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Apparently I'm in the minority here in that I didn't think this series was all that shit hot.

According to the various notes, this started life as a 64-page graphic novel, that got expanded to 144 pages. Apparently a lot of the expansion was the terrible Elektra section in the middle.

I guess the overarching storyline was the maturation of Matt from broken child to differently-broken adult, but as I read this, it felt more like three vignettes playing out over the original five issues: The death of Matt's father and his revenge on them (where he kills most of them), the appearance and disappearance of Elektra, and the saving of a young teen from the clutches of Kingpin.

Of the three, the only one that really resonated at all was the first one, and even that seemed to contradict the tone and feel of the original Stan Lee/Bill Everett run. Especially when the pre-Daredevil Matt happily kills a bunch of goons. Daredevil doesn't kill wherever possible, but he sure as hell has no problem with it here. And even when an innocent woman dies, he agonizes over it for perhaps a couple of panels, then it's forgotten.

The Elektra storyline is simply bonkers, and she's completely psychotic. There's literally no underlying reason they should fall for each other, other than they train together at the same elevated level of physicality. Whatever.

And the last bit with the Kingpin is flat-out unbelievable, even by comic book standards.

This was not that great. And sorry, but John Romita Jr's art is ridiculously overrated. ( )

See my blog note on it:

http://gypsylibrarian.blogspot.com/2006/05/quick-booknotes-on-some-graphic-novel... ( )

I read this 4 years ago. I just read it again. My opinion has evolved. It's late and I'm too tired to explain why, but it's a neglected masterpiece.

I don't have the energy to finish many books these days. I don't know why. Something broken inside of me. But comics? I can read. I can finish. The obvious answer would be that I can finish them because they are silly & dumb. But that can't be right, because I can't finish the dumb ones.

I can still finish the great ones, though. The ones that speak with that quasi-cinematic vocabulary. The comics that are frozen films, with light and sound replaced by drawings and text. Moving without moving, speaking in silence, and all the rest.

I suppose it's a kind of childhood magic. The sort of thing that seems so strange as an adult thinking now which was perfectly ordinary back then.

It's not nostalgia. The comics I liked back then, overwhelmingly, tend to disappoint me now. It's more that the juxtaposition of the way I see now and the way I saw then creates it's own aesthetic effect, a kind of anti-nostalgia.

A moment of freedom from the past? A new past? I don't know. I don't know why this works for me now, while so little else does, but it does. And I am grateful. ( )

Good. Interesting to compare this origin story with the TV series. Very closely aligned. ( )