This multi-character story has the crime boss, the Kingpin, soliciting the help of a famed psychiatrist, Paul Mondat, in the treatment of his beloved, semi-comatose wife. Not content to just hire the man, Kingpin wants to guarantee his commitment by having Mondat's blind wife, Cheryl, kidnapped. The kidnapper is Victor, a completely unstable junkie-schizophrenic who becomes fixated on Cheryl. Daredevil becomes involved, and also becomes infatuated with the blind woman.
Daredevil: Love and War is an atmospheric, fully painted, tabloid-sized graphic novel. And if it isn't perhaps the best thing Frank Miller ever wrote, it's still pretty good. The interweaving of the various characters, most well-delineated, and how their different actions have unforeseen effects on the other characters is well done. Frank Miller's ear for dialogue is, perhaps, the finest in the history of comic books, and his ability to turn phrases, to repeat lines but with different significance (like the opening and closing monologue), and to juxtapose words and images is almost unsurpassed. The story veers between urban grittiness and violence, to humour, to being lyrical, poetic, almost dreamlike, and ultimately kind of poignant.
Perhaps the chief weaknesses are that it is an ensemble piece -- Daredevil is still a prominent character, but only one of three or four -- and, of course, comic relief goon, Turk, who can be amusing...but also strikes me uncomfortably like a racist caricature. And there's a strange sense of disappointment by the end, a feeling that something is missing. I'm not quite sure what, but it keeps Daredevil: Love and War from being truly great.
Daredevil - Love And War
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