Daredevil by Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark is brilliant

I have read comics for most of the last fifty plus years or so but that does not mean all Marvel or DC comics for all of that time and there are some notable gaps, particularly when a young family put other demands on my time and pocket. 

Even so, I thought that I had Daredevil sorted as I was there for the legendary Frank Miller run which started in 1981. By the way, Frank Miller and I were born on the same day.

I was also there for the excellent Mark Waid and Chris Samnee run in 2014. More recently, prompted by reviews and sale offers, I filled in one of my gaps with the first volume of the Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev 2001 run. That was good but not good enough to tempt me to get the other volumes.

Then another sale brought me to Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark's take on Daredevil from 2006, which followed directly on from the Bendis run, and everything changed.

The Brubaker/Lark Daredevil is now my favourite Daredevil and one of my absolute favourite comics of all time. It really is that good.

Daredevil sits on the edge of the Marvel Universe and this is not a superhero comic, despite the presence of several caped heroes and villains. It is a story about Matt Murdoch and how he tries to regain some sort of life after being sent to prison and with several enemies conspiring against him.

It's a story that grips and twists like a good thriller, which is the domain that Brubaker now mostly writes in. There is action, quite a lot of it, but the fighting does not dominate the story, it is there because there and many things that Murdock needs to fight. Don't forget that his father was a boxer.

The story spreads over three collected volumes covering 39 issues (82 to 119 and 500). That's a lot of pages and I loved every one of them. The story swept majestically through some grand story lines and kept the relentless pace up with lots of little things along the way.

I had not come across Michael Lark's work before and it was a revelation! I could have picked almost any panel from any page as they are all as good as this one.

The detail of the background in wonderful and the grace of the movement of Iron Fist and Daredevil is gorgeous. There are a lot of scenes like this in the book and they are a thing of beauty. They also help to make Hells Kitchen one of the main characters in the story, which it should be as that is Daredevil's only natural territory.

The story goes international for a time and the scenes of, for example. a small town in Portugal are achingly good both in architectural accuracy and in the sunny mood of the place.

I cannot overstate how good this book is.