Too Bad "Born Again" Was Already Taken

Jock's cover for Daredevil: Reborn #1 (which debuted earlier today over at Robot 6) is just killer. I love pretty much everything about it.

What I don't love so much is this whole Reborn idea. It has long been my belief that Daredevil is, quietly, one of the best titles that Marvel puts out. It seems to me that a solid run like that, unbroken over a decade plus and through three writers, is a terrible thing to cancel. One wonders if the title wasn't selling as much as Marvel would have liked for an ostensibly A-List character, but even if that were the case why put Daredevil through this again? He's already been born again once, right?

My problem with Shadowland isn't that it's bad (in fact it's pretty good), nor is it with the concept on its own merits: a small-ish event featuring street level characters, particularly the often overlooked ones, is a pretty fantastic idea. Mostly, I don't like that Daredevil doesn't seem to play a part in his own story, that all these things happen to him and we don't really get to see how he reacts or understand what he's thinking- ol' hornhead is just a fascist, and that's all there is to it. The logical conclusion to this, of course, is the end of Daredevil, and then perhaps a phoenix-like rebirth.

And we've never seen that before, have we?

It would be nice to get some good swashbuckling kung fu crime comics again. That's all I really want. Is it really so much to ask?

1 comment:

  1. Huh...

    "The Death of Captain America" + "Captain America: Reborn"
    Iron Man: "Stark Disassembled"
    The first ten issues or so of Thor volume 3
    Spider-Man: "One More Day"
    and now
    "Daredevil: Reborn"

    Huh.

    The past decade has been all about reinventing and 'soft rebooting' major characters for Marvel. It's getting more and more like the 80s were for DC.

    Not the first time Marvel has tried this, just the first successful time in twenty+ years. Or perhaps they've been doing it every decade to various success and I was too young to notice in the 90s. The 80s Daredevil story Josh makes reference to in this post certainly supports that idea.

    Maybe I should write about this?

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