Daredevil: Born Again TPB (Daredevil; The Devil Inside and Out) [Paperback]

Out of all of Frank Miller and Alan Moore's stellar works for Marvel & DC Comics in the 1980s, Daredevil: Born Again by writer Frank Miller and artist David Mazzuchelli must stand out as being the most concise, the most stripped down and the most affecting tales that the revisionist trend for super heroes threw out in the mid-1980s.

Whatever was in Frank Miller's tea when he co-created this Marvel masterpiece starring blind lawyer Matt Murdock and the long, slow and insidious dismantling of his personal and professional life, should be bottled up and sold to the legion of imitators that came after who couldn't quite match Miller's visionary storytelling. Myself and many of my friends at the time who were fans of Alan Moore's writing on titles for various publishers such as Marvelman, Swamp Thing, Captain Britain and Watchmen when Born Again came out originally in comic book form (Daredevil Volume.1, issues 226 - 233), there was a collective belief that Miller had finally stepped up in to the big leagues and was if not the better then certainly the equal of Alan Moore. All the more impressive since Miller's tenure as artist/writer on Daredevil from #159 - 191, followed by his highly personal tribute to the Lone Wolf & Cub stories, Ronin, for DC Comics, a 1980 Batman short story and a few Spider-man annuals (Amazing Spider-man Annuals 14 & 15 and Marvel Two-In-One #51 & #100 were superior work for hire fare).

Miller's best work by far, Born Again, achieves its impact on the reader by virtue of its understanding and manipulation of emotional themes - its depiction of the Kingpin renders the Kingpin of Crime in the most realistic terms in the Marvel Universe since Daredevil #179 (His gloating over winning Businessman of the Year award for "procuring footage of acts beyond description for a automobile distributor" place the Kingpin and his amoral ruthlessness firmly and subtly into abject reality. His torment as he realises Murdock has escaped his wrath is cinematic in the extreme; it would be hard to believe that a certain Q. Tarantino hadn't read this and felt humbled by Miller's writing genius. Ditto for the shootout in the police cell when Lois the nurse working for the Kingpin is being interviewed.

Finally, Miller's tribute to Captain America co-creator, Jack Kirby, is astonishing (Jack Kirby being deeply embroiled in an undignifiedlegal battle with Marvel Comics for recognition as one of the architects of the Marvel Universe). Faced with the corrupted, evil version of himself in the shape of Agent Simpson aka Nuke, Captain America comes face to face with the reality of modern day, corporate Reaganite America. The exchange on the rooftop between Matt (Daredevil) Murdock and the star spangled Avenger is one of the most powerful scenes in the history of comics and the final battle between the escaped Nuke and Daredevil is a Battle Royale modern cinema would be hard pressed to emulate.

In DD: Born Again, writer Frank Miller's aim was to separate the man from the hero, from the troubling contradiction between costumed vigilante and defense lawyer (Matt Murdock's day job) but this was too much for lesser writers to maintain and the character and his stories went to a limbo of mediocrity well, pretty much ever since these comics came out but that's just this reviewers personal opinion. In dramatic terms, nothing since then has ever matched this incredible piece of comic writing and art and for this reason alone, you should purchase this trade paperback edition. Simply stunning.

Comics don't get any better than this. In fact literature doesn't get better than this.
Maybe the last chapter eases up a little, but the rest is a distillation of the best of popular culture of the last 60 years.

If anything was to surpass the Lee/Kirby/Ditko era, this would be it.

I recently read this and I have to say that its a classic daredevil story. it focuses on Matt Murdock's worst nightmare: the kingpin knows his identity. What then occurs is the wrath of Wilson Fisk, destroying everything he has worked for and everything that he loves. It's really a good read and like the best type of DD stories it looks at the characters around him as well, like Foggy Nelson and Karen Paige. I would recommend this to anyone who just wants to have a decent read from the Daredevil of yesteryear.