Daredevil: Wake up
Eric S Brown
The second series of Daredevil launched in 1998 and was quickly a huge success with readers. In its early issues huge events happen in Matt Murdock’s life from Bullseye murdering Karen Page to his first meeting with Echo. The series was hitting fast and hard until issue 15 when Michael Bendis as the writer, and David Mack as the artist, opted to do something much deeper in the book.
The trade paperback Wake Up collects issues 15 through 19 of that run with a story that focuses on Ben Urich and a nearly catatonic young boy named Timmy. The boy’s father was the laughable super villian Leap Frog and has gone missing. Ben becomes obsessed with finding out what traumatized Timmy so badly and what happened to his father.
The art of the issues collected in Wake Up is far from normal comic art. Each page is like a giant splash of color with the images of the characters ranging from wildly abstract to dead on realistic. Mark’s art adds an intensity to Bendis’s words helping to make the reader truly feel and experience what the characters are going through.
And while Daredevil does show up in more than flashbacks and nightmares by the end of the Wake Up, it’s Ben Urich who is the book’s hero bringing closure and hope to Timmy’s life. Urich risks his job and much more to help Timmy find peace and have a chance at being a normal child again.
While this may not be a book that everyone will enjoy, long time Daredevil fans, used to deeper stories, will certainly find the trade paperback to be a great read.
