The Monkey King's Used Primate Emporium and Book Reviews

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Daredevil (Multiple titles and authors)

Started July 17 � Finished July 26, 2006; 1330 pages. Posted 31 August 2006

I�ll start by apologizing to the long-term readers (which at this point probably consist of Danny B and Sephim), because I�m going to have to go over some familiar ground. Seeing as I�m in a different state far away from California and I�ve made friends � some of whom have spent their entire lives on this rock � my whole Daredevil obsession has come into question.

Actually, it�s come into question quite a bit. I don�t remember being grilled on the various T-shirts or the memorabilia collection with such velocity or perplexity when I was in California. I suppose I shouldn�t be surprised by that, however, as California is the land of strange habits and obsessions, many of which don�t make sense to the general public. I mean, where else but in California would anybody be crazy enough to think the Grateful Dead were anything but a bunch of worthless dirty old hippies � and poor musicians to boot?

So yes, I�m a 36 year-old manchild who recently read five collections of a funnybook character who wears red tights.

Oh, it gets worse. When I read the collection by Bendis (�Daredevil: Volume 5�) only to discover that the story arc wasn�t finished, I hopped in my car and drove ten miles to the only real comic shop I�ve been able to find, just so I could see how the story ended.

Yes, I realize how fast my coolness points are dropping here.

So why? Why would a handsome, erudite, witty guy continually sully himself with this Nietzsche-esque masturbatory fantasy aimed at prepubescent loveless, luckless boys?

Because it beats sullying prepubescent boys.

Sorry, couldn�t resist. I suppose I should attempt to bring up those coolness points. The first reason that I got obsessed with the character is because I came across him on accident. After my parents were divorced I spent some time living with my father in Hawaii. Both sides had loosened their paternalistic fascist grip, letting us watch commercial television and allowing us to forgo wheat germ and vitamins, probably in an attempt to curry favoritism, but violence was still verboten.

I remember a point where my father stopped to let us watch a street performer in the Manoa Marketplace (seeing how a street performer would be entertainment that he wouldn�t have to pay for). I must have been nine, my sister, eleven. The busker, mistakenly thinking entertaining us would be a gold mine, started asking our interests.

�You like comics?� she asked in one of those insultingly high-pitched voices. Why people think children have the same hearing as dogs, I�ll never know. Thinking of the newspaper and the collections of comic strips that we were allowed to check out of the library, I told her that I did indeed like comics.

OK, I probably didn�t say �indeed.�

�Who�s your favorite? I bet it�s Spider-man, huh?�

I looked confused. �Spider...man?� I asked, wondering who would think of such a stupid concept.

�You don�t know Spider-man? Well, how about Batman?�

�I know of Batman...�

My sister stepped forward. �We�re not allowed to read those comics because they�re too violent.�

The busker shot me a pity look, then remembering that we were supposedly her meal ticket, tried to regain control of the situation. �Well,� she said, �what comic books do you read?�

�Archie,� we answered in unison.

You know, since I began typing this, I�ve been unable to remember what the purpose was from that street performer asking us about comics. I don�t know if she was planning on drawing caricatures, or attempting roleplaying, or if she was going to burst out into interpretive dance. Whatever her plan, �Archie� gave her nothing to go on and she turned her attention to another group of kids, but not before shooting me a second look, a look that made me realize I was out of the loop about something.

Later that same year, I was hunting around in our basement, digging through boxes that weren�t mine looking for treasure. The concept of ownership didn�t mean much to me at the age of nine, and since I had already made my dad�s roommate start locking his door because I kept stealing his change to go play video games, I had to search elsewhere for entertainment. Usually, that kind of scenario leads to stumbling on a stack of old Playboys � which I found, but naked chicks only held my interest for a couple of weeks (I was nine!), and so I tore into more boxes.

This is where I should be able to regain some sense of dignity, after a fashion. Because what I found was my father�s roommate�s comic stash: Silver Surfer, Howard the Duck, Swamp Thing and Daredevil.

OK, so that doesn�t regain much in the coolness factor, but let me say this in my defense. Did you see Sin City? Sometimes referred to as Frank Miller�s Sin City? Frank Miller was writing for Daredevil at the time. Frank Miller is often credited as bringing a hard-edged violent realism back to comics after the government imposed rating system had turned the industry into a joke.

And the kid who was reading them was the same person who couldn�t hold a stick in his hand because it resembled a gun.

That explains the initial attraction, but a lot of years have passed since then. And no, I didn�t start a never-ending collection from that day forward. I discovered girls. And booze. And truancy. Still, I always remembered that moment in the basement and when the opportunity arose to look at these comics again, my nostalgia was warranted � the books were as good as I remembered them.

That�s where the obsessive collecting started. After all, how many things do you remember from your childhood that aren�t totally retarded now that you�re older? (The Muppets don�t count, �cause I appreciate the Muppets on a deeper level than you. Don�t believe me? Click here.) Through the collecting, however, I discovered how narrowly I found something I liked because the older issues, like the one in the Stan Lee collection, are shit.

That�s a hell of a lot more than I was planning on saying about the subject, because as you know, I�ve been gone for the last 20 days or so. I�m not going to write about my trip now because I see that I have a copy of A Series of Unfortunate Events waiting to be reviewed, and that would probably be more appropriate.

Oooh, foreshadowing!

I will say this however, I�ve already written about Luva and myself. Obviously, I want to find any excuse to take a trip back to California and see her. The problem is I need to have a legitimate excuse because simply saying �I�m lonely� or �I�m horny� as incentive would lead to maxxed-out credit cards and an employer who would think I�m as flaky as the rest of his so-called staff. So when I got an e-mail from Alan asking, �If I had a wedding, would you come?� I knew I had an excuse.

That needs explaining. Alan was in a band called Your Mother, a band that lasted for a full decade. My band played with them several times and I saw them perform on many other occasions. They were always fun and funny. During that time, Alan and I knew each other but never really hung out. But then I found myself moving into his house. Two weeks before that was set to happen, he notified me that they had a second roommate coming into the old Victorian where he lived, and the two rooms available were pretty disproportionate in terms of size. Since rent was the same he wasn�t sure how to settle it, whereupon I suggested a game of �Beer Hunter.�

For those not in the know, Beer Hunter is a bastardized version of The Deer Hunter, only instead of the Russian Roulette scene, the other prospective roommate and I would sit opposite each other and open cans of Budweiser underneath our noses, not knowing which can would be shaken to immense proportions. When I made the suggestion, Alan studied the movie with such scrutiny that he played the Vietcong part to the hilt, parading around the twelve pack and shouting �Di-di mao!� in our faces if we hesitated.

I lost.

Alan�s also the guy who, after I requested that Your Mother play at my fake wedding, took my idea of the band playing the Darth Vader Imperial Death March song and switched it to him playing the tune solo on a tuba, which worked better than I could�ve imagined.

Yeah, Alan�s a funny guy. And then there was the story behind his wedding. I mentioned that his band was around for a decade. Craig, who played guitar and wrote a lot of the songs, happened to have a favorite subject to write about, namely his girlfriend Kate. Craig wrote so many songs about Kate that one verse actually goes, �Last time I swore that this would be the last time I ever wrote a song about Kate. But the story continues...�

Eventually, Craig and Kate broke up, leading to a slew of new Kate song material. Then the band finally called it quits. But like an independent movie, word of mouth about Kate spread, and Alan, after running into her years later, started dating her. And that�s whom he was marrying.

Oh, it gets better.

Craig, who�s a incredibly funny guy on his own, had meanwhile gone to Antarctica, wrote a book about his travels and got it published, putting my story about my jaunt to England on the other side (which you can purchase through this site. Yes, that�s a hint). When he got back, he started another band and then on a lark tried out for an air guitar competition � and won. From that win, he was sent to New York to compete in the national air guitar championship.

He won. You can see his performance here. Sorry, I�m not savvy enough to load the video on this site. In any case, he�s headed to Finland to represent the United States in the International Air Guitar Competition.

I have the coolest friends in the world.

Anyway, before he left, he was going to be at this wedding between Alan and his old girlfriend and he was going to be the Maid of Honor.

Oh, fuck yes, I was going to go to that.

Now watch as I link all this material back together, despite it being 5:30 in the morning and the fact that I�m on my third pint glass of rum and coke. Because see, when I went on this Daredevil reading spree, I realized some things. The distant past, that of the Stan Lee era was shit, but you have to start somewhere. The Frank Miller era was a plateau � a height which for many, means the pinnacle of what they will achieve. I believed that for two decades.

I went to this wedding expecting it to be the one time where I could witness a union between two people that was more entertaining than the faux wedding I threw about eight years back. That didn�t happen; in fact, Alan and Kate�s wedding, while pretty, was fairly by-the-numbers. That�s the problem with expectations � they�re usually unobtainable.

But not always. The work Brian Michael Bendis does on Daredevil, while admitting to owing Frank Miller for his willingness to take risks, blows away the quality work that drew me to the character in the first place. It shows that nothing should ever be thought of as paramount.

And no, this is not a hint of things to come, so don�t get all drippy with well-wishes. As of now, I�m still looking for excuses to visit California. But if (hey, no pressure here) it did ever happen...

And you get an e-mail asking if you�ll come...

I�d suggest you do it.


Rating: Bendis! Bendis! Bendis!

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