Daredevil #33 – Review

By: Mark Waid & Chris Samnee (story), Jason Copland (art), Javier Rodriguez (colors)

The Story: One devil gets tempted by another.

The Review: If there’s one area where the mainstream superhero genre falls short and will always fall short, it’s in achieving a sense of fatality.  Comic book resurrections are so ingrained in the business now that pretty much no one takes a superhero’s death (or, more accurately, the appearance of it) seriously anymore.*  Nowadays, you don’t encounter such occasions with emotional interest so much as curiosity as to how the inevitable recovery will come about.

Not even the apparent deaths of fully mortal heroes like Daredevil can elicit much reaction.  Indeed, if you were actually inclined to wait on tenterhooks to see his ultimate fate, you’ll only suffer a greater feeling of anticlimax as Matt’s chest wound gets magicked into submission within the first few pages.  It’s a funny thing when the protagonist’s near-death experience becomes the least important part of a story, but that’s the modern comic book for you.