MARVEL COMICS

Pair’s crime noir approach
makes mature ‘Daredevil’

To find the heart of Marvel Comics hero Daredevil, you have to look past the weak movie adaptation made recently about the blind vigilante. Instead, delve into the crime noir approach of the creative team of Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev.

But you'd better hurry because their "Daredevil" stint ends this year.

Since the U.S.-European duo -- except for a brief story arc in issues 51 to 55 by Bendis and his friend, illustrator David Mack -- started with the title's 26th issue there have been several trade paperback collections of their work, leading up to their latest story arc, a six-parter called "Decalogue."

The story line is inspired by f Bendis' cinematic hero, the late Krzysztof Kieslowski, in particular, the director's critically acclaimed one-hour dramas of the same name, based on the Ten Commandments as interpreted through contemporary life in Poland.

"Decalogue" is an example of how Bendis and Maleev have taken a non-superhero approach to the originally dubbed "Man Without Fear." The move has proved to be a right one: Their "Daredevil" won an Eisner award in 2003 for Best Continuing Series.

IN THE STORY, Matt Murdock is struck and blinded as a boy, by a cylinder of radioactive materials that fell from a truck. He grows up to be an attorney with an athletic alter ego possessing enhanced senses that make up for his sightlessness. But his long career as a crime fighter is compromised after he is "outed" by a New York City tabloid.

In a recent interview posted on Newsarama.com (part of filmmaker and occasional comic book writer Kevin Smith's View Askew Internet company), Bendis said it was his intention to have Daredevil grow up, so to speak.

"(The title is) more mature, I think," he said. "It started out a little more (original artist Gene) Colan swashbuckler, but I figured out that Daredevil isn't a superhero book. It's a pulp book. That very first issue is a pulp comic. And I started writing it as such. It really opened the scope of the book to me."

Combined with Maleev's photo-realistic illustrations, Bendis has taken Daredevil through the ringer and then some. Murdock's recent marriage to the blind Milla (who knew his secret identity) has been annulled, and his former lover, the ex-Russian agent Black Widow, is back in his life. And Daredevil's rival from his rough-and-tumble Hell's Kitchen home turf, Wilson Fisk, a k a Kingpin, has been soundly thrashed by the angered hero (with help from some fellow Marvel superheroes who live in the Big Apple).

Now Daredevil/Murdock has given the ultimatum to the city's criminal element to "get out or change," as he appoints himself the new Kingpin.

MARVEL COMICS Alex Maleev's photo realistic style complements writer Brian Michael Bendis' crime noir dialogue in the Daredevil "Decalogue" story arc.

AS PART OF the setup for "Decalogue," Bendis and Maleev's previous story arc, "Golden Age," told of Daredevil's early defeat of Alexander Bont, the first Hell's Kitchen Kingpin. In this story, Daredevil wore his original yellow suit.

"Decalogue" now revisits that first year of Daredevil's crusade to clean up the Kitchen and his affects on its down-and-out residents.

The story revolves around the meeting of a support group that lives in Hell's Kitchen called "The Devil Among Us." The first part tells how one young, self-professed "drunk, junkie whore" saw the way Daredevil could lay down the law in a fight with his old enemy Bullit. Allied with Bullit were several criminals who showed more cojones than sense in trying to off Daredevil and, in turn, become the new Kingpins.

Bendis said: "All these Hell's Kitchen citizens (are) trying to deal with what has happened to their lives and the world around them because of Daredevil. Each person's story unlocks another layer of what Daredevil has done.

"It's also, I think, a great way to express different religious beliefs into the story that are not Matt's (Catholicism), and it shows how a guy in a devil costume can really affect someone's entire life."

Bendis and Maleev will wrap up their "Daredevil" stint with "The Murdock Papers," which will return the focus to the vigilante's current situation. Bendis would say only that the story will involve how "Matt has had the FBI chasing their tail on his case for years, and Kingpin will come to the FBI and offer Murdock to them in exchange for his own freedom. And from there a lot of people make some awful decisions."

As for "awful decisions," it's too bad the people who made the "Daredevil" movie didn't go the way of "Sin City."

Coincidentally, the movie's co-director and comic book creator, Frank Miller, did his own lauded stint on "Daredevil" as its writer-illustrator in the early 1980s.

And now you can add Bendis and Maleev to the proud legacy of creative teams that have worked on "The Man Without Fear."