Obsessively putting our comics in chronological order since 1985.
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Daredevil #239-240
Issue(s): Daredevil #239, Daredevil #240
Cover Date: Feb-Mar 87
Title: "Bad plumbing" / "The face you deserve"
Credits:
Ann Nocenti - Writer
Louis Williams - Penciler
Al Williamson & Geof Isherwood / Al Williamson - Inker
Ralph Macchio - Editor
Review/plot:
A psycho calls a pregnant lady and complains about her smoking.
Daredevil shows up to a bunch of kids.
And later thinks that there must be a god because the world is too awesome for there not to be.
The Rotgut guy later harasses some poor (i assume) Japanese woman (or maybe he just thinks she's Japanese)...
...and he does a bunch of other crazy stuff too. We find out that he's got an adoptive mother that raised him to worry about the amount of toxins and impurities in the world. Daredevil comes into contact with her when he helps her with a slum landlord.
And then he later encounters Rotgut thanks to a friend of Karen's that heard the guy talking about poisoning a building. The metaphor here is about how both he and Daredevil think they are super-heroes fighting wrongs, but it's all a matter of perspective.
While Daredevil is fighting Rotgut, his little skateboarding friends try to warn the people in the building about the poison, but one of the tenants doesn't listen and one of the kids is traumatized accordingly.
Meanwhile, Black Widow realizes her "super-heroes against drugs" program isn't working.
Quality Rating: C
Historical Significance Rating: 1
Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A
References:
- The Black Widow's weird anti-drug program was seen in Daredevil #237.
- This issue, Daredevil tells her to go after the scientist that created Hazzard in Daredevil #236 instead.
Crossover: N/A
Continuity Insert? N
My Reprint: N/A
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Comments
Nocenti is all kinds of terrible. I realize there's been a push the last few years among fans to get this run marked as underrated but it still stinks to high heaven to me. At least when John Romita, Jr. joins the run it has some decent art. Wait until you get to the issue with Captain America (in the 290s, I believe). One of the worst abuses of a character by a writer I've ever seen.
The Fatboys are another name for the Bratpack- there is no member called Fatboy.
That Cap issue was weird, since the idea in Cap's book was supposed to be that Steve had been exposed to a drug that made him more paranoid and brutal but Nocenti instead wrote him as more left-wing than usual.
I think half of what Nocenti wrote was awful, but the other was some good ideas combined with some problematic execution and left-wing agitprop where she bravely fights caricatures. I think there is some power there, but she's still too weak in the craft. And like a lot of people too earnest about their politics, she's very much in a bubble of her own making.
I didn't follow DD during this time period because of that, but I wish I had followed it more closely so I could have picked up some of her issues. Nocenti is important to DD's mythos in several respects, and she has a legacy that elevates her work.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again....Nocenti's run is my favourite work on Daredevil.
One reason is that it's different and eclectic. Frank Miller's run read like one big novel...grim 'n' gritty street level...I'm not bashing it, but I read comics as a format entirely different than the novel form. I like seeing different things done with a character in plot.
There's not a lot of runs in DD outside of Miller or Nocenti to praise.
I love O'Neil's run, but there wasn't a lot to it. He didn't do anything with the character, unlike on Iron Man.
After Nocenti the book went into wannabe Frank Miller stories with much lesser writers.
Then, Bendis came along. It was a breath of fresh air at first, but by the end, I hated the book. After that, you got mostly Bendis clones (sadly, as there were some talented writers, unlike after Nocenti, in my view).
Mark Waid's run has been different, but I've been having a hard time getting invested in it, for some reason, unlike with Nocenti.
I know it's not for everyone, but it clicked with me.
This will be my first read through of Nocenti's Daredevil outside of some crossover issues and other "significant" issues like the first Typhoid Mary appearance. I'm not a big fan of Nocenti's writing style but i know a lot of people like this run so i'm trying to keep an open mind, and also holding out for JRJR.
@Michael, thanks for the Fatboys correction. There do seem to be recurring characters in the BratFatPackBoys besides the somewhat recognizable Butch, but i'll be damned if i can keep track them.
I had picked up the first issue several years after it came out somewhere. I found Rotgut kinda chilling and realistic despite being, what I'm guessing is another black albino (to add to Nekra and Tombstone, who'd come out later. I'm surprised they never got protests from an advocacy for albinos group).
Rotgut is a bit chilling, I'll give you that, but not that interesting enough for me to care. His motivations are muddled, his MO is aimless, and the pseudo-philosophical commentary is neither subtle nor insightful. I personally never had a problem with Nocenti's politics, save for the fact that she usually gets it across in a somewhat self-defeating manner, IMO. It's her poorly handled psychological pretensions that really annoy me, particularly if we compare her to Moench, Chichester, and DeMatteis, in his prime. I give her a lot of credit for Typhoid Mary, though, and some for that arc in which Bullseye takes over Daredevil's place.
On the plus side, Rotgut does look like a black albino, which is far, far more than I can say for Tombstone. I love Tombstone, but to me, he's not a black albino, he's a mutant. Albinos usually have noses, for one thing! Plus, Rotgut has no pigmentation, but he's got a pinkish complexion, whereas Tombstone is white as snow. And there's nothing about Tombstone's hair that suggests African American descent, even considering his hairdo. So that much I owe Rotgut.
