The greatest hero can only ever be as great...
as his most fearsome villain.
For Batman, The Joker.
For Daredevil, Mark Waid.
And of course, for the Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles... their arch nemesis The Shredder!
What many comic fans don't realize... is that
for the first several years of the Turtles'
existence... they had no clear antagonist.
They killed the shit out of The Shredder...
in literally the first issue!
He was Elvis dead, Turn-based RPG dead...
with zero ambiguity on the subject.
It wasn't until a mysterious figure reformed
The Foot in 1988's Return of the Shredder
storyline... that the Turtles at last located
the yin to their yang.
To anyone who's seen the 1990 TMNT film - which
still, for me, ranks among the all-time great
comic book adaptations on the silver screen
- the story will seem very familiar, indeed.
In fact, reading this comic, you will even
note exact panels from the comic... reproduced
in faithful detail on the screen in Steve
Barron's film adaptation.
From Casey Jones' introduction to the establishment
of the Foot as a clear and legitimate threat,
this was Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird at
the absolute height of their creative powers.
For the first time in the life of their creator-owned
series, not only elevating the TMNT above
their humble origins as a tribute to Frank
Miller Daredevil... but filling out the world
of the Turtles with a ground-level lore that
is largely adhered to to this very day.
...that... and it doesn't get much more badass...
than this full three-page foldout splash...
to reveal the new incarnation of The Shredder
for the very first time.
Be still, my beating boner.
Return of the Shredder: READ THAT SHIT.
Next!
Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev... may
well be my favorite Daredevil creative team
of all-time, and in my opinion, the controversial
and plot-hole-ridden masterpiece 'The Murdock
Papers'... was the perfect bookend to an exceptional
run.
So, Daredevil finally puts the Kingpin away.
And thanks to declaring himself 'The New Kingpin
of Hell's Kitchen' (long fuckin' story, on
that one), he manages to secure a lengthy,
albeit fragile, peace.
The Kingpin claims he has the complete file
on Matt Murdock, the vigilante.
A complete catalogue of his origin, his motivations,
irrefutable proof that Matt Murdock is Daredevil!
He calls them - you guessed it - The Murdock
Papers!
And he's willing to talk trade with the FBI...
if they let him go.
See, the FBI already has the Kingpin.
And if they let him loose, as an established
crime boss, they still have 1,000 reasons
to put him back behind bars.
It's Daredevil they want.
And this looks like their only shot at him.
His secret identity was outted in the tabloids,
but he fired right back using the Barack Obama
method: Deny, Deny, Deny.
What follows is a masterfully written modern
film noir, with The Kingpin showing his unrivalled
manipulative acumen... as he plays all sides
against the middle.
And, let me tell ya', there are more sides
than a fuckin' dsco ball.
Everyone catches wind of the Murdock Papers
- The Hand, Bullseye, Black Widow... and even
a long-believed deceased young lady by the
name of Elektra.
It erupts into a full-scale war on the rooftops
of Hell's Kitchen and ends with one of the
most excruciating cliffhanger endings I've
ever fallen victim to.
Admittedly, you're going to get a hell of
a lot more out of this graphic novel... if
you go back and read from the very beginning
of Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev's
Daredevil run... a storyline called 'Out'...
but as a climax to a very well-penned and
consistently exceptional run...
The Murdock Papers are without fucking peer.
The polar opposite of Mark Waid's pseudo-retro
hipster pretense in more recent Daredevil
offerings.
Whereas Mark Waid's Daredevil volume 3 has
aged like milk...
Bendis' take on the Man Without Fear has aged
like Cindy Crawford.
Emphatically recommended.
Without Superman, the very concept of the
modern superhero would not exist.
That's a big deal.
One publication... essentially responsible
for the creation of an entire subgenre of
science fiction.
But lightning struck again in the year 1975,
and would later be reprinted within the pages
of a very different kind of comic book emanating
from France.
You call it 'comic'.
They call it 'bandes dessinee'.
Whatever the nomenclature, what is certain
is that without this comic, Cyberpunk - as
a visual and literary concept - very well
may not exist.
That comic's name was Metal Hurlant, known
stateside as 'Heavy Metal Magazine'... and
that graphic novel's name... was 'The Long
Tomorrow'.
Long before William Gibson coined, and championed
the term in his 'Neuromancer' novel from 1984...
'The Long Tomorrow' embodied every solitary
tenet that comprises Cyberpunk... and even
threw in a bit of film noir for good measure.
Written by Dan O'Bannon, whose name should
sound familiar if you've ever seen a little
movie he wrote by the name of Alien - with
breathtaking illustrations by the late artistic
demigod known as 'Moebius'.
Weighing in at a mere 17 pages, to even call
it a graphic novel is a bit of a stretch...
but in the gestative years of the fledgling
format, The Long Tomorrow nevertheless fit
the bill.
And I'm not the only person whose mind was
blown clean off his shoulderblades when he
read this for the first time... in the mid-'70s,
a rising Hollywood director by the name of
Ridley Scott felt much the same way.
It not only convinced him to hire Dan O'Bannon
to pen the Alien script... it also inspired
him visually and tonally into ultimately crafting
the cyberpunk watershed - my favorite film
of all-time - Blade Runner.
Without this graphic novel... there is no
Alien.
There is no Blade Runner.
And thanks to causing a massive stir on an
east asian island chain that shall remain
nameless... you can thank Metal Hurlant - and
the 1981 animated film it ultimately inspired
- for changing the aesthetic, violence, and
level of mature content in both Manga and
Anime.
Before The Long Tomorrow?
Manga and Anime was Robotech... and Astro
Boy... and Speed Racer.
After it?
It was Akira.
And Bubblegum Crisis.
And Ghost in the Shell.
That's a fairly radical stylistic shift, and
it's staggering just how few people ever actually
discuss the profound influence of French comics
on Japanese entertainment.
Without it, the entire face of late '70s,
'80s, '90s, and even modern manga and anime
- like post-2000 Nikki Cox - would be completely
unrecognizable.
It's a Napoleonically short read, but I can't
recommend it highly enough.
Everyone has 'that book'.
The comic or graphic novel that - although
they'd long since fallen out of love with
comics - somehow single-handedly siezed them
from the mire of their own adolescent indifference...
and once again planted their feet firmly on
the path of comic fandom.
For some, it's Neil Gaiman's 'The Sandman',
for others it was Jim Lee and Jeph Loeb's
early 2000s 'Hush' storyline in Batman, and
for others still, it was Grant Morrison and
Frank Quitely's 'New X-Men' revamp around
the same time.
There's no wrong answer on this one.
What set me apart, I suppose, is that when
I re-entered comics in 2002...
I still had no interest in superheroes, at
the time.
I'd soured on the genre in the '90s, and I
wasn't about to come crawling back to the
Long Underwear Brigade.
What I was looking for - thanks to my lifelong
love of The Oz Books, Brian Jacques Redwall
series, and of course the recent release of
a little film franchise you may have heard
of called 'Lord of the FUCKING RINGS'... was
FANTASY!
Not Dark Horse's Conan.
Not Dynamite's Red Sonja.
The REAL shit.
A PROPER, brand new world of fantasy, without
genre clichés like Elves, Dwarves, or Orcs,
but created solely for the comic book medium,
taken seriously, with the lush illustrations
the genre invariably demands...
...and then I found 'Sojourn'.
Simultaneously exploiting and inverting all
of the established fantasy tropes in contemporary
fiction, Sojourn stands worlds apart from
literally any fantasy story I've encountered
- in comics or in print - in the past 15 fuckin'
years.
Main character's a scorching hot blonde chick?
Main supporting character is a thiefy, male
ne'er-do-well with bulging pecs and a heart
of gold?
Well, these two'll be fuckin' in the first
five panels!
Nope.
Never happens.
Because Arwyn is treated (and yes, that is
a tribute to Tolkien, but Arwyn is treated)
as a three-dimensional female character.
Her husband and daughter were murdered in
front of her!
The very fact that she's on a revenge quest
proves she hasn't emotionally moved on!
You think she's gonna' hop on the first dick
she sees?
(Well, okay, maybe if she's a bad ex-girlfriend)
But Fuck no!
She's bitter, she's vengeful, she's in extraordinary
emotional denial... and don't tell Anita Sarkeesian,
but she's *GASP*... actually fucking flawed!
Possibly the most controversial artist of
modern comics, a man by the name of Greg Land,
does the illustration.
Why controversial?
Chiefly because nerds don't realize there's
a difference between lightboxing poses because
you're going for photo-realism on a fuckin'
deadline... and tracing your fuckin' comics
wholesale.
They also want to crouch behind a wafer-thin
double standard, apparently, because nearly
all of these morons who 'hate light boxing'...
LOVE the work of Adam Hughes... who has unequivocally
admitted to tracing PLAYBOY MODELS in the
past!
In my opinion, Sojourn is still the high water
mark of Greg Land's career, and Hughes fanboys
can choke on my lightboxed cock.
He stagnated a bit at Marvel, because it's
easy to stagnate while drawing superheroes.
But on Sojourn, the subject matter is eternally
transient.
It's a journey.
You're trekking through the Snow-capped mountains
of Skarnhime or the arid deserts of Ankhara.
It never.
Gets.
Old.
If there were one comic company I would resurrect,
fuck the Valiant relaunch.
To hell with Malibu Comics!
Make mine fuckin' CrossGen.
Without CrossGen comics... the industry would
not be what it is today.
They set the new standard with high-gloss,
magazine paper.
They made listing creator credits on the front
cover an industrywide standard back when the
big two were half-hearted and inconsistent
about it.
Hell, even the page-one narrative summary
at the beginning of most modern comics was
one of their innovations.
Combine that with the fact that they discovered
some of the biggest artists in the field today
- from Civil War's Steve McNiven to Josh Middleton
- and even helped revive George Pérez during
a period when that god made flesh was seriously
considering never drawing a comic book again!
And get this: They published... not one superhero
title!
But they sure as shit did everything else!
Spy Fiction, Sci-Fi, High Fantasy, Low Fantasy,
Feudal Japanese Drama, Historical Fiction...
CrossGen comics... was the fucking shit!
Marvel now owns the rights to their properties,
but apart from the odd testing of the waters,
they've done fuck and all with it.
Meridian?
Abadazad?
Look, they're great comics, for children,
and Meridian would make a fantastic animated
children's film... but SOJOURN was in the
top fuckin' TWENTY on the sales charts!
Consistently!
A fuck of a lot higher than MArk Waid's Daredevil,
that's for fuckin' sure!
And yet we didn't even get a fucking ending!
Marvel Comics: Resurrect this book... or eat
dessicated Mordath dick.
Next!
Daredevil is not 'Marvel's Batman'.
The modern incarnation of BATMAN, however...
owes an awful lot to '80s Daredevil.
And that's a fact.
Yes, we all know Batman predates Daredevil.
Thank you, Prince of Pedantry.
But the simple fact is that - when Frank Miller,
Klaus Janson, Denny O'Neil and David Mazzucchelli
gradually turned Daredevil from a B-grade
Spider-Man... to the first modern exploration
of the 'Pulp / Noir Superhero' and promptly
leap-frogged the Dark Knight to the very top
of the sales charts in the '80s...
DC Comics sat up and took notice.
...and then... they started stealing shit.
Needless to say, Frank Miller Daredevil caused
a stir.
And the entire industry took heed.
And the apex of the Frank Miller regime - at
both Marvel and DC - is unquestionably 'Daredevil:
Born Again'.
The story?
Very simple.
Daredevil's longtime flame Karen Page left
him years ago to become a star in Hollywood.
But like many aspiring actresses, she finds
herself more often working a director's button-fly
than working reporters on the red carpet.
She develops a taste for heroin.
She trips and falls into porn.
To feed her illicit habits, she begins seeing
a small-time South American drug lord.
At the end of her rope, to pay for one more
fix... she lays down the one trump card she
has:
She tells the drug lord that Matt Murdock...
is Daredevil.
And the drug lord, in an effort to ingratiate
himself with his betters and improve his station
in the criminal underworld... promptly informs
the Kingpin.
This was earth-shattering stuff, in the 1980s,
and even now.
Karen Page was an all-American girl prior
to that.
The Lois Lane to Daredevil's Clark Kent.
Marvel's LOIS LANE got hooked on H and sold
Superman out to Lex Luthor!
Frank Miller has balls the size of of a fuckin'
planetoid.
Needless to say, over the length of the graphic
novel, Matt Murdock is put through the proverbial
ringer, and for much of the story... he doesn't
go anywhere fuckin' near his actual Daredevil
costume.
Which is downright fuckin' incredible.
I won't divulge the full story, because it's
a ride that must be experienced... but I will
say that this was Miller's creative peak.
It's better than literally any Batman story
he ever told, because Marvel doesn't keep
its creators on nearly as tight of a creative
leash as DC does.
Frank Miller hadn't yet disintegrated into
a caricature of himself.
And David Mazzucchelli... simply put, cranks
out the finest artwork of his entire fuckin'
career.
I understand - and even echo - the accolades
afforded Mr. Mazzucchelli for his incredible
work on Batman: Year One... but his artwork
in Born Again... just fucking demolishes it.
The linework is thinner, making the detail
much sharper and the illustrations more precise...
on Batman: Year One, I don't know if he went
with a brush for inking or what the fuck,
but the lines were thicker, the figures more
fuzzy and indistinct... there's just a more
cartoony, less realistic edge to his Batman
art.
The polar opposite of the photo-realistic
approach to his work on Daredevil.
It's invariably featured in the top 10, if
not top 5 of every 'Greatest Graphic Novels
of All-Time' list that's ever existed.
But unlike overrated, pretentious tripe like
Watchmen or The Killing Joke... this is one
graphic novel that well exceeds expectations.
I'm RazörFist.
Hope you enjoyed the list.
God - fuckin' - SPEED!
