathed in bright red when he realizes the cop has died. Mazzucchelli relies heavily on primary and basic colors to accent the inking and lines, and there is hardly any shading. Again, this makes every panel jump out at you, instead of being noir like X-Factor, for example, and adds to the suspense of the story.

Even though the artwork isn’t dark, the story definitely is. I’ve come to respect Daredevil’s fighting spirit, and look forward to reading more Daredevil books. And Miller is wonderful storyteller who times his character development perfectly in this story. My favorite quote from the story is from the Kingpin when he realizes his mistake of not flat out killing Murdock: “And I – I have shown him… that a man without hope is a man without fear.” A