The artistic innovation continues!
I feel like up to now a great deal of the praise for this series has been laid solely at Mark Waid's feet. And yes, this series has thus far maintained a very strong voice of its own, with a very upbeat and fun tone that the rest of the Marvel universe right now is not sharing, and that's a huge breath of fresh air. Nonetheless, for me anyway, the standout aspect of this series has been Paolo Rivera's stunning artwork.
Like no Daredevil artist ever before, Rivera has taken to drawing Daredevil's world the way Daredevil "sees" it. This has allowed for creative, new ways of rendering characters, backgrounds, the works, that are nothing short of breathtaking. This issue continues the trend, with a few panels that made me pause from my reading to take the time to just stop and admire.
Much of this was made possible by having Daredevil fight Klaw. Klaw is a Fantastic Four and Black Panther villain, and there is so rarely crossover with these sorts of things, but having "The master of sound" fight Daredevil instead was a brilliant idea, and I wish, for the art's sake, that it could have gone longer. This fight could have merely been a gimmick like when there's a brawl between opposites such as the Human Torch and Iceman purely for irony's sake, but no, this logical matchup ("master of sound" versus man with enhanced hearing and radar senses) allowed for some of the most clever superhero storytelling I've seen in recent memory. The story isn't complex, yet it is fresh, bold and VERY smart.
I like incoming artist Marcos Martin well enough and I'm sure he'll do fine with Daredevil based on my familiarity with him plus his backup feature in issue #1... but I'll be wanting Rivera back.
