Comic Review: Moon Knight by Bendis and Maleev – Ultimate Collection

Published: March 7th, 2018
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
Art by: Alex Maleev

Marvel Comics, 264 Pages

Review:

After reading through the lengthy Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev run on Daredevil, I figured I’d give their run on Moon Knight a shot.

Reason being, I mostly liked Bendis’ Daredevil stuff other than how he didn’t know how to bring it to a close and his cringe romance shit. I also liked Maleev’s art, for the most part. Plus, I like the hell out of the Moon Knight character and wish I had read more of is stories over the years. I’m trying to rectify that now, as I’m older and have access to so much more.

This story is twelve issues long and it uses that space really well and wraps up much better than Bendis’ Daredevil run. I think that he went into this knowing where it needed to end and that since he had limited space to tell a story, he gave us something well structured that got to the point and gave us a satisfying conclusion.

In this story, we see Moon Knight dealing with his “hearing voices” problem in a fresh way. While he is recruited for a mission by Captain America, Wolverine and Spider-Man, he also starts seeing versions of them in his mind. Additionally, with such a close connection to them, he starts to use their gimmicks in his battles with L.A.’s criminal underworld.

That underworld is ruled by its own kingpin, similar to The Kingpin in New York City. However, this person’s identity is a mystery and Moon Knight is tasked with luring them out and discovering why exactly they wanted to buy a deactivated Ultron head.

Moon Knight also meets Echo, the two have a reluctant partnership but end up falling in love during their mission.

This becomes more and more high stakes as it rolls on. Out of the twelve issues, none of them are wasted on filler bullshit and the romance stuff is in there but it’s nowhere near as exhausting as what we got in Bendis’ Daredevil. It’s like Bendis improved in that regard and wrote something more natural and to the point. Nothing between Moon Knight and Echo seemed forced like it did between Daredevil and his wife Milla.

I also feel like Alex Maleev’s art was an improvement. It’s cleaner while also looking more detailed. It also fit the tone of the story pretty damn well.

I don’t want to say too much about the story, as there are some big reveals and twists but this is definitely worth reading if you want a superhero, neo-noir tale that isn’t Daredevil-centric.

Rating: 9/10

Comic Review: Daredevil: Parts of a Hole

Published: June 25th, 2015
Written by: David Mack
Art by: Joe Quesada, David Mack (covers)

Marvel Comics, 161 Pages

Review:

This is the story that directly follows the Kevin Smith penned Guardian Devil arc. Even though I’m a massive Daredevil fan, I had never read this.

This also features the debut of Echo, who starts out as a villain hellbent on making Daredevil pay for the death of her father but ultimately learns that she has been duped by The Kingpin. All the while, her regular identity falls in love with Daredevil’s, creating romantic tension and an interesting dynamic between the characters.

However, Echo’s origin feels like it’s ripped from the origin of Typhoid Mary, a more interesting and better character that’s made a much larger impact to the overall Daredevil mythos.

Still, this was a pretty enjoyable story and Echo was original enough as a character to not feel like a complete rehash of Typhoid Mary.

I liked this better than Kevin Smith’s highly beloved Guardian Devil story. In fact, I find Smith’s story to be really overrated but I reviewed it already.

I mostly liked the art in this, which was primarily done by Joe Quesada. My only real complaint with it was the writing, as this comic story was wordy as fuck. There was just too much text and it took twice as long than normal to read this thing.

Still, it felt like it built off of Guardian Devil well, improved upon its foundation and helped drive Daredevil forward in its new and exciting Marvel Knights R-rated era.

Rating: 6.5/10
Pairs well with: the Guardian Devil  storyline, as well as the Brian Michael Bendis run that follows.

Comic Review: Secret Invasion

Published: 2008
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
Art by: Leinil Francis Yu, Gabriele Dell’Otto (cover)

Marvel Comics, 218 Pages

Review:

Secret Invasion came out after a series of good storylines from Marvel like Civil War, The Death of Captain America and the feud between the two Avengers teams that followed Civil War. I guess this was supposed to be a good payoff for sticking through that solid run of most of Marvel’s major titles. However, this was mostly a clusterfuck that created more problems than the Marvel continuity needed.

This was ambitious, damn ambitious.

Brian Michael Bendis’ ambition really overreached, though, and this mega event became a jumping off point for me back when it was coming out. After a few issues, I dropped it an never looked back.

Since years have passed and Marvel has gotten even worse, I thought that I might enjoy this a bit more and since I never actually finished it the first time, I wanted to give it another shot.

This is just one of those ideas that sounds good on paper but once you start really fleshing it out, you know it’s not going to work. Well, Bendis should have figured that out on his own, especially since the industry considers him a legend.

The biggest problem with this mega event is that it could have worked on a smaller scale. We could’ve seen that the Skrulls had infiltrated the superhero community, replacing some heroes with themselves in disguise. It didn’t need to be so damn grandiose where nearly half the heroes were just Skrulls in hiding. The conspiracy was too big and thus, came across as really fucking dumb.

In fact, this would’ve been much better had the Skrulls just replaced a few key people and there were still less than a handful in disguise. When you expect half the heroes to be impostors, the reveals of who is who loses its impact and you’re left with a half-assed handjob from a drunk instead of great sex from a pretty hot sexual partner.

In the end, when half the characters were impostors, it poses too many questions that just break continuity and it’s way too hard for editorial to keep track of, especially editorial from this era or any after.

Someone really should’ve grabbed Bendis by the shoulders and shouted, “Scale this the fuck down!”

Rating: 4.5/10
Pairs well with: other Marvel mega events.

Comic Review: Daredevil: Back In Black, Vol. 2: Supersonic

Published: September 14th, 2016
Written by: Charles Soule, Roger McKenzie
Art by: Matteo Buffagni, Vanesa R. Del Ray, Goran Sudzuka, Bill Sienkiewicz (cover)

Marvel Comics, 124 Pages

Review:

While I’ve praised Charles Soule’s run on Daredevil, this early stuff isn’t working for me.

I came into Soule’s run towards the end of it and I really liked the last few arcs. Here, though, he is bogged down by the writer before him, who made it so that no one knew Daredevil’s secret identity. It’s a weird plot device that comes up constantly in this volume and it’s pretty annoying.

This collection is made up of multiple short story arcs.

The first deals with Elektra showing up, looking for a daughter no one knew she had. Apparently, after about 50 pages, the daughter angle was a trick and the story ended up being completely pointless.

The second arc is all about Matt Murdock playing Texas Hold’em in Macao. You don’t know what his scheme is but it ends with him and Spider-Man hunting down a briefcase. It’s pretty dull and the dialogue was bad.

The third part of this scant 124 page collection is the Daredevil annual from that year, which has a short story revolving around Echo and another that pits Daredevil against the Gladiator.

Reading this felt like a complete waste of time. I’m sure that these stories were there to plant seeds for later plot developments but this feels like total filler.

Additionally, the art in the Elektra story was bad. And then in the Texas Hold’em tale, there is a scene where Spidey and Daredevil go parasailing behind a hydrofoil. Except they aren’t using parachutes. Um… you have to use a parachute, otherwise parasailing doesn’t work. Growing up in Florida, I understand the simple physics of parasailing. The human body is not a natural parachute no matter how fast the boat is going.

I wanted to read through the earlier Soule Daredevil stuff but man, this really destroyed my motivation.

Also, I hate the black Daredevil suit.

Rating: 5/10
Pairs well with: the other Charles Soule story arcs on Daredevil.