Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: comic scripting, Comics, daredevil, David Mazzuccelli, entertainment, frank miller, Joe Rosen, Marvel Comics, Max Scheele

From Strip To Script – Daredevil: Born Again

Published Tue, 21 Apr 2015 17:00:00 -0500

by Hannah Means Shannon

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By Josh Hechinger

Welcome to From Strip to Script, where I take a page of finished comic art and try to derive a script from it, to see what I can learn from the exercise.

I've never been all that into Daredevil as a character; frankly, I already follow the adventures of a lapsed Catholic with a disastrous love life every time I get up in the morning.

That said, while Daredevil as a character frequently leaves me cold, Daredevil as an aesthetic platform in comics is one of my favorite things. There's something about the character, from Wally Wood's work onward, that seems to bring out a certain kind of extra effort from artists in terms of using the character to depict motion in a static medium. You'd have to ask an artist-artist what it is, but for my money, it's the dead-simple costume, the acrobatic nature of the character, and his accessories.

The costume, which is more or less a human figure with horns, done up in arresting bright red, is brilliantly simple, especially set against a Hell's Kitchen of varying degrees of gritty drabness. There's no cape, there's very little detailing; the pure physical dynamism an artist brings to the character can shine through more easily than on even Spider-Man, with his web-patterned costume.

The urban acrobatics of the character are also key. There are superhuman superheroes who occupy similar spaces of fundamentally simple designs forming the solid foundation from which to explore the depiction of figures in motion on the page; think Silver Age Flash or Silver Surfer. But by grounding Daredevil to the (exaggerated) limits of what a human body can do in a physical space that's not unfamiliar to us, artists make Daredevil's travels across the city seem more impressive than impossible, even if they physically are.

Daredevil's accessories, on the other hand, create a cloud of visual pizazz around the character, whether it's the impossible unspooling of his billy club's cable (Joe Quesada's probably the all-time champ of that bit), or the club itself ricocheting around walls and skulls.

For this piece, we'll be looking at a fight page from Born Again, by David Mazzucchelli (art), Frank Miller (script), Joe Rosen (letters) and Max Scheele (colors).

PAGE One Hundred Seventy Three (SIX Panels)

P1. NUKE tries to crack DAREDEVIL across the face with the stock of his machine gun, but DD ducks under it.

– CAPTION –blind as I am—but he doesn't have—heightened senses—

– CAPTION –built-in radar—tells me–

– CAPTION –where everything is—better than eyes—

– CAPTION —forget nerves—so many victims–

P2. From his crouch, DAREDEVIL punches NUKE in the short ribs.

– CAPTION —forget nerves—

– CAPTION –break the bone—

– SFX CHAKK

P3. DAREDEVIL massages his hand like he'd punched steel, as NUKE catches him across the face with a backhand.

– SFX SNAKK

– CAPTION –not—that's not bone—

– CAPTION –no more—stop being clever—

P4. DAREDEVIL pushes off the ground with both hands, catching NUKE square in the back with a double mule-kick, sending the super soldier staggering off the roof (barely, even with all of DAREDEVIL'S weight behind the kick).

– CAPTION –no more—

– SFX WHUKK

P5. Lit harshly by the flames, BEN URICH grabs his photographer by the shoulder and points at NUKE off panel. She's already got her camera up, and is taking the shot.

– CAPTION (Urich) My name is BEN URICH. I'm a REPORTER.

– URICH There—over there—

– SFX KLIK

– PHOTOG I got it–

– CAPTION (Urich) HELL'S KITCHEN is under ATTACK by a one man ARMY. MATT MURDOCK is trying to negotiate a CEASE FIRE.

P6. NUKE'S landed on some power lines, and is sizzling with electricity. He has not dropped his gun.

– CAPTION (Urich) Unilaterally.

– SFX SSZZZATT

So, What'd We Learn?

– Well-drawn action is only half the battle, no joke intended. Having a logical flow to the fight is also key, obviously. Here, we have three panels of perfectly well choreographed fighting that also works in some between-the-panels logistics even beyond the basic work of reading comics.

Like, okay: Daredevil doesn't just dodge Nuke's swing, he dodges it in a way that gives him Nuke's back slightly, in the next panel. Nuke's turning into the punch, because he's re-adjusting to DD's location. DD throws a left punch with his shoulder behind it; that's the arm further from Nuke after the dodge, and so it has more wind-up and weight. Nuke's answering backhand is the arm closest to DD, because it's a quick reaction.

We also don't take a beat to show DD actually injuring his hand on Nuke's cyborg implants; that moment is expressed entirely through the captions and DD clutching his hand even as the bigger moment of taking five across the face occurs.

But the thing is, everything in those three panels flows logically. There's no "cheats" in terms of the figures' relationship with space and each other.

– That said, the double-mule kick to Nuke's back actually does cheat: you can sort of fill in the blanks that DD turns twisting away and falling from the backhand into the kick, but there's no reason it should be to Nuke's back (as great as Mazzucchelli drawing Nuke only barely being moved by the hit is).

– Miller's staccato narration is maybe a bit much (or maybe not; it's a superhero comic, after all), but I do dig the way it captures a certain breathless/frantic mid-fight thought process.

– It's maybe a function of reading this in a trade instead of as a single, but DD narrating his radar sense in the middle of the fight is…well, Miller does the best he can with it, let's put it that way. I don't really have a dog in the fight when it comes to the "every comic should work as someone's first comic" idea, but there's maybe a time and a place and this maybe wasn't it.

Philly-based comic writer Josh Hechinger [joshhechinger.tumblr.com] is a Cancer, and his blood type is A+. You can find him being a loquacious dope on Twitter, and read his comic collaborations on Comixology.

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