The Tale of Zatoichi

I just recently finished watching all twenty-whatever James Bond movies and wanted a new series to watch, so why not the Zatoichi samurai movies I asked myself, and I said ok, sure, just watch 'em. In this first film of the 26 film saga, Zatoichi, a blind masseuse, shows up to a gambling house. It turns out Zatoichi is basically the Japanese Daredevil (though, hm, it beat Daredevil's creation by a year so I suppose Daredevil is the American Zatoichi) - he may be blind, but he has enhanced other senses and swordsmanship to take over. Anyway, he's one of those swordspeople who realizes killing is bad, m'kay, so he doesn't want to get involved in a big gambling house war, even after he meets a dying samurai named Hirate who befriends him and begs him to fight him. I'll let you guess whether or not these two swordsmasters fight by the end of the film!

RATING: 76%

Daredevil Vol. 12: Decalogue

This storyline starts with a support group meeting in a church basement to help people whose lives have been affected by Daredevil in some way. Eventually, it turns out one of them has a demon baby living inside of him, and thJESUS I'VE NEVER EVEN READ THE ILIAD WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE???

RATING: 59%

Comic Three-In-One

Daredevil Vol. 6: Lowlife

Daredevil starts dating the blind chick he eventually marries and drives insane, every man's dream!

RATING: 76%




Fantastic Four: Imaginauts

The Fantastic Four find their 'Q' rating dropping, so they hire a new publicist. Maybe we should do that here?

RATING: 93%





Incredible Hulk Vol. 5: Hide In Plain Sight

*sound of me dying in the most excruciating way possible, which is reading this book*

RATING: 6%

Secret War

The story is some incomprehensible nonsense about all the tech bad guys in the Marvel Universe working for some super terrorist, so Nick Fury sacrifices... you know what? It's got some pretty painted pictures and that's about it.

RATING: 35%

Comic Three-In-One

Daredevil Vol. 5: Out

Daredevil comes out of the closet, and we finally learn where his partner Franklin Nelson gets his nickname "Foggy."

RATING: 81%





Fantastic Four: 1234

Jae Lee does to the human form what Grant Morrison does to story, for whatever it's worth.

RATING: 54%




The Incredible Hulk Vol. 3: Abominable

True.

RATING: 15%

Comic Three-In-One

Punisher: Long Cold Dark

Killing!

RATING: 86%





Star Trek Year Four: The Enterprise Experiment

Fun!

RATING: 11%





Daredevil Vol. 3: Wake Up

Bendis!

RATING: 73%

Comic Three-In-One

Daredevil Vol. 2: Parts of a Hole

Daredevil is blind, and he meets this woman, Echo, who wants to kill him but she's deaf, get it? It's actually pretty good, in no small part thanks to David Mack's writing/layouts (no part of me can give Joe Quesada praise, sorry).

RATING: 79%





Fantastic Four: Into The Breach

Roll call: Human Torch! Namorita! Scott Lang Ant-Man! She-Hulk! My vomit everywhere!

RATING: 22%





The Incredible Hulk Vol. 2: Boiling Point

Ugh, I bought this for 30 issues, Jesus.

RATING: 19%

Ultimate X-men Vol. 7: Blockbuster

At this point, Mark Millar left the book, Brian Michael Bendis took over, and the whole thing began a 60 issue spiral into being a complete directionless mess. Oh well, at least Bendis is capable of writing Ultimate Spider-man in a hilarious manner, and he guest stars here as some group is after Wolverine for some reason, who cares.

RATING: 65%

Daredevil Vol. 1: Guardian Devil

For better or worse, the current state of mainstream superhero comics can all be traced back to the first story arc of the current Daredevil series, written by Kevin Smith and drawn by Joe Quesada. Sure, intricate storylines that focused more on character development and endless self analysis existed in comics, even superhero comics, before, but those stories were kept in the more "sophisticated" lines such as Vertigo, or maybe brief mini or maxi series. Smith brought all that to the mainstream books, and while it can often be frustrating to go three or four issues without anything happening (Bruce Jones' Hulk), I guess I'm mostly thankful he opened the realm of possibilities for funnybooks. As for this storyline, it's one of the greats; an unknown villain is preying upon Matt Murdock's religion, and thrusts upon him a baby who is claimed to be either the savior of mankind or the Antichrist. Terrific writing from somebody who clearly has love for the character, although can we all please agree that it's been 10 years of agony for Daredevil and it's about time to give the guy a break for once?

RATING: 90%

Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Vol. 2

This collection features the classic first story of Daredevil and Elektra, in which DD's ex comes back into his life except now she's a master assassin and then she gets killed by Bullseye (spoilers). This is all hokey sounding now, but Frank Miller's art is fantastic (don't judge by the cover, he did that in the past few years), and Miller is great at bringing the tragedy into DD that is common now. One thing I never noticed before, but Miller actually has Bullseye break out of prison in virtually the same way Joker does in DKR, by manipulating a talk show host. Weird. Anyway, this story is classic, and I really recommend it.

RATING: 84%

Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Vol. 1

Frank Miller essentially defined the character Daredevil as we know him today: he made the stories much darker (and they were already pretty dark), he introduced Elektra, and he killed Elektra (first). This volume is where Miller started on Daredevil, but unfortunately he started only as an artist, so most of the stories in this trade are pretty standard 80s schlock. Muggers, weddings, crime bosses, blah blah blah. It is amazing though how Miller's art changes so much over the course of these eight issues, from being normal Gene Colan ripoffs to becoming more of his definitive style we recognize from the Dark Knight Returns. But you can purchase much more interesting curiosities for $15.

RATING: 46%

Daredevil: Yellow

Sorry to review all these Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale books. But for the most part they're pretty excellent. This one doesn't hold up to the same sort of scrutiny that their Batman collaborations do, largely because it doesn't really have a overarching storyline like those. Basically it's just 6 tales from the early days of Daredevil, when he wore the lame yellow costume pictured to my left, loosely connected by the theme of Matt Murdock's love for Karen Page, his former secretary, who is dead in present continuity. Oops, spoilers.

RATING: 79%