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Review of Daredevil #13

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Thu, 17 May 2012 12:26:13 +0000

Whoa, hold on to your seats! If the Omega Effect felt a bit like a drag in terms of plot progression (though I doubt anyone can find fault with the character work), then you’ll be happy to know that this issue definitely moves us into the next chapter of the story with a cliff-hanger that will see all the (insane) people complaining of Daredevil coming out too frequently cursing the fact that we have to wait a full five weeks for Daredevil #14.

Did I say cliffhanger? Make that cliffhangers. Plural. This issue doesn’t start exactly where the last one ended, instead we’re treated to an opening scene featuring Foggy at the office going through Matt’s desk looking for some files. While he does this, he is thinking back to previous scenes from the series as well as to an appointment at his therapist’s office where he is talking about his concerns about Matt. At the end of the scene he has uncovered something that has him reeling. Of course, us readers haven’t got the faintest clue of what this might be. Judging by the solicitation for Daredevil #14, we will probably know more by next issue, but in the mean time, it’s anyone’s guess.

The remainder of the issue is devoted to Matt very quickly finishing up his date and going into action against Black Spectre in the middle of Times Square. This naturally draws out the other factions and soon enough, it’s an all-out brawl. I’ve seen some people comment that the Megacrime organizations really haven’t seemed all that scary up to this point, but here we see them using a bigger range of tricks from their respective arsenals.

When the resolution comes at the end (and I don’t want to give it away), it’s a very satisfying one, both in terms of where it takes the Omega drive plot, as well as the truly scary predicament in which Daredevil finds himself. The clever way this issue plays out will also have people immediately racing back to the end of Daredevil #12 before rereading this issue with a completely different perspective. And yes, the plot twist totally works. Well done, Mark Waid. That’s some brilliant things-are-not-what-they-seem shenaningans right there.

The art is really pretty good. I was not a fan of Khoi Pham’s work in Daredevil #10.1 (outside of the straight superhero action scenes which I thought worked well), but the art this issue looks so much better to me, the last couple of pages in particular work really well. The inker this issue is Tom Palmer (I believe Pham inked his own work in #10.1), and the bolder lines really make the art pop more. Colorist Javier Rodríguez brings his A game, as usual, and helps make the overall art look more consistent. I was particularly impressed with his handling of the Foggy scene in the beginning, where he uses a grayish, semi-unsaturated (yes, I think I just made that word up) color scale to distinguish the flashback panels from the present day.

It’s really nice to see the Omega drive subplot move ahead from “what am I going to do with this thing?” to “I messed with the big boys and they’re so going to steal my lunch box for a year!” With this issue, Mark Waid treated us to a fun and unpredictable romp before dropping Matt off at the really deep end of the pool, and he did it in style and with all of us legitimately concerned for our main character’s physical (and mental) well-being. I definitely want to ride this roller coaster again next month!

Global Accessibility Awareness Day

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Wed, 09 May 2012 22:13:39 +0000

I’ve been super busy for the last couple of weeks, so this post will have to be short and sweet (I’ll be back on track by the weekend), but wanted to take a few minutes to alert people to the fact that today is the first ever Global Accessibility Awareness Day. “GAAD” is an initiative started by web developer Joe Devon and accessibility specialist Jennison Asuncion and you can read all about it on the project’s website.

To spread awareness of some of the obstacles people with various disabilities face while surfing web, they posted a challenge for people to unplug their mouse for an hour, or try using a screen-reader. I dove right in by activating ChromeVox (a free screenreader for the Chrome browser), but my efforts were cut short by the fact that my browser has decided it’s Swedish and the very American synthetic voice kept mangling the Swedish menu items horribly. (It was pretty funny until I realized I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off and the voice just would not shut up!) I’ll give it another try when I have more time, especially since web accessibility is an area that interests me. Kudos to all the real screenreader virtuosos out there who do this every day!

For anyone curious to learn more about how people with little to no vision surf the web, I recommend this video, which I found to be pretty pedagogical (I may even have linked to it before). If you want to know why blind people are so freakishly good at understanding synthetic speech at extremely high speeds (hey, an actual superpower!), reading the abstract of this paper should have you set. And, for a Daredevil connection, I refer you to my 2009 post Assistive technology in Daredevil. That’s all for now!

Review of Daredevil #12

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Wed, 02 May 2012 22:17:50 +0000

If Daredevil #11 left me a bit lukewarm, Daredevil #12 has me all warm and fuzzy. That, and in a state of complete awe. I loved this issue. After having seen Matt’s life be action-packed to the max for a few issues, this story features only one panel of Daredevil in costume while the rest of the issue is all about Matt Murdock and the people in his life. The date with Kirsten McDuffie is sexy and sweet (and funny!), but this issue’s biggest surprise is how Waid uses it to relate an event from Matt and Foggy’s distant past, told by Matt as a story within a story.

This issue also sees Chris Samnee make his debut as the new ongoing Daredevil artist, alongside Paolo Rivera (who, by the way, absolutely rocks that cover!). I had high expectations for Samnee, but am happy to say that the artwork far exceeds anything I could have imagined. Not only is Waid’s script full of character and charm, the art has both of those qualities in spades, and the marriage between the two makes this one of the most compelling issues of Daredevil I’ve read in a very long time.

Daredevil #12 starts off with a sexy and deliberately ambiguous scene in which Kirsten McDuffie is offering Matt a scarf. Surprising both Matt and the reader, she asks him to help tie it around her head as a blindfold. Any reader who may have been wary of Kirsten, a new character introduced in the first issue of Waid’s run, will likely find her much more intriguing after reading this issue. Kirsten is fun, adventurous and savvy, and thus a great match for Matt, both in terms of personality and intellect. On the one hand, she is relentless in her conviction that Matt is really Daredevil, and open about her intentions to prove it, but on the other she seems open-minded enough to really want to get to know him.

It is during their conversation that Foggy comes up, and Matt starts telling a story about how the two would-be lawyers got each other out of a sticky situation in law school. Matt’s problems were of the financial variety while Foggy’s – the main focus of this story within a story – was being singled out by a professor with a chip on his shoulder. By telling this flash-back story, Waid takes the opportunity to add another layer to Matt’s relatively little explored past and examine the close relationship between Matt and Foggy. The execution is wonderful and any reader coming to the title for the first time is bound to get a perfect introduction to both of these characters.

Last, but certainly not least, I want to come back to the art. Chris Samnee absolutely kills it. His characters are full of life, with dozens of different perfect expressions and poses that gets us inside their heads without wasting a single pen stroke. He goes from present day to the past and back again without a glitch and the art just gives this issue so much charm. I couldn’t be happier to have Samnee and Rivera take turns on the art duties. They both have their own distinct styles while sharing a knack for simple and playful elegance and perfect proportions.

Meanwhile, Javier Rodriguez gets to go wild with the color palette – Matt and Kirsten are moving around an amusement park at dusk, after all – and gives this book a consistent and perfectly polished look. It’s great to have the same excellent colorist working with both of the book’s ongoing artists.

Man, this book is great right now. I’m in heaven. Nuff’ said!

The philosophy of Paolo Rivera’s radar

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 21:29:00 +0000

Yes, the title of this post is deliberately ambiguous, somewhat pretentious and possible misleading. First of all, Paolo Rivera doesn’t actually have a radar sense, at least none that I know of (even though he does frequently use himself and various household object as reference material, as often seen in his always entertaining Wacky Reference Wednesdays series of posts). Joking aside, I’m obviously talking about Rivera’s rendering of Daredevil’s radar sense which has become the gold standard of the series’ third volume. But, I’m not really just talking about that either. To explain what the heck I’m getting at, I’ll refer you to this comment, that Daniel D left in response to my review of Daredevil #10:

“[...] there was one part of the issue which threw me a little: The part early on where Mole Man asks; can’t Daredevil see how ugly he is? Matt replies that no, he can’t. Yet we’re shown a panel of DD’s radar mapping the contours of Mole Man’s face, showing us that actually DD could ‘see’ how ugly Mole Man was.”

My response to Daniel was that I’d get back to this topic in a separate post, which pretty much brings us here. And this is also where we get into something of a philosophical domain that is, of course, not just limited to how Paolo Rivera draws the radar sense, but how it’s been done historically as well. However, while we’re on the topic, I realized that there are a couple of properties of the radar sense that I’ve never really touched on despite the fact that they are pretty central to the understanding of Matt’s “vision,” and despite the number of posts I’ve specifically devoted to the radar sense on this site already. For this, I also wanted to use a couple of panels from the current run on Daredevil, but I’ll return to that in the second half of this post.

Getting back on track (before I have everyone so confused that you guys are ready to head over to some other comics blog where things make sense), let’s look at Daniel’s comment quoted above. And, just so we’re all on the same page, below is the panel he’s referring to, from Daredevil #10.

The Mole Man dilemma

The question we need to ask ourselves here is what purpose the radar panel of Mole Man’s face serves in this story, and what it really says about Daredevil. I’d say that its main purpose is to remind the reader that Matt’s perspective is different from that of the average person; that his way of “seeing” is unlike our way of seeing. Whenever a non-radar panel is used in the comic, that represents the viewpoint of the majority (whether we’re talking about the reader or the average Marvel Universe inhabitant). When a radar panel is used, it reminds the reader of this other way of seeing, but it can’t fully recreate it in a way that perfectly mimics the real deal. The topographic wireframe rendition that Paolo Rivera introduced is a great model, but it’s really just that: a model.

What can be done on the page is not only limited by the fact that the artist is trying to transfer a three-dimensional, yet colorless, image to the two-dimensional page, but also by what the reader is able to comprehend. While the “silhouette interpretation” of the radar (see Frank Miller and others) has been much more common, Rivera is not the first Daredevil artist to attempt something a little more three-dimensional. Another example is Scott McDaniel, who provided the art seen in the panel below, from Daredevil #306 (Vol 1), written by D. G. Chichester. His approach is different from Rivera’s wireframe, but seems to try to capture some of the same aspects of the radar image. The only problem with it that it’s quite difficult to figure out what Matt is “seeing” in these instances.

I happen to like the exotic nature of McDaniel’s radar. The fact that it makes the reader work a little harder is a good way of underscoring the difference between Daredevil’s impressions and everyone else’s. However, Rivera’s wireframe is probably the better compromise. His radar images are clear enough to allow the reader to understand what Daredevil is seeing, while at the same time capturing the colorless and “depth-based” properties of the radar. This allows us to understand where the main differences between the two perspectives lie without slowing down the story.

However, if we require that readers be able to understand what it is Daredevil is looking at, that also means that Mole Man’s face (in this instance) be drawn in a way that makes him recognizable to us readers. My take on all of this is that in trying to balance the demands of drawing the radar as different with the need to create a recognizable image, the art may actually be exaggerating Daredevil’s ability to recognize both faces and certain other objects. Matt may not be lying at all when he tells Mole Man that he’s unable to see his face. However, the Mole Man panel highlights a conflict between the art and writing that has popped up from time to time for the book’s nearly five decades of publication.

Can Daredevil “see” faces?

My main reasons for arguing that Matt Murdock would have a problem with faces really stem from two sources. The first one is the writing, as handled by Mark Waid currently, and also by past writers. Looking only at what is said about the radar sense and what is expressed by the main character, without bringing the art into the picture, it is clear that the notion that Matt can’t see faces (at least not well enough to use as a basis for recognizing people) is much more widespread than the notion that he can. Even the most obvious of facial expressions, such as a smile, is more often referred to as something that can be heard, or otherwise inferred, than “seen” by means of the radar sense. Looking at what Mark Waid has had to say on the topic, it’s pretty clear that he imagines the finer details of the human face to be beyond Matt’s grasp.

Aside from what writers have had to say on the subject, it is also a well-known observation that being able to recognize faces is one of the first things to go when someone’s sight deteriorates. People whose vision is at or even below the 20/200 mark (the legal blindless limit, and the equivalent of having only one tenth of normal visual acuity) commonly have no problems with mobility and don’t need to use a white cane. Facial recognition, on the other hand, is an ability that starts to drop off as early as around the 20/30 – 20/40 mark. This is not surprising considering the number of people who have fully correctable vision but will attest to failing to recognize people when not wearing their glasses. If you consider how much the color of people’s eyes, skin, lips, hair, eyebrows etc help in recognizing people, that’s obviously another disadvantage that Matt would have.

In essence, since it’s highly unlikely that Daredevil’s radar sense comes even close to normal visual acuity (see, for instance, the “radar” subheading in this post) and since we know for a fact that he can’t “see” in color, it seems reasonable to assume the fine details of the human face elude him. So, in response to Daniel, it seems that Daredevil wasn’t lying to Mole Man after all, despite what that panel would suggest.

Silhouettes versus 3-D

With Daniel’s comment dealt with to the best of my ability, I thought I’d take the opportunity to address a couple of other radar-related things that might provide some food for thought, the first being whether the three-dimensional take on the radar makes more sense than the silhouettes that have been a common artist’s choice historically. I would argue that both are equally valid, but at different ranges. I’ll get to why below this beautiful panel from Daredevil #1 (Vol 3), that actually shows Paolo Rivera drawing people as silhouettes (in order to emphasize their heart beats, I suspect).

Historically, the above take on the radar sense has been much more common, and is also seen in at least one scene from Marcos Martín’s issues. For close-ups, the wireframe approach which reveals more depth and follows the contours of objects more closely makes more sense to me given that whatever the radar sense really is, it relies on the relative distances between Daredevil and various points in space around him. This is key to understanding one of the main differences between normal vision and the radar sense: The first creates depth from two flat images (one presented to each eye), the other creates an image – or understanding, rather – from only relative depths.

However, at greater distances, the “shadow” cast by the reflection of some signal (sound, or something else) should appear relatively flatter. Think about it this way: If you take a large object, like a car, and imagine that you’re standing right in front of if (say 5 ft away), then the windshield will be approximately twice as far away from you as the bumper, making the relative distances of the two parts of the car large. The farther away from you the car is, however, the smaller the relative distance between the windshield and the bumper compared to the distance between yourself and either surface. If you’re relying on sound (whether ambient of self-produced), or some other kind of energy with a frequency pattern to it, you will eventually reach the point where you can’t resolve the difference between the signal that bounces back from the windshield and the one that bounces back from the bumper and your overall impression of the object will be dominated by the “silhouette” given by its two-dimensional form.

Of course, I have no idea of how Daredevil’s radar sense would work if he were a real person (who does?) so I don’t have the faintest clue at which point common everyday objects would start to appear flat to him, I’m just saying that they would appear flatter at greater distances. Then again, our own stereoscopic vision stops working when viewing objects at distances greater than 150-170 meters, at which point we start using only monocular cues (inferences that can be made about perspective and relative size in the absence of binocular vision) to understand depth. However, we can see all the way to the horizon, something Matt Murdock most certainly cannot, which brings us to the second thought experiment of this post.

The range of the radar sense

This name of this blog is a play on the title of Brian Bendis’s and Alex Maleev’s last story arc on Daredevil: The Murdock Papers. I think most people would agree that that arc was not Bendis’s best work on the title (for one, it had Elektra confessing to helping the Kingpin gather documents that didn’t actually exist…). It also introduced the questionable notion that S.H.I.E.L.D. has information about the range of Daredevil’s radar sense. I’m mentioning it here, however, because while I may have disagreed with much of what Bendis did in the senses department, there’s definitely a great deal of logic to the radar having a finite range. Again, this assumption holds regardless of what we imagine the radar to be.

I mentioned above that one big difference between the radar perspective and normal vision is how the former constructs image from depths while the latter constructs depth from images. Another key difference is the “light source” factor. Those of us who can see light rarely have to bring our own light source to the party. With indoor lighting and, more importantly for greater distances, that big yellow disk up in the sky that makes sure everything we need to see is clearly illuminated, we can see as far as we need to. Literally for miles.

The Daredevil experience is more like walking into a pitch black cave with a 360 degree headlight on your head. How far you can see depends on the intensity of the signal, of course. However, it’s not infinite. The inverse square law dictates that the intensity of an electromagnetic signal (such as light or radiowaves) emanating in all directions from a point source diminishes by a factor of four for each doubling of the distance from the source. If we’re talking about sound, the law dictates that the intensity is halved with each doubling of the distance from the source. So, whether Daredevil’s head actually emits some kind of sound or radiowave, the signal will die off pretty quickly. The situation is obviously similar if he relies on ambient sound (my own favorite interpretation).

This actually matches what we’ve seen in the daredevil comic pretty well, with many writers emphasizing that the radar allows Daredevil to get an idea of his immediate surroundings. The interpretation of “immediate” probably varies quite a bit by writer though. Either way, at greater distances, things won’t just appear flatter, but fainter as well. Eventually, no signal will bounce back and anything at the far end of the range will disappear into a void. For this reason, I’m a much bigger fan of how the “far away” is handled in the panel below on the left (nothing is bounced back from the “far away” position beyond the shooter) than the one on the right (where even distant skyscrapers are visible). Both are from Daredevil #1.

With the notion that Daredevil really can’t “see” very far, it’s really not so silly for him to be using that “If I could see what I was doing…” line. Jumping off the top of a skyscraper, it actually makes sense that he can’t perceive the street below.

So, there’s one more geek-out for you, all thanks to Daniel and his comment. So, thanks Daniel (and Paolo Rivera, of course) for inspiring this post!

Review of Daredevil #11

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:06:50 +0000

With this week’s Daredevil #11, the Omega Effect cross-over comes to an end. And, it’s not an altogether satisfying one, I’m sad to say. After the first panel below, I’ll get into some of the details of why this issue failed to fully deliver, but since that involves giving away the ending I’ll try to keep the first couple of paragraphs spoiler free and focus on the things I did like, leaving the rest of the post for those of you have already read this issue (or who don’t intend to for whatever reason). You’ve been warned, moving on.

If we look at this entire event as just a character study, or as a means of getting from A to B, where neither one of those points matter nearly as much as the journey itself, I have very few complaints. On the contrary, this has been a great way to showcase all of the players while keeping their interactions in character and tremendously enjoyable. I’ve gotten many laughs out of these three issues, including Daredevil #11. Also, focusing specifically on Matt Murdock for a moment, I am still convinced that Mark Waid is a natural when it comes to channeling our main character and that he has a profound understanding of what makes Matt tick and how he views his bigger mission as a superhero. Mark Waid has delivered top notch character work for twelve issues straight (including Daredevil #10.1), and that stretch continues here. It’s been a consistently fun, and engaging ride where we’ve had the chance to spend time with tremendously well-written characters. However, it pains me to see the great build-up we saw in Avenging Spider-Man #6 and Punisher #10 come to such a needlessly anti-climactic ending (see below).

The art is, once again, nothing short of amazing with great action scenes and interesting perspectives. Marcho Checchetto has a real knack for creating a sense of space and depth that pulls you into the scene, whether the panel has a wider scope or features a more intimate moment. The art has also been consistently clear and easy to follow which has been very beneficial to this story with its many different players and series of twists and turns. When it comes to the colors, Matt Hollingsworth brings his A game, in characteristic fashion. I actually found myself admiring the nuances of a brick wall. That’s saying something.

So, with all the great art, great character work and entertaining dialogue, what about this issue leaves me wanting something different? Or at least something more? Well, the way this story wraps up, it feels like being in the middle of a movie only to suddenly see the director walk on set saying “Okay guys, that’s a wrap,” and then watch the actors look at their watches and decide it’s time to go out for pizza. Frank Castle is seen uncharacteristically shrugging off the fact that nothing went like it was supposed to and patting himself on the back for giving it a try. Spider-Man is asking Daredevil to agree to hand over the Omega Drive, but doesn’t seem to care much one way or the other, while Daredevil finds himself exactly where he started. Which, incidentally, is an even bigger problem with how this ends up than having it seem too sudden and inconsequential. We end up with Daredevil in almost exactly the same position as where it all started.

A good story can – and should – be as much about the journey as the destination. (Incidentally a point I will be making in my long overdue Daredevil: Season One review which I hope to get to over the weekend.) But I think most people went into this event expecting the balance of power to look slightly different at the end of the story than at the beginning. This doesn’t mean that I was expecting a definitive end to all things Omega Drive-related. On the contrary, we know from solicitations of upcoming issues that the ramifications will be felt for quite some time. However, I don’t see why Matt still being in possession of an intact Omega drive is required for there to be long-lasting consequences. Simple vengeance, or even just suspecting that he has a copy of the information, would have sufficed. The way it all happens, the story manages to feel both too neatly wrapped up and frustratingly unresolved at the same time.

The criticism often leveled at cross-overs is that they are too often about rounding up a group of heroes just for the sake of putting them in a story together, where the story becomes nothing more than an alibi for doing so. With the Omega Effect, we had something very different going: a collaboration that felt organic, and which grew naturally out of a story that had been brewing in Daredevil for quite some time. There were also hints along the way (based on interviews with the writers) of the fall-out of the event affecting both the Daredevil and Punisher series in the coming months. Why, then, with everything going for it, does this story inexplicably end up giving this reader the feeling that the Omega drive was nothing more than a plot device to get these characters to team up? Yes, it was fun. Despite the destination leaving me cold, it was a fun ride getting there. But it feels as if there was so much potential for something more substantial.

Oh well, I will happily be re-reading this story for the humor, the many great character moments and the gorgeous artwork. As far as the rest goes, well… I’m looking forward to the complete change of pace of next week’s Daredevil #12.

Review of Punisher #10

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 21:29:31 +0000

With Punisher #10, the Omega Effect story shifted from planning mode to action mode, making for a less complicated read than last week’s Avenging Spider-Man #6, but every bit as enjoyable. This issue is also very funny, with Spider-Man supplying enough one-liners to make me chuckle out loud more than once, especially in his scenes with the Punisher.

The beginning of the issue sees Frank Castle and Rachael Cole-Alves silently prepare for duty, presented in parallel with Daredevil and Spider-Man doing the same. The difference between the two teams is striking. While the Punisher and his new female side-kick silently get ready to go to war, Daredevil and Spider-Man trade quips and even stop to deliver a baby. It’s a scene that initially struck me as being over the top until I realized that it’s really an ingenious way of showing the differences between someone like Matt compared to someone like Frank. The former is really all about helping people, whatever that might entail, and he never loses sight of that (no pun intended). Frank, on the other hand, is solely focused on his objective, an objective that is really all about him and his own personal need for vengeance, and much less about other people. (And, in case you thought this was the first time Matt delivered a baby, you’d be wrong.)

Next, all four rendez-vous before going into action. Daredevil takes the time to try to reach out to Cole, which – as we’re about to find out – is a futile mission. Spider-Man has about as much success in trying to appeal to Punisher’s softer side. The second half of the issue is all action and ends with a delightful and twisted cliff-hanger that is just what this event needed going into the final issue with next week’s Daredevil #11.

This is a dynamic and perfectly paced issue that does a great job of respecting all of the characters’ individual personalities, traits and conversational styles. Again, the art is fantastic. Marco Checchetto’s characters have great proportions and show a variety of poses that look perfectly natural. He has a real knack for action as well as quieter moments and I really dig the way he draws superhero costumes in a way that makes them look like real garments with seams and folds. I also want to give two thumbs up to Matt Hollingsworth’s colors that set the perfect tone for the various indoor and outdoor nighttime environments.

I’m really excited for next week’s Daredevil and am very happy about the turn this issue takes at the very end. While last week’s Avenging Spider-Man #6 was a good start (even amid the confusion), this issue gets us firmly on track with all readers comfortably onboard. More, please!

News Roundup, April 16

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:59:55 +0000

What the *beep* happened to my weekend? Judging by the stiffness of my back, too much of it was spent on major spring cleaning (thanks to my furry felines Murdock and Elektra, I generally think of cleaning the apartment as “defluffing,” a process that requires chasing rapidly multiplying dust bunnies while bent into uncomfortable positions). So, sadly my Daredevil: Season One review will have to wait until tomorrow. However, there were some news items to come out over the weekend – solicitation-related, to be exact – that I felt were worthy of their own post. So, here goes!

Marvel’s July solicitations included Daredevil #15. The issue’s interior art is by Chris Samnee and Paolo Rivera gives us yet another lovely cover. According to Chris Samnee, Daredevil #15 is the second in a three-issue arc, which makes me wonder about the “arc status” of issues #12 and #13, but I’m sure that will sort itself out.

In other news, Daredevil will also face off against Psylocke in the Avengers vs X-Men companion book Avx Vs #4. I’m not sure that’s something I’m terribly interested in, but what kind of half-ass Daredevil blog would I be running if I didn’t at least make an attempt at dissecting it? In July, we’ll also see a Fantastic Four annual by Alan Davis that’s presented as follows (emphasis mine):

The Thing and The Human Torch investigate a mysterious magical paradox in space and time with the help of Doctor Strange! What dark secrets haunt the history of the ClanDestine? Legendary comics creator Alan Davis kicks off a series of ClanDestine adventures, continuing in Daredevil Annual #1 in August!

Yep, the Daredevil annual by Alan Davis that was mentioned some time last year is due out in August. I can’t say I’m crazy about it being so (seemingly) far removed from the regular goings on in the main series, nor am I a big fans of mysterious magical paradoxes in general. However, just the fact that I’m even complaining should give you an idea of how spoiled us Daredevil fans are becoming.

That’s it for now. I hope you guys have a great rest of the week, and I’ll see you all back here very soon!

Review of Avenging Spider-Man #6

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 21:21:34 +0000

Avenging Spider-Man #6, the first issue of the Omega Effect cross-over, came out today and my overall impression is that it was a gorgeous and exciting start to the story with witty and engaging dialogue. Before getting to more of the good stuff however, I have a confession to make. I don’t completely understand all the different pieces to this puzzle. The issue starts off with Spidey dropping in on Reed Richards, responding to a call he got. Reed tells Peter that Daredevil stopped by (an encounter that was also eluded to in Daredevil #10.1) and that he helped him extract the info on the Black Spectre, but that Daredevil took the drive with him when he left and that Reed was unable to stop him due to being in the middle of a science experiment. This begs all kinds of questions:

Was Reed able to interrupt his work to extract the data, but not long enough to prevent Daredevil from leaving?
Did Reed really help Matt actually upload the data on Black Spectre to the Bugle’s server (as described in Daredevil #10.1)? Why would he do this, no questions asked?
Did Matt get a copy of this on a USB drive or something? If not, how else can they use any of the information “overlapping” with the other criminal organizations (which is mentioned later in this issue) for anything at all? It’s not as if Matt would have had access to anything popping up on Reed’s screen during the extraction process.
What happened to Reed’s science experiment – the critical one involving a parallel universe – while he was doing all this?
Why didn’t Reed just do a back-up of the whole thing while he was at it?

I have to admit, questions like the ones above bother me, as does Matt’s overall approach to dealing with the situation, pitting the players against each other, and bringing down some (but not all) by publishing the data. Considering that this conflict is at the heart of the Omega Effect, and that I’m still not sure what exactly Daredevil, Spider-Man and the Punisher finally agreed to do, you might expect me to not like this issue very much. However, for the time being, I can overlook a lot of this for the simple reason that I really like how these characters are written and how they interact with one another. The dialogue is just that good. And, while many of the details have me just a little too confused for comfort, I do buy into the concept of these characters setting aside their differences and working together. You know, to do whatever it was that they decided to do.

All the characters involved have clear and distinct voices and scenes like the one when Frank first shows up in Matt’s office feels like a perfect tribute to these characters and their past interactions. Matt comes across as smart, on top of his game and very funny in that understated, sarcastic Matt Murdock way. No one does his humor quite like Mark Waid (although, in this issue, he gets help from Greg Rucka as far as the overall plot goes, of course). The action scene with Spider-Man and the ninjas is great – even though I’m technically sick of ninjas – and having this run parallel to the flashback scene between Spider-Man and Reed Richards also works really well. The introduction of Rachel Cole-Alves to this particular mix adds a nice bit of spice and, like I said, if you just look at the character work, I have very few complaints. Hopefully, next issue (Punisher #10) will clarify some of what exactly is going on with the overall plot.

The art is gorgeous. It’s clearly very different from Rivera’s and Martín’s work on the title, but I really dug Marco Checchetto’s art during his last stint on Daredevil and it looks even nicer now. Both Matt and Frank look sexy as hell. I don’t even care if that’s a weird thing to say. The colors are by Daredevil veteran Matt Hollingsworth and the entire tone of the issue is reminiscent of another era in Daredevil’s life, which is definitely suitable for this particular story. Dark and moody works well here and the overall effect is absolutely beautiful.

Yes, this issue might have left me a little confused, but I’m still very satisfied that we’re going to get a story that – while there are no guarantees it will make perfect sense – at least delivers on the character work and dialogue. I’m glad Punisher #10 is just one week away!

The Other Murdock Papers Podcast #2

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 22:01:32 +0000

Hey everyone! Time for another podcast, just in time for new comic book day. This time, I talk about Daredevil’s Eisner nominations, the sales data (again), why I’m looking forward to Daredevil: Season One, my take on digital comics, a couple of projects I’ve been working on and, most importantly, how Matt managed to do everything that happened in the last six issues in just ten days of Marvel time.

Link to this podcast on iTunes

Links to things mentioned in the podcast:

Second sneak peek at Daredevil #12

Paolo Rivera on Where Monsters Dwell (the interview with him starts 30 minutes in).

The Matt Murdock Chronicles

Daredevil in Hulk #50

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 22:18:46 +0000

With almost a week passing by since Hulk #50, by Jeff Parker and Carlo Pagulayan, came out, I figured we’d take a very quick look at what Daredevil was up to this issue. Below you’ll find his entire two-page guest appearance, in which he’s having an Avengers training session (apparently crossing team borders). As always, click to zoom in, click again (anywhere on the picture) to close.

Personally, I think the best line here is Iron Man’s: “We got a little loose with the acceptance process for a while. Notice you’re in now.”

That’s it for now, but I will most definitely be back very soon; there are lots of things going on this week! Since we haven’t seen any more previews of Daredevil: Season One (the original graphic novel by Antony Johnston and Wellinton Alves), which is due out in stores on Wednesday, I refer you to this old post from October for a lettered preview.

Daredevil’s sense of touch, quantified!

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 15:28:38 +0000

Update: This post has now been corrected!

Yes, it’s time for a science post again. I spend a lot of time these days doing research for the Daredevil Science ebook I’m working on (it’ll have some old stuff – revised and updated – along with new material and should be done some time this summer). Of course, all of this has me in science mood more often than usual and it can’t all wait until it makes it into the final product.

For this installment, I’m basically going to continue the discussion that began in a previous post from a couple of years ago, and take one step further in trying to quantify one of Daredevil’s superhuman senses, namely the sense of touch. Or rather, try to figure out specifically how good a person’s sense of touch would have to be in order to be able to read standard print.

Before we start, a disclaimer is in order: The ability (and the inability of us ordinary humans) to read print by touch is limited by two factors. One is the ability to register a signal at all, i.e. for something printed on a page to be perceivable, it needs to actually be raised and give the overall surface some kind of texture. The underlying assumption with Daredevil is, of course, that his threshold for registering, say, the layer of ink on a page is much lower than that of an ordinary person. However, some kind of texture still has to exist or it will feel like an even surface even to someone with an enhanced sense of touch. A problem (for Daredevil, that is) with many modern printing techniques is that they yield surfaces that are perfectly smooth or very nearly so. This was something that Mark Waid brought up in a recent interview where he talked about how modern technology is making life increasingly difficult for Matt. It doesn’t matter how good your sense of touch is if there really isn’t anything for you to feel.

For the purposes of the discussion below, we’re going to have to assume that we are talking about an ink layer that actually does have some measurable thickness to it, enough for someone like Matt to pick up. However, there’s also a second limiting factor in print reading by touch. Because, even provided that the ink layer is thick enough, the spatial resolution of a person’s fingertips also limits wether a line of print, for instance, can be discerned or register as nothing more than an indecipherable smeared line. The topic for today will be to address this second issue. Given that a line of print can be felt, how good does the spatial resolution of the fingertip need to be to be able to perceive individual letters and words?

To help answer this question, we’re going to turn to an exciting paper by K.O. Johnson and J.R. Philips from 1981 that was printed in the Journal of Neurophysiology and which seeks to examine tactile spatial resolution. Out of the four sub-sets of experiments, one specifically addressed the ability of test subjects to correctly identify raised (by 1.5 mm) letters that varied in size from 3 mm to 8 mm in height. On this test, the subjects were able to correctly identify 30 % of the letters at 3 mm, close to 50 % at 4.5 mm, 60 % at 5.5 mm and just over 80% at 8mm. Since the result of this experiment was fairly linear, we can assume that the test subjects would have come close to 100 % for letters 10 mm high. Interestingly, even getting 30 % correct at 3 mm is pretty impressive and well above chance since this test used all 26 letters of the alphabet and the correct response from just guessing would have been 3.8 %. Also, to the extent that people guessed incorrectly, those responses weren’t random either but were confined to a finite set of letters similar in shape to the target. This means that a persons ability to correctly identify whole words and sentences would be higher than their ability to identify individual letters at all letter sizes, since knowledge about which letters and words commonly appear together would come in to play and improve this result. In a sense, this is analogous to lipreading (more appropriately termed speechreading) in which a person uses his implicit knowledge of the language itself to make statistical inferences when the signal is ambiguous.

Given that standard printed letters in a book are around 3 mm in height (at least in the one I grabbed at random from my bookcase), it would seem that even an average person might conceivably do a half-decent guess job if trying to read it, had the thickness of the ink been high enough. Of course, one can easily imagine just how slow and inefficient this would be. For print reading to be worthwhile at all for Matt, his sense of touch would have to be quite a bit better than this.

Interestingly, in the discussion section of this particular paper, the authors are able to use these and other findings to compare the senses of touch and sight, in terms of spatial resolution. This gives us a better idea of the amount of effort that goes into reading small print by touch versus doing so visually. For obvious reasons, tactile spatial resolution can easily be measured as a matter of distance, i.e. by simply giving the dimensions of the smallest discernable letters, for instance. Vision doesn’t quite work this way. You may be able to comfortably read tiny letters from one foot away, but if you move that same piece of text to ten feet away you’d fail miserably because the same piece of visual information at a greater distance takes up a smaller portion of your visual field. Consequently, visual spatial acuity is commonly measured by giving the visual angle. The smallest line on a standard eye chart (also known as a Snellen chart) corresponds to 20/20 vision, which in turn is the equivalent of having a spatial resolution of one minute of arc (= 1/60th of a degree). The height of the letters of that bottom row actually covers five minutes of arc, but you need to be able to see the individual features of the letters in order to recognize them. In terms of comparing vision and touch, Johnson and Phillips conclude that 2.2 mm on the skin is roughly equivalent to one minute or arc perceived visually. This means that you can decipher a 10 mm letter by touch with roughly the same ease as you are able to discern a 0.45 mm letter from one foot away. 0.45 mm (app 1/60th of an inch) sounds awfully small, but if you (like me) have normal vision, you should be able to do this, the same way you are able to read an 8.9 mm high letter at 20 feet on a Snellen chart because they correspond to the same visual angle.

In the image above, you see the relative (these are not to scale) sizes of letters of various sizes. On the far left, very tiny, is the 0.45 mm letter that represents the smallest letter a person with 20/20 vision can reliably (i.e. without error) see at the distance of one foot. Next, you see letters representing the average text in a standard book, followed by four Braille letters (that spell “matt” incidentally) at the correct relative size for standard Braille. On the far right is the 10 mm letter size which represents the tactile equivalent of reading the tiny letters on the far left, more or less. One thing I want to point out here is how relatively economical Braille is in how it maximizes the sense of touch. Before the invention of Braille, they actually did make books for the blind that had large raised letters. The problem, as we can infer from the picture above, was that they had to be quite large and reading the text was very slow. Add to that the fact that Braille can easily be written (yes, even by hand) as well as read efficiently, and it’s easy to see why Louis Braille and his fellow students took to the new system like a duck to water.

So, with the relationship between vision and touch sufficiently established, we should be able to figure out how much better your sense of touch (in terms of spatial resolution) has to be in order to read print of standard size. Since the vast majority of people can reliably identify raised letters with a height of 10 mm, but errors (though not necessarily major ones right away) start to crop up below that point, we need to get Matt from that 10 mm limit down to roughly 3 mm. This means that we need to boost his acuity by a factor of just over three in both dimensions of the surface of the fingertip. Using some quick math, we can conclude that his (fine) touch receptor density would have to increase approximately ten times compared to the norm. However, most of us wouldn’t want to read text so tiny that the letters are just barely legible (i.e. the equivalent of visually reading 0.45 mm letters at a distance of one foot) because it’s uncomfortable and tiring. If we expect Matt to be able to read standard letters by touch with the same level of ease as someone with 20/20 vision is able to, his actual tactile acuity would have to be better. If his fingertips are supposed to be the equivalent of 20/20 vision he should be able to read even those tiny 0.45 mm letters by touch. This means that his spatial resolution would have to be roughly twenty times better (10 mm ~ 20 x 4.5 mm), in both dimensions. Twenty squared is 400, which means that he’s need 400 times as many touch receptors in his fingertips as a normal person.

However, there is a practical problem with this scenario. Since the average person has around 100 touch receptors per fingertip (of different types, not just those specific to detecting fine touch, but 100 is a nice even number…), Matt would need 40 000 touch receptors in order for his fingertips to more or less do nearly the same job as the central portion of the retina. Using the Meissner corpuscle (one of the types of touch receptors in the skin) and it’s 50 micrometer diameter as a reference point, all of those receptors would actually take up 78.5 square millimeters of fingertip real estate. That is several times larger than the actual surface of the fingertip. Being just barely able to spatially resolve raised print by touch (with ten times as many receptors as normal) makes sense in a world of superpowers, but extreme “vision-like” tactile acuity is impossible, even by Marvel Universe standards. Add to this the fact that the layer of ink on most printed material is very thin (and, as we’ve noted, steadily getting thinner), and you’d be hard-pressed to imagine why Matt would rely on print as anything other than a last resort, when possible. Then again, I always thought that his voluntarily shunning Braille (way back in the Silver Age) made very little sense.

If you made it to the end of this post, congratulations! You’re officially as much of a geek as I am. And, it you’ve survived the three updates to this post (I put it together just as I was heading out the door yesterday when I realized I’d screwed up in a couple of places). My apologies for that! At least now it makes a bit more sense.

Review of Daredevil #10.1

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 18:21:42 +0000

Does a title as naturally accessible as the new Daredevil really need a jumping on point in the form of a “point one” issue? Especially when it’s just ten issues into the series and the first six issues have already been conveniently collected in an easy to find hardcover edition? I used to think those kinds of questions were silly and nitpicky. “What do I care? I want more Daredevil!” Having read this issue however, I do find those concerns to be valid. While Daredevil #10.1 was certainly an entertaining read and well worth the price of admission, it also struck me as quite redundant.

On the one hand, this isn’t such a bad thing. Lots of people are ever so mildly annoyed with Marvel’s “point one” initiative and many regular Daredevil readers are bound to skip this one. Doing so will not (and should not) negatively affect their ability to get the most out of the upcoming Omega Effect cross-over story. I really shouldn’t be required reading, and it isn’t.

Okay, that’s all well for the seasoned fans who don’t really need a jumping on point, but what about new readers who are curious about this series? In all honesty, I think Daredevil #10.1 misses the mark here. While starting out at the point of assuming virtually no previous knowledge of Daredevil (and, to Mark Waid’s credit, it does so rather elegantly), the issue changes speed significantly toward the end by possibly trying to do too much. And I’m not so sure that someone completely new to Daredevil wouldn’t still find themselves struggling to make sense of who all these bads guys in the silly hats are.

I think that if Waid had had the lapsed Daredevil reader in mind, rather than the complete novice, this issue wouldn’t have struggled as much as it does. Hampered by the format and by trying to be everything to everybody, this issue is by far the weakest of the new series to date. Mark Waid is, in my mind, a virtuoso when it comes to pacing, plot building and characterization, but all of those skills come across much more clearly in every other issue of Daredevil he’s written. That’s not to say that this is a bad piece of comic book writing (it’s not), but I’d argue that it’s actually a worse jumping on point than, say, Daredevil #9 and #10.

What does work well is the technique of delivering the necessary exposition by telling a story within a story. By having Matt go to visit a new client in prison, tied to both of his personae in ways that are revealed throughout the issue, old readers get a new done-in-one story that is still connected to the larger plot, while new readers are served with various clues to who Daredevil is and what he’s capable of. A funny detail is having Matt’s client tell one version of the main story – with plenty of self-aggrandizing embellishments – while the reader is shown the actual events. The final third of the story, where Daredevil gets proactive on his high-powered adversaries is also very amusing and does a good job of advancing the overall Omega Effect plot, even though the reader might be left wondering why Daredevil didn’t do to all of the co-conspirators what he evidently did to one of the factions.

Another thing that works against my combined impression of this issue is the art by Khoi Pham. The art really isn’t bad and Pham is particularly skilled at drawing characters in costume. The pages showing Daredevil going up against the Megacrime villains are particularly nice, and Javier Rodríguez’s colors help keep the color palette in the realm of the familiar. However, for the last few months, us Daredevil fans have become used to artwork that’s not just good, but absolutely phenomenal. To me, Khoi Pham just doesn’t reach the same kind of heights here.

If you are a Daredevil completist, like me, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try to get your hands on this issue. You’ll enjoy it. However, if you’re a newish reader looking to jump onboard in time for the Omega Effect cross-over, I would advise you to either get the hardcover collecting Daredevil Vol 3, issues #1-6 (that should give you enough background on how Matt got his hands on the Omega drive), or check to see if your store still has copies of Daredevil #9 and 10. Either of those two options will give you a much better sense of the kind of magic Mark Waid and the rest of the team has been cooking up over the last year.

Review of Daredevil #10

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 17:22:30 +0000

Daredevil #10 is another great issue by Mark Waid, Paolo Rivera and the rest of the team. The pacing on this book continues to be pitch perfect and and every single issue amazes me by offering so much story progression – on several fronts – without sacrificing any of the depth.

While you know that each issue is going to be great, that tends to be the only thing you know. Sure, we all knew Daredevil was going to escape almost being swallowed whole (and not just from checking out the previews), but nothing else in this issue happens the way you expect. While Daredevil and Mole Man come to blows in a wonderfully choreographed duel that sees the seemingly ungraceful subterranean bounce around like an over-sized Yoda, they also seem to switch roles in a surprising yet revealing manner.

We come into this issue already guessing that Mole Man must be a mad man to steal a bunch of coffins just to get his hands on the corpse of a long lost love. While we don’t walk away from this story ready to give him a clean bill of mental health, Mole Man is not as delusional as one would have guessed. There is no magic potion or other outlandish plan to bring her back and as the issue progresses, it is Daredevil who is shown as the one who has the biggest problem letting go of the past.

With this issue, one of the many wounds of Matt’s past is torn open and the lack of complete closure from his encounter with Mole Man, as well as the pressure he is under with the Omega Drive in his possession (we get to see in this issue just what the Black Cat decided to do with it) combine to make him sufficiently on edge to cause Foggy to start worrying. The façade has indeed started to crack, but Waid doesn’t go overboard with this development which feels completely organic and in line with how Daredevil has been written up to this point. This is, on the whole, an issue which feels sad, morbid and whimsical at the same time. Those are not the kinds of adjectives you usually find anywhere near each other, but the story covers all of these bases and more.

The art just keeps getting better and better. Paolo Rivera’s panel work is pure genius, starting out strong on the very first page as Daredevil falls into the maw and each of his impressions are framed according to the receiving sense. The fight scene is gorgeous, the emotional expressions of the characters faces are spot on, and details like having their brief affair told in the reflection of Matt’s window as he reads a note from the Black Cat push the artwork into a class of its own. Joe Rivera’s excellent inks play a vital part in making the underworld look just right and Javier Rodríguez’s colors are amazing as always. It’s understandable that Mole Man would expect Daredevil to be blinded by the bright gem stones, the color was intense enough to almost make mine tear up.

I could not be happier with this book right now. It’s exciting, beautiful and combines the exotic superhero elements with the human drama in a way that makes the reader deeply invested in the story and all characters involved.

Matt Murdock’s crumbling façade

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 21:14:53 +0000

Daredevil #10 comes out tomorrow! I know that you’re probably thinking “finally!” and I couldn’t agree more. It’s been a long month with the five weeks that have passed since Daredevil #9 came out. On a more positive note, we’re going to be drowning in Daredevil stuff for the next six or seven weeks so I can’t really complain about that. Still, there’s no reason to wait until tomorrow to start analyzing what may or may not be on the horizon, so let’s get to that below!

Note of warning: While I generally post pretty spoiler-free reviews, I’ve come to realize that I’m pretty worthless at protecting people from spoilers lifted from advance looks at covers and solicitations, so if you tend to try and stay away from those, I suggest you stop reading here. Specifically, we’ll be talking about information from the solicitation text for Daredevil #10, #13 and #14, in addition to things Mark Waid has hinted at in reference to Daredevil #13.

According to the solicitation text for tomorrow’s issue, we’ll not only be enjoying Daredevil’s encounter with Mole Man, but also get to see “the cracks in Matt Murdock’s façade begin to show.” This is followed up with further hints for Daredevil #13 (“And Matt’s “happy go lucky” veneer at last begins to peel back, revealing… darker truths that may end his career as Daredevil”) and Daredevil #14 (“Meanwhile, Foggy uncovers more evidence that Matt’s not quite the man he seems”). Add to this what Mark Waid had to say on the matter in an interview conducted by MTV Geek! at WonderCon (click here for a transcipt):

“Foggy knows that [Matt's new attitude] is probably not the most healthy way of dealing with Matt’s depressive tendency. This is probably not the most healthy way of dealing with the choices that Matt has made over the years and Foggy is always wondering – and you’ll see this more in the upcoming issues – is it a façade? Is it for real or is it a façade, and if it’s a façade, is it starting to crack? Foggy finds some very interesting things out about Matt – that he didn’t know and that we didn’t know – starting in issue 13 that may start to make the whole house of cards tumble down.”

We all know that this is the road we had to be going down eventually, but I have to admit that I’m really curious about the “how” in this case. What exactly will Foggy find? I even had some fun (jokingly) speculating about this on Twitter today, and others joined in, but as is nearly always the case – particularly with Mark Waid running the show – I’m sure it will be something that never even entered my mind.

However, what I’d like to discuss with you guys is the bigger picture here. I’ve already seen a couple of online comments bemoaning what looks (to some, at least) like the new happy vibe going out the window. Without really knowing what we’re heading into, I’m not really all that concerned. Not only do I think anything happening in the next few issues will see Waid & Co. start to lose steam or direction on this book, I applaud the decision to actually have Matt deal with his issues. I think I’ve mentioned this a few times before, but one of the biggest problems I’ve had with the last few years of doom and gloom – as great as they’ve been – hasn’t been the doom and gloom per se, but the fact that the catastrophes in Matt’s life appear to happen one right after another with very little time for Matt to recuperate. Like an overworked muscle, his psyche has kept weakening and too many things have been left unresolved. What I believe Waid is doing is restoring the character to a state where he is believably working through his massive amount of baggage. This in itself is positive and something that may superficially look like just another round of heartache for Daredevil, but is really something altogether different.

What kind of thing might Foggy discover that would threaten Matt’s future as Daredevil (though it won’t, of course)? Is he finally getting that long overdue cancer in his eyes from the radiation? My guess is as good as anyone’s, but I personally feel confident that whatever Mark Waid has up his sleeve is more about the evolution and growth of the character than simple shock value. Feel differently about what we might see coming up? Write your thoughts in the comments!

The sounds of silence

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 16:47:43 +0000

It’s been a while since I did a Daredevil science post, but as there still remains loads of things to cover – despite the 30,000(!) words I’ve already devoted to the topic – and because you guys continue to amaze me by actually digging the science posts (they tend to generate an unusual amount of comments), I thought I’d give this topic another go. In fact, I’m also looking to add another chapter to my “history of the radar sense” series of posts next week so you radar geeks have that to look forward to as well.

With this post, I’d like to once again examine some of the things that you might be able to do if you had superhearing, and what the experience would be like. I’ve touched on various aspects of this before, explaining why a heightened ability to hear low frequencies actually would let you hear heartbeats, and how having a wider hearing range (and more sensitive hearing overall) would amp up a person’s ability to echolocate. Regardless of whether you prefer the interpretation that Daredevil’s radar sense is echolocation (exclusively or primarily) or the one that suggests that the radar is its own mysterious sense (like we currently see with how Mark Waid writes Daredevil), this is undeniably a good thing. There isn’t a person out there, provided that said person is able to hear, who doesn’t make use of the information provided by sounds interacting with otherwise silent objects. Even if the radar is its own sense, separate from hearing, Matt would likely still benefit greatly from being able to use echoes, especially with his hearing essentially being his most important sense and his “visual” experience being as relatively impoverished as it is. Proficient echolocators can not only find and stay clear of objects but often tell a great deal about what materials they are made of, to name just one possible benefit.

So yes, superhearing would make it possible to hear heartbeats and heighten a persons ability to detect silent objects. But what about the rest of the soundscape? How would having superhearing change a persons auditory perceptions beyond sounds simply being louder?

I suspect that most Daredevil creators and fans alike, to the extent that they even think all that much about the subject, are stuck in the mindset of Matt Murdock’s hearing being much like yours or mine, just with the volume dial turned way up. In reality – if we must concern ourselves with such things – there is very little room for superhuman improvement in the frequency range of human speech, particularly between 400 and 5000 Hz. It is simply not physically possible to hear that much better than an average person in the most sensitive part of the spectrum before the absolute limit of sound becomes a factor (sound can only get quieter to the point where it physically ceases to exist, i.e. where the movement of the vibrating air molecules is no bigger than what we would expect from random motion). In this sense, Daredevil’s highly exaggerated ability to hear speech over long distances or through multiple walls is, perhaps surprisingly, much less realistic than his ability to hear heartbeats. Because, while humans hear extremely well in those mid-frequencies, our hearing drops off pretty sharply outside of this range, with sounds below 20 Hz and above 20,000 Hz becoming completely inaudible (in reality, for most people past their teens, even that 20,000 Hz figure is a big stretch). This is were the gap between the humanly possible and the physically possible begins to widen, and this is where superpowers could give someone a big boost.

What this would mean for the young Matt Murdock waking up after his accident is that the sounds of people’s voices probably wouldn’t seem strikingly different to him. They would sound louder, sure, and maybe a little off, but the biggest change to him would be all the other sounds that would have suddenly become proportionately much louder still. The low-frequency rumble of ventilation, traffic and stormy weather would likely be a bigger shock – especially since these sounds easily pass through walls – along with the suddenly much more striking presence and loudness of high-frequency sounds. Did you ever wonder why your cat or dog hates vacuum cleaners? Well, on top of the noise we can hear, vacuum cleaners generate lots of noise that we can’t hear, but that our pets can. Many of our fellow mammals have a much greater capacity to hear high-frequency sounds than we do. Many of them also rely on these inaudible (to us) sounds to communicate. If we expect Matt to be able to hear ultra-sound, he would also come back to a Hell’s Kitchen apartment where he can suddenly hear the rats squeaking on the other side of the wall.

Because not all sounds would become proportionately louder, it is a safe bet that the superhearing-endowed Matt Murdock actually inhabits a world that is not only generally louder, but sounds qualitatively different as well. With bigger gains by necessity being made in the frequencies average humans have a relatively more difficult time hearing, i.e. low and high frequencies, any sound which incorporates a wide range of components of various frequencies would sound different to him compared to before his accident. The bass in a song on the radio would suddenly stand out more, the household items he might have been used to would sound very different (consider the vacuum cleaner scenario mentioned above), and the soundscape as a whole would likely initially appear to be completely foreign, not just “loud.” Of course, humans are highly adaptable, and soon the initially strange and disorienting would become the new normal, but I personally think it’s fascinating to dwell on just how different the world of our favorite blind superhero would be, if we really start digging beneath the surface. Having your hearing dramatically heightened at the low and high end of the hearing spectrum would be like some inebriated studio technician walking in to your auditory world and going crazy with the soundboard.

Of all well-known superheroes, Daredevil is clearly the one whose power set presents the most obvious example of a mixed blessing. Not only do his heightened senses often present him with an uncomfortable and overwhelming amount of input, he is also forced to operate without conventional vision. On top of robbing him of his sight, the accident that paved the way for Daredevil also robbed him of the experience of silence. Pushing his senses into the kind of overdrive that would put his hearing threshold right at the point of literally hearing air molecules moving around would give the world a swooshing background sound. In a way, this would be not unlike a strange form of tinnitus. Even if Matt could escape the sounds of city life, “silence” itself would still have a sound. And, even this relative silence would be hard to come by. The many barely noticeable sounds of our natural and man-made environments would never escape the attention of the superhumanly hearing-enhanced. No wonder Matt Murdock is often cranky, and likes to turn to meditation to recuperate. Who said being a superhero would be easy?

Daredevil #14 solicitation and general news roundup

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 08:29:01 +0000

Hey everyone! No, I don’t usually devote an entire post to the solicitation of a single comic book issue, but with Daredevil #14 I’m making an exception so we can sort out the details surrounding the art duties on this book as it goes into the second half of 2012. Also, while I’m at it, here’s a brief (but fun and informative!) interview with Paolo Rivera from last week’s Toronto Comicon.

Okay, so how about what’s happening in June? Well, the official solicitation had this to say:

“Megacrime and Punishment” continues.

Daredevil imprisoned in Latveria for crimes against the state – and no amount of lawyering can get him out of there!

Meanwhile, Foggy uncovers more evidence that Matt’s not quite the man he seems.

It also states that the issue is written by Mark Waid (no surprises there…), and the the cover is by Paolo Rivera (see a gorgeous slice of it below). However, the interiors are said to be by Khoi Pham. This is in error.

As has been confirmed by both Samnee himself and Daredevil editor Stephen Wacker, the art for this issue will be by Chris Samnee. At some point while traveling through the production pipeline, the Megacrime and Punishment arc (Daredevil #13-15) was going to be pencilled by Khoi Pham, but this is no longer the case. Pham will be the artist for Daredevil #13, after that duties will revert back to Samnee who, as you’ll recall, will also be doing Daredevil #12.

So, to do a little recap of what’s happening in the next few months (as far as the main title is concerned), I’ll refer you to this handy list!

Daredevil #10, out on March 28, art by Paolo Rivera.
Daredevil #10.1, out on April 4, art by Khoi Pham.
Daredevil #11, out on April 25, art by Marco Checchetto
(Checchetto is the artist for all Omega Effect tie-ins).
Daredevil #12, out on May 2, art by Chris Samnee.
Daredevil #13, out on May 16, art by Khoi Pham.
Daredevil #14-15, out in June and July, art by Chris Samnee.
Starting with Daredevil #16 (or #17, see link to video interview above),
Paolo Rivera will return for a three or four issue arc.

That wasn’t too complicated, was it? Now, get the word out there so that people don’t go around thinking we won’t see any more of Chris Samnee in the near future. As you may have heard, it was also announced yesterday that Mark Waid and Chris Samnee will be doing a four-issue mini of The Rocketeer together. For anyone who’s worried, this doesn’t mean either of them is leaving Daredevil, and I wish them both the best of luck with that project!

For anyone who’s curious, the Braille lettering on Doctor Doom’s mask on the Daredevil #14 cover reads “Doom.” Or, to be more precise, “doom” (since it lacks the capitalization symbol in front). Now you know!

“Sometimes in my dreams, I can see”

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 23:46:12 +0000

“Do blind people see in their dreams?” To be honest, I’ve never thought much about this question myself. Or rather, I’ve possibly thought about it once or twice, and simply decided that it makes sense for people who were born blind or lost their sight very early to not have anything like the kind of visual dreams sighted people have, whereas blind people who have memories of seeing would at least occasionally have dreams which contain visual images. It always struck me as being pretty obvious and straight-forward.

However, this appears to be a fairly commonly asked question on the topic of blindness (along with the stranger question of whether blind people dream at all). It’s also one of those things that have been touched on in the Daredevil title in the not too recent past, and that makes it a prime topic for at least a quick post. First, let’s take a look at two images from Daredevil #1 (vol 3), both with art by Marcos Martín, before briefly delving into the topic.

To make a long story short, would Matt see in his dreams? The most likely answer is the one he gives above: “Sometimes, just sometimes.” Whether someone who’s blind sees in their dreams depends on two things*: 1) whether the person has any visual experiences to draw from and 2) how much time has passed since the person lost their sight. Since Matt has been blind for more than half of his life – i.e. a relatively long time – the vast majority of his dreams would mimic his experiences while awake. So, he might commonly have radar sense dreams (similar to what we see below, as he comes to after the bus crash in Daredevil #7, art by Paolo Rivera), but probably wouldn’t dream in technicolor very often.

The cases above aren’t the only ones depicting Matt being in some kind of dream state. We also have the scene below, from Daredevil #502, by Andy Diggle and Roberto de la Torre. He also talks about seeing in his dreams in Daredevil #9 (vol 2), by David Mack and Joe Quesada.

So there you have it! In case anyone was wondering. Since I tweeted about this post while working on it, I also got sent this link to the YouTube page of “the blind film critic” Tommy Edison where he actually answers this question for himself (in under a minute and a half). I found that most of his videos are hilariously funny and also have to recommend the video “Shit sighted people say to blind people.” Thanks to Alice the “Darediva” for the tip!

*) For more information on some of the research done on blind people’s dreams, see
Hurovitz, C., Dunn, S., Domhoff, G. W., & Fiss, H. (1999). The dreams of blind men and women: A replication and extension of previous findings. Dreaming, 9, 183-193

10 things that had me excited for the relaunch

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 22:35:20 +0000

The ten things that had me excited for the relaunch? As in, the don’t excite me anymore? Hardly! The idea for this post is just to take a look back at the little countdown series I did in July of last year, just as we were waiting for the new Daredevil #1 to come out. Which things on the list excite me even more now and are there any that have fallen short of what I had expected?

Below is the list of topics I brought up then (click each heading to go to the original post), and my thoughts on what’s happened since. Obviously, when it comes to the series as a whole, it has by far surpassed my expectations. As spoiled as we Daredevil fans often are, I can’t remember a time during my seven years of reading Daredevil on an ongoing basis that I’ve been as eagerly awaiting each issue as I am right now. Nor can I remember being as compelled to read each issue over and over again. But, enough gushing, let’s get down to business.

Paolo Rivera’s radar

While this new way of drawing the radar sense has since become standard – guest artists like Emma Rios (Spider-Man #677) and Kano (Daredevil #8) replicated it and now Chris Samnee can be seen doing the same thing – it was Rivera who first introduced it. The panel that originally caught my attention and became the inspiration for the original post was the one of Daredevil “looking” at the Spot (see below), and I know I wasn’t the only one whose jaw dropped at the sight of it.

Needless to say, the way the entire art team has dedicated themselves to trying to portray Daredevil’s senses has been a constant source of joy. What makes the radar sense in particular so difficult to convey is that it consists only of relative depths, and a sense of absence versus presence while lacking color information. The way us real life sighted humans go about things is to construct a sense of space from a two-dimensional color or grayscale image (using binocular vision, motion parallax and other clues) where colors and nuances tell us everything.

In many ways, these two ways of seeing are each other’s complete opposites. One constructs a sense of space from an image, the other constructs an image from a sense of space. One is also a perfect fit for the comic book page whereas the other forces artists to come up with the kind of topographic representation that Paolo Rivera pulls off here. While it can never be more than a model for imagining the unimaginable, it is a very fine representation. The image of the Spot here was indeed the start of something great.

“A fresh new voice”

My second post in the series found its inspiration in a quote by Mark Waid. When asked by Marvel.com what his mission statement was for the new series, he said, among other things: “And, with luck, to do what Frank Miller did 30 years ago: bring a fresh new voice to the series that’s respectful but not in any way imitative of what’s gone before.”

This is certainly something that Waid has been very successful in doing. The book as it is now is a very different read compared to what we’ve seen in the last few years. At the same time – and this is the amazing part – almost all fans have welcomed the change. Apparently, what the new creative team has brought to the table was something fans wanted and needed without even knowing it. Many have come out and said that they were skeptical of the changes before finding themselves firmly onboard.

At the same time, I have to admit to frequently wincing in disagreement (I think I just came up with a new expression…) whenever I hear anyone compare this run to the classic original run by Stan Lee or anything else from the Silver Age. I don’t quite understand why fans and critics are so eager to try to label it at all. The comparison with Stan Lee’s run is so superficial that it completely misses everything that’s great about this book right now. Even worse, I think that using labels like swashbuckling, and “classic superhero” actually risks alienating many people who might actually enjoy these recent Daredevil issues. It’s not that they miss the mark, but that they are insufficient when it comes to describing what I feel is very multi-dimensional body of work.

Yes, volume three of Daredevil is fun, has lots of fantastic action, and a new brighter outlook for the main character. At the same time, these tales have not been superficial or inconsequential. They may be fun, but they are never goofy. And Matt may smile more often, but there is still a definite sense of his being a man desperately struggling to regain control of his life. None of the characters are caricatures, they are creations of genuine depth and the stories told about them make you care about what happens next. I suspect that it’s these qualities that have made seasoned fans want to stick around because the best Daredevil stories have always been the ones that are the most character-driven. The reason Mark Waid has been able to shake things up the way he has is because he has such a firm grasp of who Matt Murdock is. That’s what I believe readers appreciate.

A blind hero who’s actually, you know, blind

This was also inspired by a quote by Mark Waid. One of many, in fact, that have touched on the fact that Daredevil is not just about amazing heightened senses, fighting skills and athletic prowess. There’s also the too rarely touched on, yet blatantly obvious, fact that the character’s blindness carries with it real consequences. For much too long, Matt’s blindness has been dealt with – to the extent that it’s been dealt with at all – as something that is completely offset by his heightened senses or simply as a matter of esthetics. I guess many creators have just seen him as “differently sighted” and never stopped to think about what that really means.

While Daredevil’s heightened senses, the radar in particular, leaves his level of mobility unaffected or even improved (except for when it comes to driving or finding a particular location in an unfamiliar area), the average person has access to a wealth of visual information that lies firmly beyond Matt Murdock’s grasp. The areas that Mark Waid has focused on the most in interviews has been the increasing significance of screen-based information in modern society and this is clearly one of the more obvious things that would present a problem to someone who perceives only depths and shapes. Waid has also talked about how getting inside Matt’s head is something he comes back to time and time again in whatever situations he finds himself in and I’m just incredibly grateful that he brings this level dedication to the task of writing this complex character.

As any regular reader of this blog knows, this is a topic of great interest to me. However, it’s been gratifying to realize that I’m not the only one who seems to care. I’ve read countless reviews where critics have pointed out how it’s become much more obvious these days that Daredevil can’t see and every single one of them has intended such statements as compliments.

Big art

This was an art appreciation post. More specifically, my appreciation was aimed at the preview images of Marcos Martín’s two-page spread that featured Matt and Foggy walking across the page, as well as the Daredevil and Captain America spread from Daredevil #2, by Paolo Rivera. Obviously, I’m still digging the art and how splash pages, when they used in the current run, are not only stunning to look at but have an obvious purpose. Too often in comics, big brawl spreads, while usually nice to look at, come across as filler. I’m sure they take ages for the artist to complete, but when used too often and in lieu of plot progression they make for an unfulfilling and much too brief reading experience.

Rather than go back to the pages featured in the original post, below you’ll find some examples of “big art” (as I jokingly phrased it in the original post) we’ve seen since then. On the left is an example from Daredevil #2, and on the right is one from Daredevil #9, both by Paolo Rivera (inks by Joe Rivera and colors by Javier Rodríguez, of course). Another page that would fit in well right here is that great looking first page from Daredevil #12, by Chris Samnee that I talked about in my last post.

The cast

Ah, the cast. You know how I feel about the supporting cast, the book wouldn’t be complete without it and there is plenty to indicate that Matt’s friends and associates will take on even bigger roles in coming issues. We have newcomers in the form of Kirsten McDuffie (and let’s not forget that Foggy has played nookie with her room mate), and Austin Cao, in addition to good old Foggy Nelson. One thing that Mark Waid mentioned early on though was that the law firm was going to have a very annoying new secretary. We’ve met the secretary – in Daredevil #4 – but haven’t seen much of her annoying side just yet. In general, this would be the only item on the list where the full potential has yet to be realized. I expect this to change in coming months though.

No more ninjas

Speaking of the cast, it also consists of a growing list of villains. And there’s not a ninja in sight! The Hand and the Kingpin are excellent adversaries for Daredevil and when either one makes a return, I’m sure something good will come of it. If that’s not for a few years though, that’s totally fine with me.

Mark Waid has received some flak for pitting Daredevil against what might appear to be goofy, old-fashioned villains. However, it must be said that most of the criticism has come before anyone’s seen them in action. Klaw was creepy as hell, and even Mole Man comes across as something from a horror movie. They are certainly no laughing matter and the stories they appear in are well-crafted. I will definitely admit to initially being a bit hesitant about the names that were being thrown around before the relaunch – even while I applauded Waid’s decision to forego ninjas – but it’s clear at this point that there was no reason to worry. Right now, I’m so confident in Waid’s ability to make the inclusion of any villain seem logical that I’d even welcome back Stilt-Man. Maybe.

A cane that actually looks like a white cane

This was one of those things that probably wouldn’t strike most readers as a particularly big deal, but I will honestly say that it would have bugged the heck out of me if they hadn’t gotten it right. Thankfully, they did. Paolo Rivera even managed to make the cane work believably as a billy club without sacrificing the qualities of either one. Not much to say here except, bravo!

The internal monologue

I really liked Ed Brubaker’s use of (lots of) internal dialogues for Matt, and it was something I missed for most of Diggle’s run. When used well, those little caption boxes make us feel closer to the character(s), and in the case of Daredevil, the internal monologue becomes yet another way for the writer to describe to the reader exactly how Daredevil perceives a situation. So far, Mark Waid has made liberal use of internal monologue for this purpose and I think it helps us get into his head a little better.

Matt the lawyer

How was Waid going to focus on Matt’s career while changing things up by having him serve the law in a different capacity? I know we were all scratching our heads until it was revealed that Matt and Foggy were now in the business of helping people help themselves, that is coaching them to represent themselves in court.

The way this idea has played out has been great. It’s given us plenty of Matt and Foggy time around the office without subjecting anyone to long court room scenes while at the same time functioning as a plot device for introducing new cases for Matt to deal with in his Daredevil guise. Matt still gets to be in the lawyering business, and he’s even found a new potential love interest in assistant D.A. Kirsten McDuffie.

The no longer suicidal Man Without Fear

I can’t say how happy I am that this finally happened! What’s great about the new take on Matt though, is that it really isn’t about wiping away his years of heartache – first of all, it’s abundantly clear that he’s in some kind of denial – but that it gives the character back his full range of emotions. We’ve seen him during some darker moments (see below for what is clearly a crack in the surface), and he recently (see Daredevil #9) let his judgement give way to anger for the first time in a long time.

They key here is that Daredevil has not been transformed into a completely different character that’s all about fun and games. What we see is more a case of Matt being portrayed as a complete human being, and moving away from his portrayal as so down on his luck that he almost seemed like caricature from one of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Matt at his worst was not a relatable character. I’ve said several times that Matt Murdock is like a great actor who’s unfortunately been type cast into playing only one type of role (the one that brought him the greatest commercial success). We finally get to see him oscillate between different moods in a way that seems more natural and is, quite frankly, a whole lot more engaging.

Well, this was my look back at the details and developments that appealed to me about the relaunch before we had even read the first issue. It is incredibly rewarding to be able to return to the expectations I had, and realize that this book has more than delivered in every respect. What were some of your hopes and what do you hope for down the line?

Samnee hits it out of the (amusement) park!

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 16:15:38 +0000

UPDATED: See below regarding why we should be even more blown away by that first page!

I don’t usually devote a separate post to previews, but this is a special kind of preview. Not only is it a sneak peak of an issue that comes out a full two months from now, but it’s the first finished art we get to see from Chris Samnee. Oh, and it’s awesome. I don’t even mind that Marvel’s releasing these pages this early totally screwed up my contest (announced on the podcast yesterday).

The accompanying press release from Marvel (offering details beyond the previously released solicitation), reads as follows:

Marvel is pleased to present your first look at, Daredevil #12. The best reviewed comic of the year continues as writer, Mark Waid, welcomes aboard fan favorite artist Chris Samnee (Thor: The Mighty Avenger, Ultimate Comics Spider-Man)! Matt Murdock’s alter-ego leaves him little time for a social life; but the Man Without Fear finally makes time for Kirsten McDuffie! But, the assistant district attorney’s motives aren’t so innocent; she’s on a mission to uncover Daredevil’s true identity at any cost!

Will Daredevil’s super-human senses save him from falling hopelessly in love? Find out in Daredevil #12, hitting comic shops everywhere and the Marvel Comics app, this May; as Samnee joins the all-star Daredevil creative team, creating unimaginable adventures only The Man Without Fear can handle!

Click each image to zoom in, click again to close.

A couple of comments on this preview: First of all, wow! And that goes for Javier Rodriguez’s colors as well. In this particular scene, the vibrant colors of the amusement park on Coney Island, as well as those of the evening sky, also seem to take on special meaning because the two main characters in the scene are unable (temporarily in Kirsten’s case) to really appreciate any of it. Maybe that’s just my interpretation, but I do think there’s a bit of irony in this scene being so unusually bright while featuring a blind guy leading around his date in a blindfold. It’s also nice that they are once again incorporating real sites around New York in the book.

Another thing I think is cool is how the radar perspective on that second page really does look three-dimensional. That’s just how I imagine the radar, actually: very good at relaying depth, but not much to cheer for in the resolution department. I wonder though, do new artists have to take a new radar crash course overseen by Paolo Rivera before coming onboard?

What do you guys think? Are we Daredevil fans lucky or what?! Oh, and do you guys have any guesses on what they’re talking about in this scene? Kirsten still pestering him about being Daredevil, one would assume!

UPDATED: After a comment Samnee made on Twitter about there being a subtle “radar effect” on that first page, I had to go look at it again. And there it is! Everything from having Matt’s head right at the center of the ferris wheel to the diagonal stripes that run through the image at various angles. Why didn’t I react to this when I first saw it? Argh! Anyway, have a look at the things I found by clicking this image! Can you guys see anything else?

The Other Murdock Papers Podcast!

theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 08:39:16 +0000

“What’s that? A podcast?” Why, yes it is! Though you may be asking yourself why I would feel compelled to add yet another medium to this modestly active website, there are a few different reasons why I’ve decided to take this route, such as:

I like talking.
I like talking about Daredevil.
Perusing this site while driving is most definitely not safe. Listening to me talk while driving is much safer, though I can’t guarantee you won’t choke on your coffee. As you can tell, I care deeply about your safety.
Podcasting seems to be “in” right now. Being cool obviously means a lot to me.
A couple of people have actually asked me whether I might consider doing a podcast. Consider it officially considered.
It’s a challenge! I like challenges. At least the kind that doesn’t involve throwing myself from an aircraft at ten thousand feet.

So with all of these reasons in favor of doing a podcast, why has it taken me this long to actually get to it? Well, lack of time has been one reason, but certainly not the main one. The big hurdle I had to get past was coming up with a format that works even when it’s just me talking. It would be fun to have a co-host from time to time, or maybe do interviews, but if I’m going to do this on any kind of regular basis I can’t be dependent on other people helping me along. So, the key to getting this to work is do find a nice balance between improvisation and carefully planned talking points. You’re going to have to let me know how you think I’ve handled this one! Below is everything you need to know about this first episode, including relevant links or other resources mentioned. Thanks for reading and listening!

The Other Murdock Papers Podcast #1

Link to this podcast on iTunes

On the podcast…

This podcast is 33 minutes long and some of the topics I cover are random news (Chris Samnee joins the team!, sales figures etc), what’s going on in New Avengers, and when exactly Daredevil: Season One comes out. We also talk about the sneak peeks of Daredevil #12 and #14, what happened in DD land 1, 2, 3, and 4 years ago and I also briefly offer my thoughts on Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. Finally, at the end, a look at the medical phenomenon of blind sight.

Additional resources

Here’s the link to Chris Samnee’s website
This sneak peek from Daredevil #12, by Chris Samnee, was posted on Twitter by Daredevil editor Stephen Wacker the other day (click the image to read the tweet). In an ill-disguised attempt to drive fans up the walls, he cut this beautiful page in half, creating much confusion when it comes to deciphering what exactly is depicted in that top left corner. So, here’s a contest for you. Whoever comes closest to guessing what the heck that panel is supposed to depict (post your answers in the comments below) wins a copy of Daredevil #145.