Daredevil: Echo - Vision Quest (Daredevil)

Rating:
Summary: David Mack's long awaited return to the Man Without Fear
Review: Award winning painter David Mack made his long awaited return to Daredevil with Echo: Vision Quest; marking the return of the deaf Maya Lopez AKA Echo, who is attempting to reassemble what's left of her life as she goes on a Native American vision quest. Mack's story revolves around Echo, with DD playing a supporting role and Wolverine makes a surprising appearance to help Echo on her quest. Mack's storytelling is solid, but his superb paints are what the main attraction is here and help the story progress. The only problem with Vision Quest is Mack's superb art. As contradictory as that may sound, his art is and has always been an acquired taste; and that alone will either turn you off or sell you the book. All in all, if your a fan of Daredevil or David Mack, this is worth picking up.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: First I would like to state that my opinion may be biased. When this came out monthly, Bendis's run had temporarily ended on a cliffhanger; Daredevil had publicly beat up and defeated his nemisis the Kingpin, unmasked himself and declared himself the *new* Kingpin.

Then we got this.

David Mack, who is one of Bendis's best friends in the industry, did a guest stint with a character from his previous DD arc 'Parts of a Hole', Maya Lopez (AKA Echo) a deaf latino women who fell in love with Murdock after Karen Paige got killed.

I think if this had come out as a graphic novel, or as a seperate mini, I may have enjoyed it more. But imagine being engrossed in an intelligent, gritty fast-paced work and then being forcefed an elaborate, artsy character study on a relatively minor character.

The story has Maya Lopez returning to Hell's Kitchen after a lengthy absence to attempt to reconcile with Murdock, only to find the world turned upside down and Matt with a new girl, the blind Milla Donovan. So Maya goes off on a 'Vision Quest' to find a name for herself.

One thing that bugged me is Mack disrupting the 'finality' of Hardcore by bringing back Kingpin. Bendis's run ended with a shot of Kingpin unconscious, bloody and bruised with DD standing over him. This should have been his last scene for a long time. Yet he comes back in this arc. Which would be fine, as Kingpin was a fairly integral character in Parts of Hole and to Maya's character, but Mack establishes nothing. Kingpin goes "I still love you" and Maya leaves. Thats it. Her relationship with Fisk is a LOT more interesting than Maya giving monologues on herself. Maya started the chain which led Kingpin to his downfall, surely Fisk has something to say about that?

As stated before, the rest of the arc is pretty much Maya finding a place for herself. Mack's art is beautiful, if not abstract, but it gets boring when the story has nothing to say.

As I said before, this should have been a seperate mini or graphic novel. Instead we get the equivalent of a documentary on Van Gogh between Kill Bill Volume 1 and 2.