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Saturday 18 February 2017

Daredevil, Volume 11: Golden Age Review (Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev)


Alexander Bont, the Kingpin before Wilson Fisk, is finally out of prison and wants revenge on the man who put him there: Matt Murdock!

Volume 11: Golden Age isn’t as good as previous books in Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev’s Daredevil run, but it’s not a bad read either. It’s basically just a straightforward mob/revenge story which felt a bit too unoriginal for my taste.

The dialogue is strong but the plot pretty much plays out as you might expect without any surprises. Matt training up the new White Tiger didn’t do anything for me either – Bendis making a callback to his vastly better Daredevil book, Out, possibly to elicit more favourable feelings towards this lesser volume?

Alex Maleev’s art is good but it’s nothing fans haven’t seen many times before. I liked that the colours varied to reflect the different time periods: black and white, four colour/dotted process, and full colour. Though I don’t get how Bont aged decades while Matt remained perpetually youthful! He must be secretly taking Infinity Formula…

Golden Age is certainly not a bad comic and still held my attention, but the story and writing isn’t as sharp, exciting or layered as in other Bendis Daredevil books. It feels like the creative team were basically out of ideas at this point and had settled into serviceable mediocrity, waiting for a new team to take over.

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