Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Marvel Comics Presents #49

The Daredevil story titled 'White Messiah'. It's an 8-pager. And it's a stinker. It features a black gang leader with pre-cognitive abilities named Scope. So you take Daredevil's sonar and pit it against this guy's ability to sense when somebody is trying to harm him and I'm really surprised
either one was able to land a punch on each other. 

But that's not what made this one a clunker. It's the dialogue. I'd expect it from a 70s blaxpliotation movie. There's all these jive turkeys and honkys peppered in, mostly from Scope. I expect better from Wolfpack's John Figueroa.

There is also a lot of criticism of the white savior syndrome here. Scope questions Daredevil's right to guard Hell's Kitchen when he's white and most of the neighborhood population is black. I know the irony here is with Matt Murdock being blind, he can't tell who is what color. But if this story was published today, it would be polarizing. 

You'd have half loving the cultural relevance. The other half would criticize it as being woke. I see it as a sequential art take of The Defiant Ones between a hero who pictures himself a villain and a bad guy that sees himself as a savior of his downtrodden people. It's supposed to be poignant and ironic. Sadly, the poor dialogue makes this story more farcical that poignant.

Rating: 5 out of 10 stars.

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