Annotated 47-30
FB: MILLENNIALS ARE KILLING a cadre of Gastonian plutocrats pretty soon, hopefully
My favorite superhero comic of the 2010s was Mark Waid’s Daredevil. Without hyperbole, I can call it life-changing.
Waid made the most of the status quo he’d inherited: a miserable and anxious Matt Murdock who no longer had a “secret identity” so much as a cycle of public denial. No one could prove he was Daredevil, but everybody knew it. That secret wasn’t getting unshared, no matter how many people he threatened to sue. And that was just the latest layer on a trauma cake decorated with dead girlfriends, Catholic guilt, and injustices unavenged.
So as Waid’s section of Daredevil’s story begins, miserable Matt…decides to be merry. He’s not pretending that the awful things that have happened to him aren’t awful, he’s choosing to adjust his attitude. Even that isn’t as easy as it sounds, and Waid’s 54 issues are filled with reversals and complications. But in the end, it’s an argument for remembering the power we have to shape our own stories.
In a related thread, by stages, Matt admits to the world that he is Daredevil…and that becomes an argument for living wholly. We all divide ourselves up to some degree, we all have different faces for different contexts. But when I started reading the series, I’d divided my identity too much. On social media, as a writer, or when telling my parents how I was doing, I was hiding too much of myself behind masks, filled with anxiety about letting my flaws and failings be seen. I finished Waid’s run on the series around the time I embarked on the relationship that would become my marriage. Its example helped give me the courage to be honest with Janice about who I was, even as I tried to better myself to deserve her.
These are the things I think about as I watch Penk meditate on his lost mask, his integrated selves, and the remaining Champions, all of whom look up to him but all of whom have seen him vulnerable. Goblaurence has critiqued his strategies, he’s attempted a pass at Magda, and Auraugu befriended him when he was a skinny drumming nobody. But that’s why sharing this moment with them means more than it would if they were just random soldiers, who’d worshipped Penk without ever really knowing him.
(Incidentally, the next Daredevil writer restored the character to “factory settings” immediately, going back to the secret ID, anxiety, and self-destructive tendencies. My mixed feelings about that would take too long to unpack here—and you can probably guess at most of them anyway. But I’d gotten what I’d needed from the series when I’d needed it, and that’s the important thing. Penk, at least, will not be doubling back on his development.)
Honestly that whole “reboot, reset, retcon, retread” mentality probably would have turned me off “mainstream” comics eventually ….except I was already suffering from Crossover Fatigue well before that.
I’m very glad I found Webcomics, indie comics, and manga. Not that those don’t have their own issues, but it really does feel like I have a better shot at getting one whole proper story out of them than I do with Marvel or DC.
They all, typically, have just the one writer(team), yes? At the least, it’s purposely and personally, not corporately, passed off to a new hand. So that certainly will affect consistency.
I’ve never as an adult thought of mainstream (primarily superhero) comics as being an attempt at a story. There’s far too much history against that and an unwillingness to officially adopt individual runs that feature a known character. It’s possible that’s changing, I suppose I’m speaking from a point of view that’s never tried to follow them.
Mainstream comics can still be fun to read, but it is a bit of a chore to keep up with the current events and keep on the lookout for the next good run of this or that character.
The age of purchasing single issues is long gone. Now you have think about buying specific sagas and stories rather than titles. Then, when the good run is over and the person(s) responsible for it start working in their own comicbooks, you’ll follow them and end up reading indie stuff anyway.
Out of curiosity, do we ever see Rana again after this? I’m trying to remember if he appears in any scenes after this one, but it’s been awhile since I did a reread.
No, this is all he gets. I’ll get into the why of that a bit later…