Daredevil End Of Days #8

The Team
Writer Brian Micheal Bendis Pencillers Klaus Janson, Bill Sienkiewicz, and David Mack

Mapone is a word that has haunted the readers of this title for months. Its the kind of cliffhanger that starts to get under your skin until you cannot process anything else. Series protagonist Ben Urich never quite figured out the mystery. In this final issue the word is sitting right in the background staring readers in the face. Justice is blind and so is Matt Murdock who haunts this comic book series like a ghost. Daredevil died before the title even started, so why does this feel like a new beginning instead of a dreary end. Maybe its the way the figure known as Stick makes his return in this issue. Or maybe it is the training that a key character endures within the 23 pages of this title. Nonetheless this title has finally reached it's startling conclusion this week that should leave readers in sheer awe.

A huge star of this show still happens to be the Punisher. The character is given all of the best lines here. From the very start of this series the black clad anti-hero has known all of the secrets and quirks readers have been clamoring for. In this chapter many can see what the vigilante was really up too in the earlier installments of the series. As you could expect the results do not include anything remotely happy. Hidden in this issue is also a beautiful reference to artist David Mack's wonderful Wake Up story, which was also written by Brian Micheal Bendis. This tale's final scene is nothing short of masterful storytelling, as it becomes the centerpiece of the entire story being told here. Even though the crux of the narrative is wrapped up here there are still moments that will reveal themselves only in a second read of the entire series. I have no doubt that when these issues are collected in a trade they will read even better than they do now.

Thanks to the art of David Mack, Klaus Janson, and Bill Sienkiewicz this title will age incredibly well. The faux retro style that have made this an enticing read will still be intact decades later. End Of Days has been a comic where the creative talent involved have gone completely all out, Delivering the most insane balls to the walls talent that is currently being produced in super-hero comics. Mack's pages are both creepy and beautiful, backgrounds are very sparse but the impeccable mood is there. Janson and Sienkiewicz deliver a tone that is retro and sloppy. The word sloppy may seem detrimental, but in actuality it hides some of the nuance stemming deep within the title itself.

Here we are eight issues later where there series literally never took a step in the wrong direction. Art is based completely on feeling, the feeling of mystery and the sense of dread that this comic brought was enthralling. It rivaled some of the best moments of the previous Daredevil run by Brian Micheal Bendis. The art has been completely shockingly consistent since the very first issue of this series. When this titles is released in a beautiful hardcover, sit back and enjoy some of the best material that this medium can offer.