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Saturday, June 16, 2012

Greatest Comic of All Time | Daredevil #220 | Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources – Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment

Greatest Comic of All Time | Daredevil #220 | Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources – Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment: Why it’s the greatest comic of all time: Historical importance aside, this is just a fantastically put-together comic book, a great example of how work done in the assembly line process of work-for-hire comics can occasionally become more than the sum of its parts.  The big draw is Mazzucchelli’s art, about which the editor of a major superhero website remarked “I can’t believe this is in a Marvel comic” when I showed it to him.  Indeed.  What makes the best of Mazzucchelli’s pre-alt-comics work so special is how convincingly he was able to pull off the meat and potatoes of superhero action without ever resorting to the lexicon of stock poses, angles, and compositions laid down by Jack Kirby and company in the mid-20th century.  Instead, Mazzucchelli’s best pre-Born Again work looks something like action comics by an artist who combines the best of Bernard Krigstein, Raymond Pettibon and Edward Hopper.  The slashing, immensely bold brushwork gives straightforward shots of hands and faces the visual might of a great punching panel, and when the punches do start flying his emphasis on figure drawing and realist gesture sells the bones they jar and the blood they draw much better than the kind of amplified blocking this comic makes a point of avoiding would.  The approach to violence on display in this issue’s panels is almost a matter-of-fact one, far removed indeed from the balletic fury most comics about fighting strive for.  Mazzucchelli saves the high drama for ink-splattered panels of ran falling, buildings jutting into clouded skies, fog turning a city into a collection of grainy gray rectangles.