The Real DD
Daredevil #12 is a perfect example of why Waid's Matt Murdock is as interesting a character as DD. In previous sagas, Murdock's normal concerns are swallowed up by the latest DD crisis of conscience. In this issue, however, we see Matt Murdock in two specifically human struggles. The first is a date with a babe, in this case the beautiful (and also really, really, insensitive?) D.A., and the second is an anecdote from Matt and Foggy's Columbia years. Waid's dialogue is, as always gratifyingly light without being ridiculous, evidenced best, perhaps, in a very short cameo appearance by Spider-Man.
Waid's Daredevil has very consciously (and often) assured readers that his character, and more specifically Matt Murdock, will no longer be the whiney emo chick of recent years (look at Shadowland for a case study in over-the-top teen angst). This issue reminds readers, after the bluster of the Omega Effect, that DD is a street level character, first and foremost. He, like Spider-Man, is also a New York mascot, and this issue is as much an appreciation of the city, and its diversity, as it is a segue from big-picture megacrime to DD's more localized escapades.
Without confessing my undying love for Mark Waid, I must admit that I believe this to be the most accurate representation of the Silver Age Daredevil since, well, the Silver Age. Although the overarching series plot rears its head once or twice, the main story lines start and finish in this comic. The world may not hang in the balance, but DD plots like that should be treated as the exception, because DD has no place fighting cosmic forces (or the X-Men). One of the great DD comics of all time, "A Blind Man Shall Lead Them", in which Matt Murdock and then DD aid a de-powered Fantastic Four against Doctor Doom (so many alliterations) makes this point expertly. Daredevil has the brave but not the brawn to fight upper echelon villains, and when he does, it should only be to remind readers where DD belongs (not fighting them).
This expertly crafted tale gratifies because it almost completely avoids ridiculous tights in favor of more personal (and more believable in contrast to, say, a giant Tokugawa Shogunate Castle in the middle of Hell's Kitchen, a neighborhood that has all but disappeared). Marvel should take note of what makes its best series its best series. Stories like these made Marvel in the 1960's, and its heartening to see a comic that isn't drowning in the squalor of continuity.
