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A Few Thoughts About the Current Run

daresplaining:
I feel like I ought to say a few things about my feelings on Zdarsky’s run, as of right now (August 2020, pre-Annual– that may be important). I haven’t said much about this run, and I should admit that I actually stopped reading it for a while. At a certain point, I realized I was dreading the release of each preview, and took that as a sign that maybe I should take a break and just re-read some back issues instead. This is, above all, supposed to be fun; I never, ever want reading DD to feel like a chore.
That said, I am now caught up and feel ready to begin untangling exactly why this run is so distasteful to me. I’ve been fortunate to have other DD fans to chat with about this, which has helped me to pinpoint what my problems are… because on paper, this run seems like something I’d enjoy. Matt accidentally kills a guy; that’s always fun. Marco Checchetto is great. The story explores Daredevil’s relationship with the citizens of Hell’s Kitchen, which I love. Foggy helps Matt with an action-y Daredevil thing; that’s awesome. There are some very cool fights. Elektra is in it. Stilt-Man is (briefly) in it. It has all the trapping of an interesting narrative. But there is a giant hole in the middle of this run, and that hole is Matt Murdock-shaped and impossible to ignore.
I read Daredevil comics for a lot of things (anyone who’s been following me for the past few years might think I read Daredevil comics for Mike Murdock, and you may have a point there) but first and foremost, I read them for Matt. There is a lot that makes a good DD story great– historically, the comic has featured great supporting casts, and that’s another problem with this run that I’ll get back to in a minute– but Matt is always the anchor. One of the greatest strengths in Daredevil comes from the fact that the protagonist is such a compelling character. You are interested in what he’s doing. You want to follow his story. You enjoy being inside his head. I’m not saying that you can’t write a good Matt-free Daredevil story– you definitely can. But if Matt is present and written poorly, the whole story will collapse around him, and that’s been my experience with Zdarsky’s run. Part of the reason I’ve taken so long to write this post is because I’ve been trying to figure out if my complaint comes from my own personal taste– which is not a basis on which I can critique this comic– or whether the problem is inherent in the work itself. Having discussed it with other people, I feel comfortable saying that I think the problem is in the writing.
Zdarsky’s Matt feels profoundly unfamiliar to me, and that in itself isn’t necessarily a problem, but I don’t find this new version of my favorite superhero interesting. I actually find him a little repellant. If this run had been my introduction to Daredevil, I would’ve said “Nope” and read something else. Matt is a character with depth. He is intensely multifaceted. His relationship to superheroing is complicated, his views on justice and morality are rich and often contradictory. Zdarsky somehow missed all of that and has crafted a one-dimensional character with a blatantly black-and-white sense of morality. Matt’s reaction to accidentally killing someone seems to be to decide that all superheroes are bad– something I complained about at the beginning of the run and which, unfortunately, only grew more annoying as the story progressed. Zdarsky’s Matt is painfully self-righteous, to a degree that makes him extremely unlikeable (at least to me). And yes, Matt has been written as unlikeable before. I actually love when Matt behaves badly; I find that fascinating from a narrative perspective. But I’ve realized that the key reason that has been effective in the past is because the story has never condoned that behavior. When Matt was emotionally abusive toward Heather Glenn, Frank Miller went out of his way to show us– via the side characters, via blatant expressions of Heather’s pain– that Matt was in the wrong. When Matt was a jerk in Bendis’ and Brubaker’s runs, when he drove his friends away, when he acted irrationally and harmfully, the narrative commented on that jerkiness and irrationality.
But Zdarsky does not do that in his run. He presents Matt’s irrational and jerkish behavior without comment or nuance, as if it’s a perfectly normal, reasonable way for Matt to act under the circumstances, and I have been surprised to realize how distasteful I find that, and how bad it makes Matt look. There’s a difference between having a character who is comfortably flawed– whose behavior you’re supposed to occasionally question– and a character who is just unpleasant and unlikeable, seemingly by accident. In the most recent issue (#21), Matt has an extremely upsetting interaction with Spider-Man, one of his oldest friends, and Matt is positioned as heroic for behaving this way, and it made me feel a little ill, because there’s no textual examination or questioning of this behavior. It’s just Matt, pushing people away, being Angsty™ and Gritty™ and lone wolf-y just because, in a way that is grating and unpleasant and completely lacks nuance.
The other major element of Zdarsky’s characterization of Matt is religion. I’ve mentioned before (as have other DD fans before me) that Matt is not generally written as religious, and it’s a strange phenomenon that this characterization has appeared in multiple adaptations (the movie and the Netflix show) while having very little actual presence in the source material. But it was a key theme in the Netflix show, and while hopefully that influence will disappear from the comics as more time passes, we are still in a honeymoon phase wherein MCU elements are still popping up in the 616 universe. It’s clear that Zdarsky really liked the show, and Soule as well; I’m certainly not letting Soule off the hook here, because the idea of Matt being devoutly Christian showed up his run first. But there, you could get away from it if it wasn’t your thing (which, for me, it’s not). Soule had whole story arcs that didn’t mention it. But Zdarsky has made it 75% of Matt’s personality. When he isn’t fighting or sleeping with someone in this run, Matt is angsting about God.
I hesitate to complain about this because it’s Zdarsky’s right as a DD writer to change the protagonist however he likes. It’s frustrating, yes, but not actually a sign of bad writing per se. Plus, not everyone is me. Many people– probably including many people who were fans of the Netflix show and are entering the comics via that connection (which seems to be the target audience for this run)– may be religious and may connect to MCU/Zdarsky Matt in that way. And that’s wonderful. I want to be very clear: it’s not the religiousness itself that I’m complaining about. My complaint is this: if you’re going to drastically alter a character, you need to back it up. You need to dig into it, make that new personality element feel powerful and real, and integrate it into the character’s pre-existing personality. And if you’re going to base the entirety of that character’s emotional journey on that new trait, you need to work to make sure it’s accessible to your readership. I, as a non-religious person, have no sense of why Matt is so upset about God. I have no frame of reference for his pain, either from my own experiences or from previous Daredevil continuity, and Zdarsky does nothing to develop or explore the basis of Matt’s faith, and so it all just falls flat. I feel alienated by this run. I see an angsty, self-righteous, prickly jerk ranting about needing to do God’s will, and then I put the issue down and read some She-Hulk instead. If Zdarsky (or Soule– again, he could have done this too) had made an effort to actually explore and explain Matt’s feelings about his religion, rather than lazily shoving that characterization in there and assuming readers will just accept it, it wouldn’t bother me nearly as much as it has.
Also, I feel I have to mention; this is a fantasy universe. Matt went to Hell and yelled at Mephisto in Nocenti’s run, and it was awesome. Maybe this is just me, but if you’re going to bring in religion, at least have some fun with it! Bookend Nocenti’s run: Matt goes to Heaven, runs into God, and she gives him some free therapy and a souvenir t-shirt (or, I don’t know, something). To give Zdarsky credit, he did at least hint at that sort of thing in Matt’s conversation with Reed Richards in #9.
I’m going to cut this post short, because I really don’t enjoy writing negative reviews. I’d much rather post about things I love, and over the next few weeks I do plan to highlight aspects of this run that I’ve enjoyed. But I’ll end by saying that the weaknesses in Matt’s characterization could have been mitigated by a great supporting cast. Having prominent secondary protagonists would have provided outside perspectives on Matt’s behavior and given the reader other characters to root for when he got too out-of-hand. They would have drawn out the human elements in Matt’s character and helped give him that nuance he so desperately needs. But this run, just like Soule’s before it, is woefully underpopulated. Foggy’s presence is extremely weak and his appearances far too infrequent. Apart from brief cameos in MacKay’s Man Without Fear mini, Kirsten McDuffie and Sam Chung have both vanished, and I’m worried that Kirsten might have joined Milla Donovan in the limbo of still-living-but-permanently-benched ex-love interests. The women in this run are all either villains or people for Matt to sleep with (I was pumped about Elektra’s return and the idea of her training Matt, but her characterization was disappointing (I may write a separate post about this), and Mindy Libris could have been really compelling as a moral person trying to survive life in a crime family, but instead she was just a one-note, underdeveloped victim for Matt to lust after). To Zdarsky’s credit, he has clearly been trying to give the Kingpin a humanizing story arc, but even that I haven’t found compelling enough to want to keep reading (though that could just be me). Cole North was intriguing at first, but he ended up feeling more like a concept than an actual person. And none of these characters engage with Matt on a human, emotional level, which is what a good supporting cast needs to do. I commented early-on that this run felt like all flash and no bang (Is that a term? It is now.) and I think I still stand by that– it’s all bombastic plot concepts and big ideas without any of the actual development or nuance necessary to make them work. There is nothing in this run that has pulled me in and held my interest; in the absence of a Matt I can connect to, I need something, and so far I haven’t found it.
I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. This run was nominated for an Eisner for best ongoing series, so apparently someone likes it, but it has become clear that– so far, anyway– it’s just not right for me.
Wow, phew, I’m going to try something new! A whole bunch of people have contributed some really phenomenal additions to this post, and so rather than reblogging it over and over and over again, I’m going to make a list of links, which I will continue updating if people keep adding commentary. You are all awesome, I’m glad we’ve all been able to connect in this way (I wish it were over something more positive, but there it is), and I love reading your perspectives on this run. Here we go:
@zeapear‘s commentary on religion
@hornheadonmain‘s (and my) commentary on social issues
@thosemintcookies‘s commentary on social issues and Matt’s senses/blindness (Yes! Thank you! You know that I agree 100%.)
@ceterisparibus116′s commentary on religion
@scienceoftheidiot‘s commentary on religion and characterization (“Empty shell” is a really good way of putting it. Thank you!)