The first place I fall in love with thelate , beloved science fiction author Harlan Ellisonwas in comics . Specifically , it was in Daredevil # 208 , a comic I obsessively read over and over again when I was a small fry . After re - reading it last dark , I can emphatically state that it contain up extremely well .
I got hooked into Harlan Ellison ’s non - illustrated prose and fable writing after my first tangency with him in comic . The rambunctious genius of his writing created a gravitational attraction well I did n’t want to escape . His concept were sharp , his verbal description lush , and his drama filled with stakes that always mattered . Ellison ’s career postulate him to many infinite and he glitter in most of them . Daredevil # 208 — write by Ellison and Arthur Byron Cover , with art by David Mazzuchelli , Danny Bulanadi , Joe Rosen , and Christie Scheele — showcases the just aspect of both the title character and Ellison as a storyteller .
“ The Deadliest Night of My Life ” begins briskly with an economical option . Rather than desolate page space to jog out the stock beat of a sub going on patrol and taking out some punk , Ellison and Cover tell you that it just happened . Daredevil ’s dog-tired and just want to go home but then hears a battle cry for help from a little girl .
Only she ’s not a daughter …
She ’s a dud . Specifically , a robot made to lure Daredevil into a tunnel that herds him towards a gauntlet of death bunker .
I ’m not certain what each author ’s specific contribution to the story was , but the joyful bid of scientific minutiae as Matt Murdock ’s masked alter ego faces fortune after chance and intimate soliloquy voicing feels very much like Ellison .
The pacing of this narrative is insane , taking a well - wear down figure of speech from superhero comics — the elaborate dying - trap — and rage it up to the nth degree . The marathon of risk that Daredevil front always feel like it ’s ratchet down upwards with pressure , and his enervation becomes the referee ’s . Yet all that denseness executes a counterintuitive magic trick of also make exhilaration , because it ’s a tumbler pigeon coaster drive to see Daredevil barely escape with his life multiple times in this single issue .
The Daredevil of the recent seventies and former eighties crystallize a lot of the trademark that we have intercourse take for award : the ninja training , often self - destructive obstinance , a super - sensory connection to the domain realized in very few other character . Though he ’s just dropping into the series for a midstream one - off , Ellison rifle along perfectly with the flow . He has Matt meditate to rivet himself in the midst of all the chaos and hallucination and muster strength for a net reckoning .
Up until the final pages , the kinetic drive of this tale makes the secret at its core all but casual , but the reveal of the sand trap - menage ’s architect unleashes a full battery-acid of Ellison prose . There are a lot of words in these instrument panel but they throb with grain and impulse . We can feel the bloodline and animus of Elizabeth Dawes Sterling , who honestly admit she ’s doing a big affair .
Still a few years away from his star - making grow on lunatic : conduct Again and Batman : Year One , David Mazzuchelli ’s nontextual matter shines all throughout “ The Deadliest Night of My life story . ” His acquirement with body speech communication and facial expression is already in grounds . His linework evince a wonderful feeling of texture and delineates more item than he would in those by and by , more minimalistic industrial plant . He also breaks up page layouts in assured fashion , going from grid to kaleidoscope and back to make drama and rhythm .
Before last dark , I had n’t re - read Daredevil # 208 in many years . But I recall almost all of it , and I catch myself hypnotically cantillate along with certain sequences . That ’s all owed to the strength of Ellison ’s committal to writing here , in a employment that reinforced a with child series by being so unlike than what commonly happened in it .
DaredevilHarlan EllisonMarvel Comics
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