This is a five-star comic book. Everybody gets five stars. This is how you pace a comic book. This is a shining example of everything that makes reading comic books a rewarding experience. This is how you pace an issue, a series, and a relaunch. Wonderfully done.

This is how you tell an A story and a B story and a C story and keep me involved in each and all.

This is why I read Marvel comics. Show me the inner turmoil of Harvey and Matt alike. Deepen their knowledge of each other, their connection, the chance of a future meeting. But give it meaning. Make me get who they are. In a story.

Mark Waid, writer, gets five stars for a script that makes me happy while I’m reading the issue, happy to be reading the title, and looking forward to the next year’s-worth of issues.

Paolo Rivera, artist, gets five stars for thrilling me page after page, panel after panel, layout after layout, action after action, sequence after sequence, scene after scene. Simply flawless execution, from stem to stern; from that amazing, creepy, faux linotype, Penny Dreadful cover to the final expression of Foggy’s face, every bit is rendered with loving care.

And the action sequences. Oh, the action sequences. Old School adventure comics
meets solid modern storytelling. You can actually tell what the hell is going on. Not only that, what is going on is by turns fun, thrilling, audacious, tense, exciting. It’s great to look at, but it all has weight. It all carries the story forward and focuses the emotion.

Which means that Joe Rivera, inker, and Javier Rodriguez, colorist, also get five stars. This is a cool, groovy, eerie, strange, fun, upbeat, deadly serious Daredevil comic book, and by God, it looks like one. This is turning out to be a beautiful volume of Daredevil. Every page is a poster for my wall.

But I have to save my biggest praise for a guy who took all of the above and raised it to even heights of greater glory. I’m awarding a very rare SIX STARS to Joe Caramagna, letterer, who gives here a master class in tone, pitch, placement, emphasis, order, flow, direction, silence, shouting, emotion, hatred, duty, anger and fear. This, my friends, is how a letterer takes the elements handed to him by the rest of the team and expands upon them, bringing the work to its fullest fruition. Where others might have coasted by on the greatness of others, this guy put in the work to improve upon it. Brilliant. Six stars, Joe. Way to go. Superlative.

Heck, I’ll even give an administrative five stars to Pyle, Wacker, Alonso, Quesada, Buckley and Fine for presiding over the production of such a premium quality comic book magazine. At a lovely two dollar and ninety-cent price point, I might add.

This is the kind of comic book that keeps me going to the shop every Wednesday. This is the kind of comic book that I can’t wait to read as soon as I get home. And, luckily for you and me, this is the kind of comic book that not does NOT let you down, it more than fulfills your expectations. It’s not predictable or boring. It’s fun, inventive, complex, well-scripted, well-plotted and just a fine example of what the random issue of Daredevil can aspire to.

I want to see Daredevil fight a whole bunch of people he’s never fought before.

Mark Waid, Paolo Rivera, Joe Caramagna et al, I salute you.

This is the pinnacle of the comic book art.

Bravo.

Seamless Storytelling: 5 (by all involved)