Daredevil Noir by Alexander Irvine

Daredevil Noir Reviews

• 
  Chelsea 🏳️‍🌈

  This wasn't far enough off from Daredevil's initial origin to make this interesting for me.
  
  It does have more of a classic Noir feel compared to Iron Man Noir, but I enjoyed that book a lot more. I don't know if it's just that I find Matt Murdock to be a bland character (doubtful considering I love him on the show) or if it's just this book but I couldn't really find anything to latch onto. There's a "romance" that progresses out of one meeting somehow. The narrative wasn't moving enough that I got invested in it at all.
  
  The art is absolutely gorgeous. It's exactly what you want for a story like this. I did enjoy the Bullseye aspect of this. Also, I found Kingpin to be likable enough.
  
  Ultimately, I just didn't love the story and I wasn't invested.
• 
  Frédéric

  My favorite of the Marvel Noir series (excluding X-Men that I haven't read).
  Both Irvine and Coker grasped the concept of noir and delivered a good, dark, gritty, very much hopeless story with an open ending just as I like them.
  
  Of course, 4 issues is not nearly enough to really develop the characters and Murdock is particularly aloof in this story. But I think that is a good use from Irvine of what you're supposed to know about him. If you've never read Daredevil in your life you can appreciate the story, no problem. You'll find the main character not so genial but not to the point to give away the book. But if you ever did (and if, like me, you have a special fondness for him), you just connect the dots between what drives this Murdock and the one you know, and so the story flows.
  
  Irvine also makes a nice use of other characters (Foggy as a wise P.I. giving advices to reckless Murdock) even if you don't see them (Some chinese guy once told me...).
  
  Bullseye and Kingpin are perfect cogs in the story and Coker draws them with what's needed of appeal/menace to impose them as more than mere antagonists of the hero.
  
  The arty default would be DD's horrible chinese demon-like mask which looks a wee bit more ridiculous than scary. Since it's half in the dark most of the time anyway, that's no big deal.
• 
  Robert

  Take away his lawerly conflicts, take away his Catholicism, whats left behind isn't rightly Daredevil.
• 
  Amanja

  This is actually my second time reading Daredevil Noir. I read it previously before I had started this blog. Since I have read Punisher Noir and Luke Cage Noir I figured I should also have a review for this one. I honestly didn't even remember reading it before and that pretty much sums up the review of the comic book. It's forgettable.
  
  Find the full review at
  https://amanjareads.com/2022/08/30/da...
• 
  Lost Planet Airman

  Fairly straightforward. Reimagine Daredevil in the thirties in New York, populate with gangsters and molls and guys and dolls and tell a four-chapter dark gritty two-fisted noir tale.
• 
  Jeff Lanter

  If you know anything about Daredevil, particularly the Bendis/Maleev version, you know that it is a fairly noir style. This has made some skeptical about why Daredevil could benefit from a noir adaptation of his origin story. While I will admit that it doesn't radically change who Daredevil is, the resulting story does lead to some nice surprises, a very cool environment/time period, and rich character interactions, particularly with Daredevil and Kingpin. I don't want to ruin any of the surprises, but I will say that while the book starts off as a seemingly by the numbers noir adaptation, the book slowly goes in its own direction. The noir framing of the story works really well and you know Matt isn't going to end up walking away happy because nobody ever does in these kinds of stories. I loved the art here. It reminds me most of Maleev, but it looks very much like Prohibition era art and the dark colors and shading look very authentic. Kingpin looks younger, fitter, and more wry here and I really liked that change in his appearance. If you like noir stories and can set your doubts aside about a Daredevil noir story, I think most readers will find this really enjoyable.
• 
  Hilary "Fox"

  
  
  I can't get over how much I love the suit with the more prominent horns.
  
  
  Daredevil Noir is a tight mystery. Bullseye is killing people left and right. The man who killed Jack Murdock is out of prison and on the streets. Matt, the young courier for Foggy Nelson, has to consider just what he wants to do. He wants to be a lawyer, and is the most trusted adviser for Foggy. Yet there's something strange about the woman who hires them, not the smallest fact of which is how hard Matt falls for her. Then again, he never was one for good decisions.
  
  The art in this volume is beautiful, a fair bit of it looks like it was done in watercolors in fact. The suit design, as seen above, is great. I liked the relationship between Matt and Foggy, although I wish more time had been given to it. Daredevil's origins were a little bit shaky, but the scenes between him and Fisk more than made up for it. Likewise, Bullseye was great.
  
  Daredevil, already a noir character, lends himself well to this format. I would read more in this style, and in fact am greatly looking forward to
  Luke Cage Noir. This time period fits so well for the characters, and the art has been uniformly great in the two issues I've read. Shame this all didn't last longer.
• 
  Matěj Komiksumec

  Další super alternativní Daredevil, byť si myslím, že měl trochu na víc. Matt Murdock je tady spíš takovej nijakej panák bez duše kolem nějž plyne příběh (něco jako Batman v Dlouhém Halloweenu). Ostatní aspekty DD světa jsou super, Foggy jako P.I. je super idea, Bullseye mě tady hrozně moc bavil a Kingpin je pořád skvělý mizera. Art je nádherný, líbí se mi důraz na krev.
  A konec to má úplně fantastický. Škoda toho Murdocka 3,5*.
• 
  Eva B.

  I love Daredevil and I love noir/noir spoofs, so I should have loved this, right? Well, I did not love the way that so much of this focused on Matt's obsession with Eliza after meeting her once when there could have instead been so much more noir detective work going on.
• 
  Rick Silva

  Set in Marvel's "Noir" alternate universe, this 1930s-era version of Daredevil has most of the classic elements readers will expect: Wilson Fisk, Foggy Nelson, Hell's Kitchen, and even a "Bullseye Killer".
  
  This was a very well crafted story that stands on its own, and retains the heart of Daredevil's mythos. The action sequences were excellent, and the characters were spot-on. Foggy Nelson and the Kingpin were especially good.
  
  Really, in many ways, this story could have been done in the standard continuity as easily as in this alternate world, and some readers may find that it is not enough of a departure. The changes made from the standard Marvel continuity didn't feel like much of a leap: Matt Murdock is an assistant to Foggy, a private investigator. Other than that, the biggest change is a new interpretation of Bullseye, and the addition of gangster Orville Halloran, and up-and-coming mobster who serves as an effective new villain.
  
  The pacing of the story was a nice build to an effective conclusion, and I thought the climactic twists and action were effective, along with a really fun open ending in the final pages.
  
  This is a good story that hits Daredevil's classic thematic elements through just enough of a different lens to make it feel fresh.
• 
  Rosaria Battiloro

  This is actually my second reading of this series, the first one being back in 2010 I think? I didn't remember anything about the story, lol, but sure I do remembered the art! Tomm Coker is an amazing artist, and his style is the perfect match with Irvine's writing. A really classic noir story, with the hero/detective duelling with his dark past, a nemesis on the rise, and a femme fatale, ofc.
  I will go on checking again the other titles for this marvel AU!
• 
  Jorge Williams

  I have always loved Daredevil, he might even be my favourite Marvel character. This is great, a very well written short Daredevil one off. The art is fantastic also and there is a twist in the middle that I did not see coming. This is the first marvel 'noir' story I have tried, I will checking out some of the others.
• 
  cody

  i liked this comic, the noir series of heroes is cool in general. not throwing shade as if it was completely bad but i feel like the costume for him tho could’ve been a bit more, well- “noir” similar to spider-man’s noir version which is such a good costume. but good story, nice action, short read, and ofc love daredevil
• 
  Logan Harrington

  9/10:
  While this isn’t a perfect story, this new character serves as a very interesting counterpart to Marvel Comics’ main Daredevil from Earth-616. I was thoroughly intrigued with the story told throughout these four issues, I felt the most important tropes for a Daredevil, and I felt the noir tone established through the artwork, setting, and writing.
  
  Daredevil Noir is certainly a character I’d love to see make a transition to live-action some day!
• 
  Mike

  Dd Noir review
  
  Oh come on - really? We're going to trot out DD's nearly word-for-word origin story (Battling' Jack, blinded as kid, developed super-senses, lawyer, gymnastics)? I've enjoyed the Noir series precisely because they take the *concept* of the central hero and put them into a 30's setting with powers and villains that fit a pre-golden age era.
  
  This is more like what Hollywood did with the Flintstones movie - instead of re-imagining what our modern gadgets would look like in the stone age (fax machine? Internet?) they brought out the same tired gimmicks as were "funny" in the 60's - or to a ten-year-old version of me.
  
  This story has all the classic DD elements: quietly menacing Kingpin, killing Bullseye, an ineffectual Foggy, and a woman in danger for Matt to obsess over. The only *noir* elements here are so much black ink ("shadows") that I can't even tell if DD is kicking or dancing, and (b) enough rainfall to wash away the stank of movies like Barb Wire.
  
  By chapter 3 it starts to read like a *good* DD story. Not anything particularly *noir* (or even old-timey) about it mind you, but maybe this imprint was the only way Irvine was able to ever write a DD tale.
  
  It ends up like a primer of every iconic DD story ever written - all the high points are summarised here, like an illustrated Cliff's Notes guide. Which is to say it's decent enough, but hardly stretches any boundaries.
• 
  Sam Quixote

  Matt Murdock has been looking for the man who killed his father for decades and then one day a woman steps into his office to tell him she knows the man. With vengeance finally within his grasp, the man who at night becomes a masked vigilante called Daredevil, must decide if taking a life to avenge a life is right. But what part does this mysterious woman play, and with the Kingpin lurking in the shadows, the seemingly straightforward story suddenly becomes a lot murkier...
  
  Alexander Irvine does a decent job of writing this book, it's clear he's a novelist as he's got a stronger grasp of syntax than most comics writers and hammers home the themes and imagery of the book throughout very effectively. I thought the way Daredevil took down Bullseye in the end was ingenious and yet inevitable given the book's foreshadowing techniques. Tomm Coker's artwork is so-so, it suits the story though I thought Daredevil's mask was a bit too Hallowe'en-y.
  
  I thought the story was decent and had the right amount of surprise in it, I liked how they twisted Bulleye's identity, but I felt Murdock was a bit distant as a character and the book a bit shallow, despite its plot being the classic vengeance storyline. The book is a decent effort but not the best in the Noir series.
• 
  Aaron

  Not terrible, but the whole time I was reading this I kept thinking "Why?" Daredevil, particularly at the time this was written, is already a noir. The runs written by Bendis and Brubaker are some of the best Daredevil stuff around, and lean heavily into the tropes and dialogue styles of the genre. This story (which is mostly "noir" because it's set in the 50s, I guess?), doesn't really nail any of those. It's just Matt Murdock beating a lot of people up to find the guy that killed his father. There's no real twists or turns or mystery or intrigue. There's one minor twist that you will see coming from a thousand miles away, but it doesn't lead to any sort of satisfying conclusion or new action. This feels very much paint by numbers, and while some of the art is gritty and appealing, it's overall just not really doing anything all that new with the characters.
• 
  Hális Alves

  Demolidor Noir honra a proposta da coleção Marvel Noir e constrói a figura de Matt Murdock como alguém que trilha uma linha muito tênue entre a arrogância e a fragilidade. Os traços e cores de Tomm Coker são tenebrosas e hostis, contribuindo muito bem para a atmosfera geral da narrativa e demarcando os espaços do Demolidor e do Rei do Crime de modo a envolvê-los na antiquíssima dualidade interdependente em que ambos se encontram no mythos da Marvel. O encadernado da Panini tem boa qualidade e traz alguns extras.
• 
  C. Varn

  Daredevil Noir is almost redundant
  
  While post-Frank Miller Daredevil is almost already noir, some of the twists here are classic. That said, this just doesn't do enough with the set up despite some very interesting twists. The art is properly atmospheric.
• 
  Dan

  review later
• 
  Crossbreaker96

  B R U T A L!
• 
  Matty

  i actually rather liked this. it was a bit hard to follow but i'm always if not a fan then at least open minded to historical AUs like this.
• 
  I_ty_toje

  Интересно, это главное слово, нам представляют кажется знакомого героя, но на самом деле чуть иного. Вот кажется начинается мотив справедливости, но нет - мотив мести. Причина для комиксов довольно банальна, самые известные истории комиксного становления вышли оттуда же. История для одной арки вполне сносная, жесткая и увлекающая. Присутствие Фамм Фаталь тоже порадовало - для нуара самое то. Не понравилась несколько "ведомая" роль Мэтта. Он все время позади, все время обманут.
  Рисунок мне очень нравится, я люблю такие мрачные дождливые истории, удалось создать впечатление дождя за окном и драмы в большом городе.
  Прочитать можно, но ожидания стоит немного приструнить, всеми любимый герой здесь не так хорош.
• 
  Emanuele Malpezzi

  L'atmosfera hard-boiled si addice benissimo a un personaggio che fa della voce fuori campo il suo tratto distintivo. Peccato che però non esista un vero enigma da risolvere.
  Alcuni dialoghi sono molto buoni (soprattutto sul finale), ma la sceneggiatura ogni tanto non è chiarissima. Anche la disposizione delle tavole ogni tanto lascia a desiderare.
• 
  Λευτέρης Αναγνωστόπουλος

  *2023 reread*
  Daredevil Noir was the first Marvel Noir I've ever read when I was a teen. The art is still gorgeous, as I remembered it, really good prose and the structure of the story is interesting. The plot is so-so and I don't really like Daredevil's suit but I honestly believe that this is a well-told cape-story.
• 
  Ash Reads Books

  The art was great and the premise was interesting, but there wasn't enough of a build-up to the villain reveal for me to get invested. Also, the writing felt choppy at points, particularly at the very beginning and end of each comic - it made transitioning from one to the other difficult.