Okay, I wasn’t of the mind that New Avengers Dark Reign The List Men
and X-Whatever should have necessarily been the next issue of NA after
the current story arc wrapped up because I thought these List issues
would be in some way related. The only connection so far is Osborn & co.,
but what’s the damn difference between that and any other Marvel book
right now? (Answer: zip)
This easily could have, and should have been in the regular series. What if they want to make a Diggle/De La Torre Omnibus one day? (Which, judging by the art from the preview, won’t be in high demand… from me at least. Whereas the previous main Daredevil artists used photo referencing to create a realistic image altogether, this guy seems to be pasting Daredevil over photos that he put through a sketch filter on Photoshop) Will this be included? As the first issue, no less? I don’t think any epic, sprawling 50+ issue tale about ol’ Hornhead (if they intend to continue in the Bendis/Brubaker tradition) should start with Billy Tan.

This looked a heck of a lot better than what I’ve seen from the guy on New Avengers, but even so, I was unimpressed. Honestly, I don’t think he should be drawing superheroes. Now, don’t accuse me of trying to put him out of work, Mr. Quesada (whose main defense of Greg Land was to guilt his detractors out of their calls for blood), all I’m saying is that when Tan draws the ‘men in tights’, I feel a bit queasy. On the other hand, I didn’t mind his ‘guys in suits’ all too much. It wasn’t great, but he actually draws enough distinction for me to know who everyone is (which may solely be the result of Matt Murdock being surrounded by Japanese men, but still…). Ironically enough, and this dates my review (’cause I really thought this would be my magnum opus), but I said the exact opposite of the Tan (Philip) on the DC side of things with Batman and Robin #4. Maybe the best things for the unrelated Tans would be to co-pencil a book with Billy on the out-of-costume stuff and Philip on the capes and tights! Eh… still wouldn’t be great, but it’d be an improvement over any of their solo work I’ve seen.

Aside from that, I did enjoy Diggle’s writing and am intrigued by the story. Though I feel like it was an ignorant move on Marvel’s part not to include this in the main book, if only because they’ve got to realize that Tan could drive people away from this book. I wouldn’t have read it if I didn’t see the preview in DD #500, which some surely skipped. Were it part of the main book, more people would have overlooked the artist in order to maintain their collection or stay afloat with the story.
Judging from the iFanboy pull list, this one shot, as of my writing, has 416 pulls. The previous issue of DD had 606, and while the higher pull number is from the that being a special issue, the next issue of the main book will not likely have as staggering a drop rate (i.e. Amazing Spider-Man #600: 809 pulls, #601: 747 pulls; -62 vs -190 in the drop from DD #500 to DRDDtL #1) but the reader will be dropped in the middle of the story! That, I would guess, will cause even more to drop it! The readers of 500 will want to see the fallout of that story, but they don’t necessarily know that the fallout is in a separate title; maybe I’m overreacting on this one, but I for one think it’s a foolish move on Marvel’s part. If I could give a 1 on marketing for this book, I would! (Booyah!)