Writer Blocks - Daredevil: Born Again

Daredevil: Born Again, originally published in 1986, is the first collaboration between Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli, the same team who would produce Batman: Year One the following year.  It is also the best Daredevil story ever and a perfect illustration of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey.



For those unfamiliar, The Hero’s Journey is a story structure composed of twelve parts:  The Ordinary World, The Call to Adventure, Refusal of the Call, Meeting with the Mentor, Crossing the Threshold, Tests (Allies & Enemies), Approach, Ordeal, The Reward, The Road Back, Resurrection, and finally the Return with the Elixir.

Here is how Daredevil: Born Again works within these confines -

The Ordinary World – the story opens with the crumbling of Matt Murdock’s world.  His former lover Karen Page sells his secret identity for a fix, and this bit of information makes its way to the Kingpin, who goes about dismantling Matt Murdock’s life piece by piece.

The Call to Adventure – as a final blow, the Kingpin has Murdock’s townhouse blown up, and now Murdock knows that the Kingpin is behind all his troubles, having left Murdock’s Daredevil costume in the wreckage as a way to brag about what he has done.

 

Refusal of the Call – instead of donning his Daredevil tights and paying the Kingpin a visit, Matt holes up in a seedy hotel, suffering from depression and unable to physically leave.



Meeting with the Mentor – we’ll get to that a little later.  Not everything in The Hero’s Journey happens in order!

Crossing the Threshold – Matt eventually crosses an actual threshold, mustering the will to leave his hotel room, gradually losing his reign on reality and degenerating into a fantasy world of extreme violence.



Tests (Allies & Enemies) – this was probably going to be Miller’s swan song on Daredevil, so he includes everybody who was ever in his run: Foggy Nelson, Turk, Melvin Potter, Nicholas Manolis and especially Ben Urich, whose subplot would have made a strong comic book in and of itself.

 

Approach – Matt makes his way to the Kingpin’s offices where . . .

Ordeal – he is badly beaten by the Kingpin and presumed dead.



Meeting with the Mentor – now a derelict on skid row, Matt is taken in by a benevolent nun named Sister Maggie.  This is really Matt’s long-lost mother, and she nurses him back to health both physically and spiritually



The Reward – Matt reclaims his identity, and more importantly, his soul, and is reborn a stronger man.



The Road Back – now healthy, Matt reenters the world and takes out all of his enemies.  He does this as Matt Murdock, not as Daredevil.  He hasn’t reclaimed that part of his identity yet.  One especially striking part of Daredevil: Born Again has Matt fighting a lunatic the Kingpin disguised as Daredevil in order to frame the hero for Foggy Nelson’s murder. 

Resurrection – this is the resurrection of the hero, Daredevil.  In the final two issues of Daredevil: Born Again, Daredevil fights Nuke, a parody of the 1980’s action hero.  Daredevil eventually wins, with the help of Captain America, and this victory exposes the Kingpin’s involvement in organized crime. 



Return with the Elixir – Matt is back in Hell’s Kitchen with his true love, Karen Page!



There is so much more to this book than just The Hero’s Journey.  From the Easter themed religious imagery juxtaposed against a story that takes place during Christmas, to the “Matt Murdock in bed” title pages representing his descent into madness, Daredevil: Born Again is a masterpiece.  

Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli were operating in perfect lock-step, and it showed in every panel.  This book completely remade Daredevil, and, as a true test to its longevity, the repercussions are still being felt today, after almost 30 years.

I’m getting old.

- Aloha -

 

Writer Blocks - Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Volume 3

Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Volume 3 is the Resolution and Dénouement of Miller’s “Three Acts” during his first run of Daredevil.  Here he resolves any loose plot threads, including the vague fate of Elektra, and ends with my single favorite issue of Daredevil EVER.

The volume starts with an anti-drug two-issue story co-starring a new character called The Punisher.



Miller does a fantastic job with this story, which was the last he would illustrate with Klaus Janson.  Beginning with Daredevil # 185, Miller handled script and layout duties while Janson took care of pencils, inks and colors.  While not Miller’s style exactly, having a single artist, and one as accomplished as Janson, on the complete visual package made the transition from Miller’s art less traumatic to a reader.

Daredevil #185 is a great Foggy Nelson story, heavily inspired by Will Eisner’s The Spirit and the writing of Elmore Leonard.  It’s a crime story with Foggy as protagonist and narrator, Daredevil playing the role of “guardian devil”, making sure Foggy gets out of his scraps with Old Man Slaughter, Turk and The Kingpin in one piece.

The remaining stories conclude the Hand, that evil Ninja organizations subplot, as well as ending, in a rather ham-fisted way, the relationship between Matt Murdock and Heather Glenn. There is a final appearance by Elektra, one with a prologue and epilogue that hints of her resurrection, which would come years later in a beautiful graphic album by Miller and Lynn Varley.

That is the Resolution of the story.

Next - the Dénouement.



Daredevil #191 is a standalone story called “Roulette”.  This is inked by Terry Austin, and it’s obvious from the layout and difference in Miller’s art that he has been experimenting while away from Daredevil.  That experiment would become Ronin from DC, and the influence of Moebius and Lone Wolf and Cub Manga is evident from the first four panels.



As a story, “Roulette” ends Miller’s run at its core:  Daredevil facing off with Bullseye, discussing the relationship between fathers and sons, a theme at the soul of the Daredevil mythos.  Bullseye is paralyzed, lying helplessly in a hospital bed, recovering from the wounds inflicted on him by Daredevil after killing Elektra.  Daredevil sits at his bedside and proceeds to play Russian roulette with the villain, pointing the gun first at his own head, then at Bullseye’s.  He tells a story about a young boy who worships Daredevil, ultimately witnessing Daredevil taking his father down in a blackmail scheme.  This pushes the boy over the edge and he shoots a child, wounding him and being committed to an asylum.

Daredevil then tells a second story about his father, who forced him to excel at his schooling, striking him one night in a drunken rage. Young Matt Murdock spent that night on the Brooklyn Bridge, deciding in that moment to become a lawyer.

Miller ends his run on Daredevil with a soliloquy on the meaning of heroism, on the influence parents have over their children, and with Daredevil, down to the last shot, the chamber sure to hold the lone bullet, aimed at Bullseye’s head. He pulls the trigger . . .



I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Frank Miller made me want to create comic books, and his Daredevil run in the early 1980’s showed me how a continuing narrative like an ongoing series doesn’t have to rely on past continuity and boring tropes.

It can create new experiences, new paradigms, new structures and new characters.



It can create new creators.

Next Week – Born Again

Writer Blocks – Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Volume 2 (part two)

The second half of Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Volume 2 is by far my favorite piece of work from Miller’s run as “writer / artist”. Daredevil issues # 174 – 182 not only conclude the Elektra Saga, they also introduce the visual storytelling techniques and narrative elements that would make Frank Miller become FRANK MILLER!

At this point in his artistic career, Miller began to employ a five-panel horizontal “wide screen” layout to his pages, beginning with page 5 of Daredevil #174.



As if to announce the film-like character of the design, Miller has Daredevil bounding through Times Square, in the middle panel actually paying homage to the films of the time: Thief, Eyewitness, Night Hawks and The Postman Always Rings Twice.  Here we also see the seeds of what Miller would do in his most popular work: Batman – The Dark Knight Returns.  Every page in that book is composed of four horizontal bars broken into sixteen panels, but four horizontal planes nonetheless.  Instead of the movie screens in Daredevil, Miller uses the television screen, naturally mimicking the emerging music video culture of the mid-1980’s, in Dark Knight Returns.  The television screen as window is used sparingly in this Daredevil volume, but it’s the movie screen that dominates the visual style.

The second narrative technique Miller begins is the elimination of thought balloons (remember those) and the omniscient narrator, electing to instead tell a story through inner monologue captions from a single narrator.  The most striking use of this, both thematically and visually, is “Spiked!” in Daredevil #179.  Miller begins the true development of one of his favorite characters, Daily Bugle reporter Ben Urich, with the opening caption: “My name is Ben Urich. I’m a reporter.  This is my story.”



Note the continuation of the five-panel layout. The beauty of this technique is we are being told the story from a character who is not the lead, and who better to “report” on events than a reporter.  Especially striking is the font letterer Joe Rosen used for the text.  We can feel Urich typing this story in his mind, on the hunt for that elusive Pulitzer he knows he could win if he sold-out and revealed Daredevil’s secret identity, Matt Murdock.

Nowhere is the use of this narrative device more evident than in Daredevil #181, and its promise of an end to a major character.



Miller tells the story from the perspective of arch nemesis assassin Bullseye. It’s a tale of jealousy: Bullseye’s jealous that Elektra has replaced him as the Kingpin’s assassin.  It’s a tale of madness: both Bullseye’s homicidal tendencies and the dark shadow that would descend over Matt Murdock from this point forward.  But most importantly, it’s a tale of lost love.

This is a “Special Double-Sized Issue!”, and from the cover one would expect an epic twenty-page throw down between Elektra and Bullseye, but after eighteen pages of suspenseful build-up, the fight lasts just four pages before Bullseye delivers the chilling piece of dialogue:

“Put up . . . pretty good fight, toots . . . you’re pretty good . . . but me . . . I’m magic.”



Then performs his next trick . . .



This page, with its release of the built-up tension through an overt sexual image, would be shocking today, let alone when it was originally published in 1982. What was even more shocking for the time was the death of a character that had been such a narrative force.  Bullseye was a relatively minor villain.  Elektra was the love of Matt Murdock’s life.  Readers of the time must have assumed that it would be Bullseye who perished, not the striking and mysterious Elektra, with so much potential and so many more stories to tell.

And that is the brilliance that was Frank Miller in the 1980’s:  taking established norms and subverting them, evolving them, and creating them to serve the story he needed to tell.

I really miss that guy.

Next Week – The Conclusion

 

Writer Blocks – Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Volume 2 (part one)

Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Volume 2 collects the entire Elektra Saga, Daredevil #168 through #182, originally published from 1981 to 1982.  This is a large volume and can be broken into two parts: the introduction of Elektra and rise of the Kingpin as the primary antagonist in Daredevil’s life, and the Elektra Saga’s endgame.



Elektra was a revelation in 1981 – a strong, independent, deadly female character in a comic book. Daredevil’s equal in physical ability, it is revealed, through an almost entire issue flashback, that they knew each other and were lovers while in college.  Before the flashback, Elektra is introduced to the reader by saving Daredevil’s life.  This was a new concept in the early 1980’s, a time when most female characters were regulated to the “damsel in distress” role, what would later be termed “women in refrigerators”. Frank Miller broke that mold, and Elektra became the focus of the book, supplanting Daredevil as the character a reader truly cared about.

The influence, almost reverence that Miller has for Will Eisner can be seen in the splash-page innovations within Daredevil, incorporating the issue title and creator credits into the panel itself. 



This is an art almost completely lost in today’s world of movie-like credits pages. The last time I remember seeing this was in the New 52 Flash by Brian Buccellato and Francis Manapul.



As a writer, these issues taught me about the use of time as a tool to tell the story. Miller would alternate between tight, multiple paneled pages to create tension and evoke mood to wide-screen panorama shots for dynamic action and fight sequences. But it was his use of silence – the way he’d couple that silence with a cinematic frame-by-frame depiction of events – that was the true way Miller created the passage of time to build tension. The best example of this, from the first half of Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Volume 2, is the penultimate page of Daredevil #169, appropriately titled Devils.



Daredevil, our hero, is contemplating leaving his hated rival, Bullseye, to die on the train tracks. Of course he won’t do it, but the last eight panels, beginning with Daredevil’s thought of “I hate you”, with their use of time and light to create tension, makes the reader wonder –

“Is this hero starting to go over the edge?”

Next Week – he will!

Writer Blocks - Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Volume 1

Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Volume 1 reprints the opening salvo in Frank Miller’s groundbreaking run on this book, issues #158 – 167.  When reading this, and comparing it to the later volumes, it’s important to note that Miller was the penciller and sometime co-plotter of these issues.  He wouldn’t begin his writing duties until issue #168 and the introduction of his most lasting character, Elektra.



Even though he is not writing each issue, one has to wonder how much input Miller had into Roger McKenzie’s scripts. The groundwork is clearly being laid for what Miller would do when taking over all story telling duties.  We meet Ben Urich, who uncovers Daredevil’s secret identity of Matt Murdock, setting up their relationship that Miller would use throughout not only this run but the Born Again arc years later; we are introduced to the informant, Turk, and the crowd at Josie’s Bar; Bullseye is elevated to the role of arch nemesis; and the Black Widow is sent away, a jilted lover opening room for what lies ahead.

What comes across the most in this first volume is the evolution of Miller’s pacing. These comics were clearly done in the “Marvel Method”, where the writer would give the artist the plot, the artist would then illustrate the book, and the writer would add dialogue and captions based on the pencils, but as the volume progresses we can see Miller finding his artistic voice.  Suddenly there are fewer panels per page and the pages are more dynamic.  The angles Miller chooses have a noir quality that Miller would bring with him throughout his storied career, and the action and fight sequences have a fluidity of motion, a film-like quality, that would become Miller’s trademark.



Then there is issue #164, and Miller’s retelling of Daredevil’s origin.



This was most likely a filler issue, but there is a scene that has always stuck with me. On the final page, after Daredevil has finished telling Ben Urich the story of his father’s murder and how he became Daredevil, the reporter decides to burn the front-page article that would surely make his career.  Through seven silent panels, Miller uses imagery to evoke emotion that is just as good, if not better, than any film work being done at that time.



Go watch Taxi Driver or The Godfather, then read Miller’s Daredevil run, and you will get a sense of what creators in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s were encapsulating – a dirty realism grounded in malaise. Every time I read a novel set in that time period, what I see in my mind’s eye if a Frank Miller cityscape, a smoke filled room, and a vigilante lurking on the rooftops, protecting his city.

Next Week – Miller takes full creative control in Daredevil Visionaries Volume 2 and we meet Elektra!

Writer Blocks - Batman: Year One

It was 1987, February, and I stood alone in front of the spinner rack at the Shop-Rite in Neptune City, NJ. It was the first time a Batman comic book caught my eye.  On the top, above even the title, it said “By Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli”:



I was a huge Miller fan, and the Daredevil: Born Again storyline by Miller and Mazzucchelli, which I had purchased from that same spinner rack the previous year, was and is one of my all-time favorites, so I couldn’t wait to get home and read what they did with the Batman.

Not only did I get a classic story, but also a lesson in dichotomy and juxtaposition.

Batman: Year One is really the story of James Gordon’s arrival in Gotham City and his struggle against crime, corruption and infidelity.  Bruce Wayne, and thus Batman, is almost a supporting player, acting as a visual representation of what Gordon is going through.  This compare / contrast effect begins on the very first page:



Gordon enters the city, and thus the story, on the ground, while Bruce returns to his birthplace by plane, above the fray.

Above it all. 

This sets the tone for the entire arc. Gordon is already an accomplished cop as opposed to Bruce, who has to learn how to be “Batman”.  While Bruce is getting stabbed by a young prostitute and then arrested, Gordon is taking out his main rival, Detective Flass.  And as the confidence and notoriety of Batman grows, it empowers Gordon to become a hero in his own right.

The two eventually collide at the climax of the book when Bruce saves Gordon’s newborn son, James, by diving into a mud pit, similar to where old man Batman defeats the Mutant Leader in Dark Knight. Gordon lets Bruce know that his secret is safe, saying that he is “practically blind without my glasses”:



Blind as a bat.

Batman: Year One is also the first time I remember picking-up on visual motifs in a comic book.  The clown painting hanging over Commissioner Loeb’s chair is a clear homage to the Joker:



As I read this I was positive that the book would end with Loeb becoming the Joker. I was half right. Batman: Year One does end with the arrival of the Clown Prince of Crime, but this is used to show the new respect and partnership between Gordon and Batman:



Batman: Year One and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns will always be the bookends to the Caped Crusader’s career in my mind.  While what Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo are currently doing with Batman in the New 52 is excellent, and Zero Year was an epic story, nothing can replace these two works by Frank Miller as how I will always see my Batman.

Next Week – Miller Time continues with Daredevil

Writer Blocks - Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

If you were to pierce the fabric of spacetime and ask eleven year old me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would answer “Frank Miller.”  Go back a little further to Coles Books at the Seaview Square Mall just before Christmas in 1986 and you’ll know why - there, in the science fiction section, stands a wide-eyed boy reading a book unlike anything, ever.  That boy was me. This is the book:



Batman: The Dark Knight Returns made me want to create.  This was a classic superhero presented in a manner that was bold and new.  I was too young to truly appreciate everything Miller was doing, and there are plenty of resources available that deconstruct the work, but upon reading it again, for the first time in about 20 years, I can see how it made its way into the pages I write.  My penchant for “talking heads” scenes is a direct correlation to the repeated television screens used throughout Dark Knight Returns, only without the subtext that the newscasters, experts and pundits bring to Miller’s work.  Early in my writing I tried to jam as many panels onto a page as possible, subliminally borrowing from the 16 panel grid layout Miller used to heighten the sense of a claustrophobic Gotham City.  I just didn’t know how to tell a story.

As a kid, the grand vision of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns was lost on me.  What wasn’t lost on me were the images - iconic and beautiful.

Like this, the Dark Knight ready for battle:



Or the Dynamic Duo leaping through the night:



And of course the simple cover from Issue #1:



But the image that stuck with me the most was this page, and what Bruce says before dying:



Followed by Superman cradling the body of his fallen friend, telling the soldiers “Don’t touch him.”

This is the type of book I wanted, and still want, to create, and every time I sit in front of another blank page, eleven year old me appears as a reminder that I will never be able to “touch” this masterwork from Frank Miller.

Next week - Batman: Year One