Omnibus Reviews

Daredevil Volume 1 Review

“You must be real proud of yourselves, gents… With a little luck, you may actually defeat a blind man… if you work together!”
DD1
Daredevil Omnibus Volume 1 Cover Art

Fair warning this is another ‘past review’ as I finished reading this omnibus back in July. Anyways. The first Daredevil omnibus collects Daredevil #1-41, Annual #1 and Fantastic Four #73. 

For me, before going into this book I wouldn’t say I had much knowledge of Daredevil, I remember him showing up in Spider-Man cartoons and games and I’ll admit I had the netflix series on playing TV while doing some things on the computer and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ll probably give it a proper watch at some point rather than just having it on for background noise. 

This book like most silver age stuff can be quite wordy and have some extra dialogue that doesn’t always seem necessary. Being written in the 60’s you can definitely feel the age of this book, one thing that stood out to me was just how fast Matt knew he wanted to make Karen his wife, something that just doesn’t happen often in this day and age. 

I have to admit, this book was far more enjoyable then I ever thought it would be. I started it just knowing who Daredevil was and by the time I finished issue #41 I would consider Daredevil to be among my favorite super-heroes. Once I got through the first few issues I couldn’t put it down and found myself wanting to see more and more of Daredevils exploits. This was a pleasant surprise as I had never been overly interested in him as a character before, more or less just a sidekick to Spider-Man. 

This book is everything Daredevil, we get the origin story of how he lost his vision and reasons for becoming a lawyer, his friendship with Foggy Nelson and the beginnings of a relationship with Karen Page. Seeing the way Matt Murdock uses his blindness and other enhanced senses to his advantage is awesome and the explanations of how he is doing it are great too! We also get to see an early yellow Daredevil outfit but it got replaced by the classic red outfit we know today about 10 issues or so in. 

I’m starting to think these reviews are more challenging since so many stories can happen over the course of 42 issues. Also having read two more complete omnibus’ since finishing this one, I don’t have the best recollection of everything that happened! Some standout villains like the Owl and Killgrave (the villian from Jessica Jones on Netflix!) Some guest appearances from Thor and Spider-Man, and humor all around are just a few of things you can expect from this book. 

The constant battle between Matt and Foggy to try win over Karen Page is ridiculous but a quite common problem in writing from those days. Two friends chasing the same girl, but only one can have her. Classic. I’m glad they started to steer away from this and Matt seems to be the clear cut winner, although Karen doesn’t think Matt could ever love because he is blind (what!?) 

When it seems the secret has got out that Matt Murdock is Daredevil he quickly makes up another alter ego of his twin brother ‘Mike Murdock’ unlike Matt he is loud, obnoxious and sometimes flat out rude to Foggy. I wasn’t a huge fan of this writing as it makes Foggy and Karen seem completely incompetent, not to mention the way Matt treats Foggy when he is trying to act like his brother Mike is completely disgusting. 

All in all this was a great read and another book I would recommend to anybody seeking to learn more about Daredevil, or just enjoy a classic silver age comic. 

 

Leave a Reply