Stuff I Read This Week Episode 16 or Cautionary Tales for Fanboys and Crazy People....

Kick-Ass 3 #1: Okay, I'm just going to go ahead and say it. Kick-Ass needs to die. I'm not quite talking about the character. I mean this story needs to be drowned in the bathtub quickly. The thing that's wrong with everything after the first Kick Ass is that writing satire is like telling a joke. The only real rule is to just tell the joke. Don't explain it. Once you have to explain the joke, it's immediately not funny anymore. When you get bogged down on explaining satire, it becomes obvious you're trying to say something about something.

This story was awesome when Mark Millar simply saying "A guy trying to be Batman in real life would either be dead or in the ICU in a day." It's become painfully obvious that, in its evolution, this series has become a platform for Millar to shoot fanboys in the kneecaps. In parts 1 and 2, at least our protagonists were likeable. In this issue, we get Dave Lizewski standing over his parents' graves in what should have been a sobering reflective moment of character development. Instead, he and his friend are musing about how must look awesome like Batman did. Taking brooding pictures by a family member's tombstone because he thinks it looks badass doesn't make your character relatable or realistic. It makes him an extinction-level asshole. The big upside to this book is, as usual, John Romita Jr.'s artwork, offering the right amount of levity to serious moments and awkwardness to funnier moments. Ultimately, time will tell whether or not Millar can bring closure to something that's really already run its course.

Bottom Line: One part entertaining....two parts beating a dead horse. 7 out of 10.


Daredevil: End of Days #8: Considering the fact that David Mack retweeted and reposted my review of this book last month (No, I'm NEVER going to stop talking about that...deal with it, humans...), I considered the idea that the cool thing to do would be to not review the finale, that it would be like the hero in a movie who kisses the girl, says goodbye and walks away without looking back. But I'm a writer, a blogger and a comic book nerd which is, more or less, a willing forfeit of the chance to be cool. No need to break tradition now.

There are more great things to say about End of Days than there are adjectives meandering about  the English language. It could be argued that the much sought meaning of the word "mapone" came across as slightly anti climactic, but with a book like this, the last thing readers deserved was something they actually expected. Besides, much like in life, the destination wasn't nearly as important as the journey that brought us there. It could be argued (and it almost certainly is) that this miniseries ended on more of a bang than a whimper, but this series ended in a way many superhero titles wouldn't dare to: with a prevailing sense of finality. With many of Marvel's "The End" future vision concepts, although they stay somewhat true to the essence of the highlighted protagonist, at times, they have a tendency to feel dated depending on the changes that character endures. With End of Days, we are offered a story that manages to offer closure while preserving the hard truths that we've come to know of a hero who concerns himself very little with the traditional tropes of heroism when it comes to justice. No matter what crossovers and costume changes may come from other writers over the years, this book makes a timeless, definitive statement about who Daredevil is even if it's not always a trite one.

We see cast of characters who have been as much a part of defining who this character is than the character himself saying goodbye in their own ways, some of which are clear even if they're not reflected through dialogue or action beats. Having said that, one of this issue's biggest weaknesses is the absence of journalist Ben Urich's internal narrative that has been the perfect voice to carry us through this semi-dystopic wasteland of an eulogy to the Man Without Fear. Still, no matter what point of view they offer us, Brian Michael Bendis and David Mack's voices are like old friends taking you for a drive through that part of town you grew up in, showing you how it's changed as well as how it hasn't and never will. And after reviewing two other issues of this book, there is virtually nothing left to say about the top shelf artwork from Klaus Janson and Bill Sienkiewicz. Rarely is there a comic where any given panel or page, if left by itself, could be a poster or printed on a t-shirt. There are no artists better suited to help tell a story like this. If they taught comic books in high school, rest assured that Daredevil: End of Days would be required reading.

Bottom Line: This book raised the bar for comics like a school bully playing "keep away" with your lunchbox. 9.5 out of 10.