Marvel Pick Of The Week – November 19, 2014

Pick of the Week:

Daredevil 10, by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee

I picked up twenty single issues from Marvel this week. It was going to be a chore to get through them all in time to select a winner, but I was looking forward to most of them. Unfortunately, I chose to start by reading AXIS and all the tie-ins. That was a miserable idea. I turned grim, bleak page after blunt, dour page, and after the seventh book, I felt morose and lifeless. This week is needlessly depressing, I thought, and I’m getting nothing out of it. I might as well be reading DC.

Then I opened Daredevil, and I was reminded what the illness of depression is, and by the time I had closed this week’s offering, I felt hope again.

When the book ended last time, the Purple Man’s rape-children had ganged up to cause trouble, and they had forced Daredevil to walk off a bridge. Something about their psychic attack reminds Matt Murdock that his happy-go-lucky attitude has been a desperation move, something Mark Waid has hinted since the first issue of this relaunch. See, Murdock may have started as a light character, but the last couple of decades have seen him work best when he adds another few miseries to his back. A girlfriend has committed suicide, two have been murdered by Bullseye in his arms, and his blind ex-wife is confined to a long-term mental care facility. In recent years, despair has moved him to set up a bizarre prison in the heart of New York, staffed by ninja guards. This man has experienced a lot.

This issue is the first in a long time to sit with Matt as he thinks about the clinical depression he is developing. He narrates beautifully his experience with the disease – “Its primary goal is to isolate you. At its worst, it will literally paralyze you rather than allow you to feel anything at all.” This is a naked, brutal revelation of a man who has stopped pretending that he walked through his troubles unscathed. And though I was so deeply moved by his observations, I was readying myself for the trite, “But then I got over it, because being depressed is lame!” And Mark Waid showed me, yet again, that he gets it. Matt doesn’t just get happy. Matt finds small ways to make little conscious moves, and eventually, those allow him to disrupt the morass that holds him. He saves the day with some heroic acrobatics and a clever understanding of how the Purple Man’s coercion power works, but at the end of the day, he has curled up in the dark because this isn’t the kind of sadness you just smile your way through. I encourage readers to stay for the post-credits sequence, though (Yes, the book has a secret page after the letters page, and yes, it’s as awesome as it sounds), for a perspective on his illness that brought a happy tear to my eye.

Mark Waid has done the readers a service with his kind but firm discussion of the realities of postpartum depression three issues ago, and he has reached people again with a sensitive portrayal of the clinical depression so many people face, encouraging folks to hold on to their heroism amidst this inner fight. Well done, sir. And thank you.

Honorable Mentions:

Black Widow 12, for pitting sexy super-spy Black Widow against sexy Silver Fox Anderson Cooper in the court of public opinion. I am team Widow, but I love the idea that the Marvel Universe’s version of Anderson Cooper fights his enemy by encouraging the Twitterverse to trend #WhoIsBlackWidow.

Amazing Spider-Man 10, for Spider-Verse continuing to surpass AXIS in every way. It’s dark, too – different versions of Spider-Man are getting killed and eaten, and often the cute versions – but this is done with a sense of humor and a thrill of watching brave heroes working together to protect the worlds they love. Extra points for the cute editorial boxes encouraging us to follow the adventures of each subgroup of interdimensional arachnids in Spider-Woman, Scarlet Spiders, or Spider-Man 2099. This crossover is large but easily interconnected.

Elektra 8, because Elektra has a jetpack and fights magical flying Hand ninja assassins in midair, and that’s why we read comics in the first place.

Guardians Of The Galaxy 21, for developing the Venom symbiote into a terrifying monster that just might eat this whole team up… and then dressing Groot up in it. Chills.