Blasphemy Reviews

Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller, Volume 3

Did Frank Miller regret killing Elektra and decide to undo his mistake? Or had he intended to resurrect her all along?

It's not clear to me. But the resurrection of Elektra, which would be repeated ad nauseum with other heroes in other comics in the years to come, looms large over this volume. Its culmination, in issue 190, is arguably the best issue of Miller's initial run, and offers the first glimpse into why Miller is so interested in this character in the first place.

The issue begins and ends with Elektra's two attempts at climbing a mountain; the first time, she fails. The second time, she succeeds. In between, Daredevil and his allies battle for her very soul. Do they succeed? It is to Miller's credit that, even as he refuses to answer the question, when we see Elektra atop the mountain at the end, we feel a sense of closure. Having delved into the heads of the character, Miller now steps back and lets her thoughts remain her own. The mystery itself becomes the story he is telling.

And now, resurrected by demons, Elektra is more interesting to Miller than ever before.

The rest of the volume is of high quality, though perhaps not quite as high as Volume 2. The stories, many of which focus on Daredevil's decaying sanity, lack the human element that Ben Urich provides in Volume 2. Daredevil becomes an enigma, treating his fellow characters poorly with dismaying frequency, and falling down rabbit holes from which Miller does not appear to want to extricate him. These stories are compelling, but with no emotional anchor, we are somewhat alienated.

That is, until Daredevil's downward spiral is purged at the very end.

The final panel of issue 191, Miller's final issue, says almost everything Miller has to say about...well, everything. In God's eye view, we see Daredevil and the incapacitated Bullseye, bleached of color and surrounded by shadow, with Daredevil's confession overhead in caption: "Guess we're stuck with each other, Bullseye." This is a more complicated statement than it first appears. The conventional reading of this statement is that Daredevil and Bullseye, the superhero and the supervillain, are "two sides of the same coin," and need each other more than they need the outside world. Or, expressing the idea Mike Myers' Dr. Evil would parody in the first Austin Powers movie: "We're not so different, you and I."

But they are together, the story makes clear, only because Daredevil has chosen not to kill his enemy. Bullseye lives because of Daredevil's mercy. This makes Daredevil either morally weak or strong, depending on your point of view, but it also makes him definitively different from his adversary. They are so different, Dr. Evil, so there.

posted by Mr. Blasphemy @ 2:22 PM