Daredevil/Bullseye: The Target #1
Review by Everest
Story:
Art:

Written by Kevin Smith
Art by Glenn Fabry
Colors by Paul Mounts
Lettering by J.G. & Comicraft’s Jason Levine

Published by Marvel.
Price: $3.50
My verdict: Unless you just want anything with Kevin Smith’s name on it, don’t waste your money.

The premise: The book starts off with a comparison between the way New Yorkers felt about 9/11 and the way Daredevil felt when Karen Page was murdered by his arch-nemesis, Bullseye. From there we go to an apartment where an American, a true believer in capitalism, is arranging a meeting between some Arabs and a killer they want to hire to assassinate some unnamed, but obviously important person. When asked to demonstrate his willingness to kill anyone for the right price, the killer pulls off an unbelievable murder that is, apparently, the climax of this particular issue. At the end of the book, the assassin reveals himself to be none other than…well, since the title of this mini-series is Bullseye, who do you think it is?

Okay, let’s get started here. While readable, this book is far from being Kevin Smith’s best work (which, in my opinion, was Clerks, by the way). There’s just not much to the book. The 9/11 comparison seemed like yet another gratuitous inclusion of that tragic event. What it sets up--that Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil, loved Karen Page--is nothing new. We’ve been through this before. Then we get to the introduction of this series’ villain. So what? Ooh, Bullseye will work for America’s worst enemies; he’ll kill an innocent bystander. We already knew that too. And when I said that he pulls off an “unbelievable murder,” I meant it; no suspension of disbelief there for me: I just couldn’t buy it. The writing on this book is adequate, but certainly no more than that.

Glenn Fabry’s artwork is, well, classic Glenn Fabry art. It’s not my style. It’s cartoony, and almost everyone in the book has strange bulges randomly dispersed on their bodies, including Daredevil’s head. Maybe this is foreshadowing a brain tumor development. If you liked Fabry’s work on other books, then you’ll like it here too; unfortunately, if you didn’t like his work elsewhere, it hasn’t changed.

My recommendation: Some people are going to love this book; some people will rave over the fact that wunderkind Kevin Smith wrote it and that Glenn Fabry did the art, but I’m not one of those people. Read it in the store, but don’t waste your money on it.