Daredevil: Road Warrior #1

By Mark Waid, Peter Krause and John Kalisz

As a recent convert to the amazing world of digital weekly pulls, as well as a big fan of the Mark Waid/Chris Samnee/Javier Rodriguez Daredevil series, a series that just wrapped with issue #36, Daredevil: Road Warrior was kind of a no brainer. The infinite comic line has been a gamble for Marvel and, frankly, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of talk or buzz about it anymore, for whatever reason. In this case the Infinite Comics line doesn’t really add to the story, so much as enhance it. A good example of that is right at the start when Matt Murdock is trying to explain radar sense and every “page turn” slowly fades from his “radar sense” to, for lack of a better term, regular vision. It was a very cool fade to go along with an interesting narrative.

Speaking of the narrative, what adjectives have not been used to describe Mark Waid and his writing/portrayal of Daredevil? All his other work aside, there might not be any other ways to explain it or describe it that hasn’t already been said. This man is just a master of his craft that is consistently writing at a higher level than most and he just gets it; he gets comics, he gets the drama, suspense, humor, character building, character moments, narratives, interactions, everything. Mark Waid just gets “it” and it’s no surprise that he is, without a doubt, one of the top writers in the comic industry past or present and future.

Peter Krause, who previously worked with Waid on the awesome Irredeemable series, and colorist John Kalisz do a great job with their side of the coin too. While it’s hard to perform at the level that Mark Waid does, be it as a writer or artist, both Krause and Kalisz match Waid stride for stride and deliver a visually enjoyable issue. The effects when the plane goes through turbulence are particularly striking, even if they kind of mess with your eyes, and add another great layer to this relatively new digital format.

The only complaint that comes to mind, and it’s not a knock on the art team because the page itself was laid out great, drawn and colored great, is during the plane scene and whether it’s because of the iPad or poor digital quality or what, for three or four swipes everything was blurred. It was awful. Hard to make out the words and just ruined the overall quality of it. With being an infinite comic, there’s apparently no zooming in or out. It was not good, whatever the reason, and hopefully it gets sorted out in the following issues so it doesn’t happen again.

Aside from that, the comic was great. It was fun, interesting, expertly crafted and just the perfect little intermission before the new Daredevil series in San Francisco. The new series really can’t arrive fast enough, so if you’re hurting for some great Daredevil look no further than Road Warrior.