Daredevil: Yellow #1-6

Daredevil: Yellow #1-6

Originally released in 2001

Written by Jeph Loeb

Art by Tim Sale

Jeph Loeb is a writer that I have a mixed track record with.  On one hand, Batman: The Long Halloween and Superman For All Seasons are two amazing comics, but on the other hand, Ultimatum is one of the bleakest and most mean-spirited comics that I've ever read.  Still, the first two were collaborations with Tim Sale while Ultimatum didn't involve him, so maybe that's a good sign for this book.

The story starts with Daredevil mourning the loss of Karen Page.  Jeph Loeb did several books with a superhero name and a colour, and by my understanding, all of them deal with a hero struggling with loss. (such as Spider-Man with Gwen, or Captain America with Bucky)

Despite the darker incident that prompts this story, it mostly focuses on Matt's early days, recapping his origin.  It doesn't go into the truck accident that blinded him, but the death of his father, a boxer named "Battling" Jack Murdock.  Participating in rigged fights, Jack won a fight that he was supposed to lose, and the gangster who had been rigging the fights for him didn't take it well, killing Jack and managing to be found not guilty in a trial.

For the first six or seven issues of the silver age comic, Daredevil's costume was bright yellow along with dark reds mixed in, before switching to the full red ensemble.  Red makes much more sense for a character who names himself after a devil, but this issue provides a touching justification for why he wore so much yellow; it's the colour that his father wore in the ring.

It's early days for both the Nelson & Murdock law firm and Murdock's career as Daredevil.  Matt only briefly acknowledges the hypocrisy of him being a lawyer who works outside the law, but ultimately, he still looks up to his dad as the greatest guy in the world and wants to be like him. (Even if his dad wanted Matt to be better than him)

After a series of interviews that mostly go disastrously, Karen Page is hired as Nelson & Murdoch's secretary. In the comics, I mainly know Karen from the early silver age comics (where Matt tends to angst that, while he loves Karen, she likely won't love him because of his blindness, while Karen is in love with Matt, in a pattern that Stan Lee used with a few other characters like Thor) and Daredevil: Born Again, along with the first two seasons of the TV show. As a result, I'm not familiar with the circumstances surrounding her death or how she developed between her introduction and the point that this story was written outside of Born Again.

Things are looking up for Nelson & Murdock - they've hired their first employee and got their first clients in the form of the Fantastic Four. They go out to celebrate, having some misadventures at the bar that Matt and Foggy went to during university, where Matt hustles a bunch of lowlifes at billiards.

Matt wants to know who the man responsible for his father's death, the Fixer, worked for. Naturally, I assumed this would be the Kingpin, who feels like he has his hands in just about every grounded/realistic criminal enterprise in New York City, but instead, it was a different villain of Daredevil's, who has been around for a while but is considerably less well-known than Wilson Fisk.

The Owl was, once upon a time, Daredevil's arch-enemy, though since the Frank Miller run (at the earliest), he's been completely overshadowed by the likes of the Kingpin and Bullseye. The book does a good job with blending the silver age swashbuckling adventurer aesthetic with modern grittiness, which is due in large part to Tim Sale's artwork.

Two characters who are conspicuous in their absence are Elektra and Stick. The framing device of the book is Matt writing letters to Karen Page after her passing, so mentioning Elektra might not be appropriate, but both played a large part in Matt's early life yet they aren't even vaguely referred to here.  I guess that's because this is largely a reimagining of the silver age where they didn't exist, but it seems like Stick would have at least gotten a nod as someone who helped Matt to hone his senses.

While most of the book deals with the Owl or low level thugs, the last issue introduces the Purple Man, Zebediah Killgrave.  In contrast to the Owl, he is portrayed as being as depraved as the modern version found in stories involving Jessica Jones, trying to force Karen to undress before Daredevil intervenes, and trying to make her jump off a building once Daredevil does get involved.

The story is ultimately one about love, loss, and learning to overcome guilt.  Matt believes that, if Karen hadn't gotten that job at Nelson & Murdock, she'd still be alive today, but by writing out the letters to her, Matt learns to forgive himself.

Daredevil: Yellow definitely fell into the category of Jeph Loeb stories that I liked.  While some parts of Daredevil's history were conspicuously ignored, it seems like it was for the benefit of keeping the story focused. It did a great job with taking some of the character's older stories, ones which might be tonally inconsistent with the character's best-known sagas, and reframed them to make them feel consistent. It felt touching and heartfelt while being a loving tribute to the Stan Lee era of Daredevil.