Daredevil: Yellow -- Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale

I remember very well buying the first issue of DAREDEVIL off the spinner rack in Trammell’s Grocery Store. I thought it was great, and for a long time DAREDEVIL was one of my favorite comics. I’ll admit, though, I got burned out on the character even before I quit reading comics in the Nineties. Just didn’t care for the direction some of the storylines went. I still have a great fondness for those early issues, though, when Daredevil wore his original yellow-and-red costume.


So it comes as no surprise that I really liked DAREDEVIL: YELLOW, the collected edition of a mini-series by writer Jeph Loeb and artist Tim Sale. It’s not actually a retelling of the character’s origin – that’s referred to but doesn’t take place on-screen – but more of a revisiting of the events in the first several issues of DAREDEVIL told from slightly different angles. There’s not a lot of retconning and monkeying with the original version, either. Loeb and Sale pretty much stick to what Stan Lee, Bill Everett, and Wally Wood created in those issues, just expanding on it here and there.


Everett’s art in the first issue is some of the most memorable I’ve ever seen in comics. A lot of the panels are still vivid in my mind. Sale does a fine job of capturing the same feel without slavishly imitating the work of Everett or Wally Wood, who took over the art chores with the second issue. He’s one of my favorite modern comics artists, being responsible (with Loeb) for the great Batman mini-series THE LONG HALLOWEEN and DARK VICTORY, SUPERMAN FOR ALL SEASONS, and (with Brandon Choi) DEATHBLOW: SINNERS AND SAINTS, one of my all-time favorite graphic novel/collections.


As with MARVELS and MARVELS: EYE OF THE CAMERA, the nostalgia factor is probably one reason I enjoyed DAREDEVIL: YELLOW so much. I can’t read it without remembering the times when I read the original issues on which it’s based. But even if you’ve never read those stories, it’s well worth reading if you’re a Daredevil fan or a fan of good comics in general. Highly recommended.