Daredevil [2016] #6 - Marvel Comics

DAREDEVIL No. 6, June 2016

As ‘magazine-long’ fight-fests go, there is little that is technically wrong with Charles Soule’s script for Issue Six of “Daredevil”. True, the actual motivation behind such a vicious battle across the rooftops of New York City isn’t made clear until the comic’s final splash panel, and ‘new’ incoming penciller Matteo Buffagni’s imitation of his predecessor’s distinctive art-style arguably leaves quite a bit to be desired. But this twenty-page periodical does feature a fast-moving contest between two of the publisher’s most enduring ‘street level’ combatants, and even manages to momentarily depict the titular character’s protégé, Blindspot, squaring off against Frank Miller’s “Deadly Assassin”.

Sadly however, all these shenanigans surprisingly seem to lack any real semblance of life or energy, and instead simply seem to suggest that this twenty-page periodical’s creative team were just ‘going through the motions’ in order to deliver a monthly title. Indeed, the vast majority of “Practice To Deceive” feels as if it is merely a ‘filler-in’ edition, penned purely for the book’s cliff-hanger ending in which Elektra accuses her former lover of ‘abducting’ her child; “It was all I had. The one bit of light in all this hell. And you will tell me, Daredevil, if I have to cut away every lie your body holds. What have you done with my daughter?”

It certainly seems hard to justify why else the Milwaukee-born writer would dedicate three whole pages of his narrative to a depressingly grey-toned scene, set inside the New York Supreme Criminal Court, solely to depict Orestez Natchios’ sister meeting Matt Murdock, or a similarly-sized chunk of the comic in which the tale’s 48,745-strong readership must painfully watch the uncomfortable couple subsequently dinning out together… 

Buffagni’s lack-lustre renderings must also partially shoulder this publication’s palpable listlessness. The Parma-born illustrator’s breakdowns appear awkwardly animated at best, with the vast majority of his figures looking wooden, slightly angular and one-dimensional. Such artistic lethargy may well survive unnoticed within the more sedentary scenes of a bored courtroom, but that unfalteringly flat, self-same technique performs quite miserably when used to supposedly show Elektra and Daredevil duking it out in the rain amidst the night skyline of Hell’s Kitchen.

The variant cover art of "DAREDEVIL" No. 6 by Bob Mcleod