I pick up the stink of violent need

Daredevil Vol.2 #1 (1998)

Chosen by me from my shelf as part of Daredevil week.

Daredevil had been languishing and struggling for a while.

Along came Kevin Smith and Joe Quesada (later, alongside Bill Jemas, massively influential in shaping Marvel's future, with effects seen felt today) and put him on the map again.

Smith was the nerd's nerd. His films poems to geekdom. And his big weakness as a film-maker was visuals so letting a supremely talented artist handle those details should have made this a slam dunk.

It kinda did. 

This was the first Daredevil book i ever read. At a time when I still had little in interest in many comics, certainly super-hero ones.

At the time I found it a bit dull. And more than a bit silly. There was a shift in my brain that hadn't quite happened yet and stories like this could not find purchase.

That also occured with Buffy around the same time. Couldnt get past the name. Couldn't get past the silliness. Hated the first and only episode I watched (A first season one about a witch that isnt really that great) but thankfully I kept hearing good things and came back to that. Suddenly the valley girl dialogue clicked into place, I got the joke, and it remains a firm favourite.

A similar thing happened with super stuff.

And the second time, a year or so later I re-read the trade of Guardian Devil I owned and enjoyed the over the top narration, the rather ludicrous plot and all the men in silly costumes running around and beating each other up.

There are definitely some flaws with the storyline as a whole (its treatment of women is tiresome) but the first issue despite a two page sequence with Karen Page writing a Dear John mostly avoids that.

It doesn't hold up against the best of the Daredevil arcs, most of which I've briefly looked at here, and is - like a lot of people who come from a different medium to comics - overly wordy not always trusting the art to sell character moments. Which is a shame because the art is absolutely terrific. Quesada with Jimmy Palmiotti on inks and Dan Kemps colours positively radiating off the page.

Still is holds an important place in my personal history with Daredevil, the character I own the most issues/books of hands down.