1/5/07
I just finished reading the collected “Daredevil: The Man Without Fear” by Frank Miller. The limited series was first published 1993-1994, and was Frank Miller’s attempt to go back and re-tell Daredevil’s origin story integrating the characters Miller created during his stint on the title in the ’80s. The original Frank Miller run on Daredevil was one of the major comic book revelations of my childhood. 
I found a stack of issues from this run at a garage sale for a quarter each back around ’81-’82 which was the only way I could afford to buy more than an issue or two as a child. After Jack Kirby, Frank Miller was the biggest influence on me wanting to become a comic book writer and artist. Frank Miller continued to be one of my all-time favorite comic book creators up through his writing on “Elektra: Assassin,” “Daredevil: Born Again,” and “Batman: Year One.” Then after that point (in the late ’80s) whatever work of his I picked up just didn’t have “it” anymore. His work on “Ronin” and “Elektra: Assassin” were absolutely the most powerful artistic experiences I had as an adolescent. After finishing “Ronin” with the fold-out pages at the end 
I sat stunned in my room for the evening, completely emptied. I still use the ending of that series and the “Elektra: Assassin” series as my gold standards for the powerful impact I expect the ending of a narrative to have. (I loved Bendis’s recent run on Daredevil but I found the ending of his tenure to be more of a “to be continued” than a powerful finale.) When “Elektra: Assassin” issued in 1986 that was the most experimental comics work I had seen both visually (Bill Sienkiewicz) and narratively (Miller) by a longshot up until that point.
Some people love Frank’s “Sin City” stuff. I’ve read a handful of the collections, and while they are readable, I find them uninspiring, cliche-ridden, formulaic noir. They just don’t do it for me. That is how I’ve felt about all his work since his incredible peak in the ’80s.
I was so uninterested in his work by the time the “Daredevil: Man Without Fear” limited series dropped that I never bothered to even read a single issue. I finally picked up the “Daredevil: Man Without Fear” collection this week to see if I had missed anything when I blew if off during its initial publication. Well, I didn’t miss much. The writing comes off as very amateurish and uninspired. Its attempts at being writerly are flat and unmoving. I have never been a fan of Johnny Romita Jr. as an artist and this series didn’t change that for me. I find his linework totally unappealing. His work is too comic-booky for me to effectively illustrate a “dark” series like this. I don’t care for his depictions of Matt Murdock (at any age) or Elektra. There are moments with some dramatic power that I have to cop to in the art, but I basically just didn’t appreciate him on this series at all. Despite finding the writerly tone of the series embarrassing I was at first open to Miller’s attempts to more thoroughly graft his character creations to the Daredevil origin story. Unfortunately I didn’t buy the character of the young Stick or his nighttime training sessions with Matt. Trying to retcon in a tragic early mistake of Matt’s that would haunt him forever (despite him never having thought about it in the comic before) didn’t work for me at all. The young sidekick was as unbelievable and lame (and unnecessary) at they all are. The kidnapping plot and the assassin Lark, equally uninspired and lame. The only interesting thing for me were the details Miller mentioned showing just how depraved the activities of Kingpin’s crime organization are.
Frank, what happened?
