Digitally Speaking...48

Digitally Speaking...covers comics I've read from my comiXology account...

CBLDF Defender #1 (Creator Owned)
From April 2015.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund takes comics seriously, as in they champion creator rights, and the right for readers to have access to comic book material.  It's basically the comic book version of the inexplicable banned book phenomenon.  Banned books, as in the concept of allowing ninnies to censor what you're allowed to access.  Mostly this takes place at schools and libraries, which means the very institutions intended for society to build itself up are in fact breeding ground for people to tear each other's potential down.  This strikes me as wrong.  This debut issue of a journal detailing CBLDF's activities and relevant discussions such as Neil Gaiman's experiences (via an interview) and the Charlie Hebdo controversy (in which one culture violently attempts to tell another what is acceptable, and the other responds with cartoon drawings) is pretty dry.  Usually the Defense Fund enlists industry veterans to make actual comic book material out of the discussion first begun with Seduction of the Innocent (also covered in the issue, by the way), but for whatever reason chose not to do so here.  Insightful material, but could use more innovative analysis.  Personally, using more examples of challenged material would be more interesting.  An excerpt from Persepolis is almost completely unreadable in even the greatest enlargement, which only enhances the size of the pixels.  Alas, comiXology's Guided View is useless in this instance.

Daredevil: The Man Without Fear #1 (Marvel)
From 1993.

This issue begins Frank Miller's origin of Daredevil alongside artist John Romita, Jr.  This was years after Miller's famous work on the character, and it shows, how well he knows Matt Murdock, calling back to mind things Miller had done previously.  By the end of the issue, Matt's father has refused to throw a fight (this is depicted in the movie released a decade later) and been murdered for it, following Matt's blinding and subsequent training under Stick, although his interest in the law and even nickname "Daredevil" is presented as predating all of this.  Romita has a distinctive style that is already in full evidence, pretty much exactly as seen in his current Superman work.  Perhaps tellingly, it looks much like Tim Sale's work.  And hey! speaking of which...

Daredevil: Yellow #1 (Marvel)
From 2001.

After years of telling Batman stories together, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale went over to Marvel and started a series of character sketches there, too.  Their Daredevil read a lot like Frank Miller's, and looked like it, too.  Probably not a coincidence.  Miller's work paved the way for Loeb, who always seemed to have an instinct for superhero psychology and an intuitive grasp of their personal narratives.  Later he'd bring this to his greatest success, Superman/Batman, which began life as a series of dueling monologues straight out of the work he'd done in Batman: The Long Halloween and Daredevil: Yellow, among others.  Yellow is another origin story, and the first issue covers the same fateful sequence concerning Matt's father as detailed above.  Yet repetition, as always, creates resonance, especially when covered by expert hands.  One master to another...

The Defense Fund could find a lot of illustrations in Matt Murdock's story.  Miller depicts the formative days of the boy who would become Daredevil as full of delinquency and fallen heroes.  Yet this only serves to create the man who would become a hero best known for never giving up.  Surely a message worth spreading?  Comic book fans, especially superhero fans of the Marvel persuasion, are always arguing that this is a medium that celebrates triumph over adversity.  Isn't that the CBLDF mission statement?

Django/Zorro #5 (Dynamite)
From 2015.

Django/Zorro, and Grant Morrison's Annihilator, became the first time I read a comic book first-run digitally.  I haven't made that clear until now.  My local comics shop is supposed to have the series (both of them, actually) pulled for me, but then, the guys who run this store are always screwing up.  So I didn't even realize I hadn't read this particular issue yet until I checked in on my comiXology account.  I don't always have time to read the material there, which is why my alphabetical journey through it has taken such a long time.  As it turns out, this is the issue of Django/Zorro I've been waiting for all along, the moment the Quentin Tarantino in the story really pops.  Not just because the late Dr. King Schultz makes a cameo, or that Don Diego de la Vega (a.k.a. Zorro) pulls off the same trick Schultz does in Django Unchained concerning revealing the identity of someone he has a bounty on, or that gunfire irrupts abruptly.  Okay, maybe a combination of all these is enough.  It's the first time Matt Wagner seems interested in more than a superficial juxtaposition.  Here he's making a clear effort to evoke not just the spirit of Tarantino's movie but its feel as well.  And this is a good thing.

(I've also added Descender to my subscriptions.  Where will I strike next???)