The Post "Born Again" Issues
This section covers the handful of fill-in issues that appeared in the wake of Miller's ‘Born Again' storyline, including the issues written by who would become the next regular DD scribe, Ann Nocenti.
Daredevil #235: "A Safe Place"; 23 pages
Writer: Danny Fingeroth
Artist: Steve Ditko, pencils, Danny Bulanadi, inks
While Daredevil struggles with the repercussions of what the Kingpin put him through, Calvin Zabo comes to grips with the possibility of always being Mr. Hyde and never having the ‘one safe place' of his humanity.
This is a fairly peculiar issue. This is the second of a whole series of fill-in issues written to fill the void left by Steve Englehart's declining to take over the book after the radical rehaul of 'Born Again.' As we'll see as we get deeper into this period, a lot of the writers who did these fill-ins either gave lip service to the new status quo Frank Miller left the book in, or they ignored it all together. Not Danny Fingeroth. To his credit, Fingeroth tried to tackle the matter head on in this story, which contrasts Daredevil's confliction with the depths he reached during ‘Born Again' with the dilemma faced by Mr. Hyde when he can disappear into his secret identity....but only if he accepts that the change is permanent.
It's not a great story--not the least because Fingeroth is, at best, a mediocre writer. He really tries to convey the desire Matt has to rise above the brutality he had to resort to, and there are moments when you could see him coming a hair shy of attaining his goal. But for every moment of near-success, there are a handful of glaring mistakes. The choreography of the fight, for example, is truly messed up; yes, it is true that Chinatown abuts the legal district in downtown Manhattan as Fingeroth cites, but his pacing is so off that it looks like Hyde jumps out of a Chinatown loft, crosses the street and bursts into the Supreme Court building (and I'm not even going to get into how improbable it is for DD and Hyde to just happen to fall into a subway track after one big hit). Overall, Fingeroth seems to be trying to say something profound, when in truth all he's got is ‘a weird menace, two fights and a chase.'
Art for this issue is by Steve Ditko (it's interesting how many Daredevil fill-ins of this era are by Ditko--it's as if E-i-C tom DeFalco desperately wanted Ditko to do Spider-Man stories, but gave him the next best thing to keep the notoriously eccentric artist happy), and it's the usual good cartooning by the veteran artist. Admittedly, after years of Gene Colan's nightmarish Mr. Hyde, Ditko's staid portrayal--he basically makes the villain look like a man in need of a haircut--is a touch of a let down, but it gets the job done. What's really bizarre is the weird, obvious tacked-on at the last minute page that's drawn by another artist who doesn't even try to make his work look like Ditko's (my guess is it's by finisher Danny Bulanadi). The coda literally comes out of nowhere, doesn't seem to have any connection thematically or emotionally with the story we've just read, and creates a sort of stunted climax to the tale itself.
"A Safe Place" is certainly a step up from the previous fill-in. But it's still a fill-in, and one that is lacking.