One Sentence Overview: The Owl returns to the streets of Hell's Kitchen to try to take control of the cocaine trade whilst a baby in a bag leads to a comedy of errors
Well, may I be the last to congratulate John Romita Jr on his wedding... which took place the month this little colourful wonder was due to hit the shelves back in '88. [Though perhaps I shouldn't - a quick interweb search reveals that they're no longer together... and also that apparently JRjr's first wife was the model for Typhoid Mary!]
Moving swiftly on, therefore, John's leave of absence means yet another cameo from comic book legend, Steve Ditko. I'm always astonished to see Steve do something for post 60s Marvel as I thought he had fallen out badly with them. Nevertheless, with the legendary artist on board, Ann seizes the opportunity to do something a little different - a bit of homage. This story interrupts the current Inferno storyline and the action, we're told at the beginning, takes place a few months back. However, it could be even longer in the past - bringing the Owl back (he's an oldie... but a goodie), Ann appears to mimic Stan Lee's narrative style, particularly in a longish section early on where she has the king of hooting deliver a verbose soliloquay to an attentive bird.
It's fun but perhaps more interesting is the Owl's interactions with a bunch of hoods, who (in quite a Tarantino-esque postmodern way) discuss the merits of the old style of bad guy and the new style of bad guy. These more realistic villains feel they own the streets now and laugh at Leland's garb and moniker.
However, when he starts flying, they start to become a bit more impressed. Strange, though, in this throw back to a 60s style of writing to see the Owl talk about raiding crack houses.
The Owl and his minions are diverting enough but the most interesting aspect of the issue is the surprise return of another couple of characters - the nameless armed robber and the abandoned baby he encountered back in DD252. Despite his reappearance, the reader is not really given any further insight into the poor sod. No wonder Daredevil keeps turning to the wolly hatted street bum and think, "Who is this guy?"
It's quite a bleak comment on the Hell's Kitchen landscape that our escaped convict can come across a baby and start to bring him up without any state intervention.
Daredevil thinks about intervening but when he sees how compassionate the robber is to his charge, he lets him go. It's a strange set up, but in contrast to a recent story about child sex trafficking in DD259, the street bum here is a reformed character, ready to take on responsibility for another soul abandoned by the Kitchen. It's little details like this that really makes me warm to what Ann has created in the book.
What we end up with is a strangely knockabout story, centring around the old chestnut of identical bags being swapped - one with a bomb in it, and one with er, our robber's baby in it! You can appreciate the subsequent pandemonium. By no means a classic, but enough to raise a grin.
Cast
Daredevil/Matt Murdock
The Owl/Leland Owsley
Armed Robber and abandoned baby
Einstein
Rating: 6 out of 10
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