Musing

One thing I love about what Brubaker is doing on Daredevil - at least, throughout the potboiling and chess-setting he's been up to over the first three issues of his run - is he's bringing powerful villains back to the book. Kingpin is the plotting silent craftsman from the Bendis run, but also a physical terror, smashing a shower room attacker's head through the tile wall. Bullseye goes from being basically humiliated, lying in the gutter with Matt's piss all over him, to being so frightening and dangerous that the whole prison holds its breath when he's brought in and taken to his cell.

See, something that frustrated me about Bendis' whole run was the lack of strong villains. Every time Matt got serious, he whupped the shit out of 'em. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I don't think Matt should be able to beat Wilson Fisk nearly to death and throw his body all over hell. Diminshes the Kingpin's presence as a frightening person. To an extent I think this was on purpose - part of the point of the Bendis run, to me, was establishing Matt as his own worst enemy. Did Bendis downplay the other villains, then, so they wouldn't outshine Matt's own muscle as a destructive force in his own life? The world may never know. All I know is, it seemed to throw the series kinda off balance, at least as I read it.

But what I see the Brube doing is balancing that obsessive, control freak with anger issues Matt Murdock against some bad guys with serious fuckin' presence. Makes a more satisfying, whole story to me.

'Course, we're just three issues in, and who knows where he's going with this. But I was just thinking about that and wanted to share.