Writer/Artist: David Mack
Publisher: Marvel Comics/ Marvel Knights
Before you go any farther, I should tell you that this review will most likely be much shorter that any other review I’ve written. Why is that, you may be wondering? There’s a perfectly good explanation for that: I didn’t finish reading the book. Before you deluge my email inbox or the message boards with cries of how unprofessional that is, allow me to explain. Not finishing this issue is part of my review. This issue of Daredevil was so bad that I felt like I was wasting my time reading it and needed to move on to the next book in my stack. I could not find a single nice thing to say about this issue, so I’m going to limit my venom this week.
How far did I get? I read every page up to the point where someone remembers Echo asking what sound a dog’s tail makes. This is the third issue in a row Mack uses that device to describe her deafness, and to be honest that’s two times too many. From there I flipped through the rest of the book and got to see her go on a “spirit journey” while she sits in the woods, but not one bit of it held my interest. What was interesting is the sudden and inexplicable appearance of a man that looks suspiciously like Wolverine on the last page, but it’s interesting in a “how much crap does Mack expect us to swallow?” way.
This marks the second issue in a row that Mack pulls the old “bait and switch” on readers, and once was enough for me. Last issue we got about three pages with the title character, and this time out we get the same amount of time with the Kingpin. Since we were promised a big, heart-to-heart discussion between Echo and Fisk that doesn’t sit well with me.
The unconventional art and storytelling techniques still look nice and are a break from tradition superhero antics, but Mack’s is not a style I want to read for a protracted period of time. I want to see the title character involved in his own book for more than 5 pages in three issues. Someone please tell David Mack that there are reasons Daredevil has his own book and Echo does not.
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