Daredevil: The Devil Inside And Out Vol. 2

Collects Daredevil #88-93 written by Ed Brubaker and drawn by Michael Lark, except for #88 which is drawn by David Aja.

This is the second Daredevil book of Brubaker's run, which by the way is still going strong. The first book, which sets up the story in this book, was reviewed in glowing terms here.

Matt is out of prison, but now he has to deal with the twin problems of being on the run and solving the murder of his best friend and colleague Foggy Nelson. The trail sends him on a trip to Europe, but the case is all but simple and he ends up going from one country to another like a euro rail bum. During his trip he runs into several local personalities and also a few from his past. The most interesting of these is Lily, a true femme fatale with the add-on ability to fool Daredevil despite all his lie-detection capabilities. I won't spoil anything here, let's just say that although the person behind it all is not a total surprise, the ending of the book is a bit of a shocker.

Brubaker is certainly not being nice to Daredevil here. Not only does he have to deal with the (apparent) death of Foggy, his encounter with Lily also brings back memories of lost desires that forces him to question his own feelings towards some people very close to him. In short, Brubaker drags him through his own inner hell in best Daredevil tradition.

Brubaker builds this story like a classic noir crime drama. In fact, you could say that this story is so conventional in terms of it's noir influences and how they're applied, that it's almost unusual of Brubaker. But he does pull out a couple of jokers along the way. The most obvious one is the location, but what really pulls the story home and makes it a good Daredevil story is the use of familiar characters to play the archetypes in the story. Besides the familiar faces, again, no spoilers here, Brubaker also introdudes the character Lily. She is a multi-faceted character with unclear motives, and this book will not be the last we have seen of her.

The art is dark and moody and really quite fantastic. With these two books, Lark has established himself among the heavyweight Daredevil artists, up there with Miller and Mazzucchelli. Aja's single issue is also a real gem artistically (although the story is among Brubaker's less interesting work), his artwork reminds me of Miller is terms of the iconography and expressiveness. Whew, difficult words... Finally I want to mention the covers by Lee Bermejo which are absolutely stunning and among some of the most memorable Daredevil images that I can think of.

This is another solid book in what promises to be a very strong series. I can't wait to get to the next book, but with so much going on in the world of Marvel these days, it'll have to wait in line.

8/10