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DAREDEVIL: YELLOW #1

A disappointing look back at the birth of a hero

By Tony Whitt July 02, 2001

Daredevil: Yellow #1
© 2001 Marvel Characters

After the death of Karen Page, Daredevil the Man Without Fear finds that for the first time he is afraid. To get back to the man he once was, he reflects on the events that led him to where he is today. His introspection takes him back to his law school days, and the days when his father was trying to become Heavyweight Champion of the World. But Jack Murdock gets involved with the wrong people and pays the price for his folly. At that point, Matt Murdock decides to take matters into his own hands.

Jeph Loeb did an amazing job a few years back recreating Superman's past in the highly acclaimed A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, and now he turns his attention to Daredevil, a character as far removed from Superman as one can get. Instead of mucking about trying to update Daredevil's origin story so that it's artificially set within the last decade, though, Loeb and Sale use visual references that firmly set this story in the '60s right where it belongs. The sense of nostalgia that pervades the earlier Superman series works just as well here, paradoxically giving the story and the art a timeless quality even as it ties it to a particular time period.

The problem is, though, that there's really not all that much that's special about the story. Murdock's father is killed by shady characters, and after losing faith in the ability of the law which he himself has studied to bring them to justice, Murdock decides that he must use his abilities to ensure that justice is served. Sadly, there's nothing here to distinguish it from any of the other "man becomes hero to take revenge" origin stories that pervade comic books. One of the greatest strengths of A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS is that it took the Superman origins and tugged at them slightly, looking at them in a slightly fresher way than they had been looked at before. The familiar became unfamiliar, and thus some originality was born. But in this first issue of DAREDEVIL: YELLOW, the familiar is just as familiar as it ever was, and not all the lovingly crafted artwork in this book can spruce it up.

There's also another flaw in this first issue, and it's the fact that we join Matt Murdock's life when he's already a young adult in law school just before his father's death. There's no exploration of what his life growing up as a supposedly disabled child with unusual abilities was like. If Matt Murdock is trying to regain the fearlessness that defines his character, shouldn't he be looking back at a childhood which should have been full of such fear and which somehow was not? Surely those events are as important to the formation of the man who became Daredevil as the single moment of his father's death was. It's precisely those sorts of thing this kind of series should focus on instead of starting with the same sort of story that informs the origins of comic book heroes from Batman to Spider-Man.

Perhaps it's only comparison with the amazing Daredevil series currently featured in MARVEL KNIGHTS that causes DAREDEVIL: YELLOW to seem so bland and unoriginal, but there's enough here to warrant giving the rest of the series a peek. With any luck, Loeb can eventually spark some interest in what so far has been a fairly uninteresting effort.