One Sentence Overview: Daredevil is drawn into an ethical battle of wills when he encounters an animal rights activist, appalled at the way her farmer father treats his animals
You know the story about movie stars who take the dollar for a blockbuster or two in order to win favour with film studios to make their own pet projects (e.g. George Clooney)? Well, I feel like we've had two consecutive issues of more 'traditional' comic book fare, with Daredevil battling against bad guys or in the case of DD270, a supernatural freak, and having delivered this, Ann feels comfortable about drafting an 'issues' heavy escapade with next to no 'action'. (Indeed, the best an action fan gets is Daredevil putting a poor young woman in an arm lock - you should be ashamed of yourself, Matt!)
Here, Ann concentrates on a couple of big themes that interlock - animal rights and the rights of women. First up, we're reintroduced to the cocaine dealing Skip, a guy Daredevil rescued from a burning plane back in DD267. But it appears that the white powder's a side line - rather, Skip is an intensive farmer, whose methods of meat production are, to say the least, unkind. Skip likes to keep his animals in the most inhumane manner possible. Who cares, he tells his farm manager, Harry, if the pigs are breaking their legs because of the grids he keeps them on? They're not being bred to walk anyway. Who cares about chickens being debeaked or geneticaly tampered with to create extra meaty chicken wings? Instead Skip moans about animal rights activists turning up to protest in leather shoes.
Skip, however, faces an unlikely adversary in his daughter, Brandy, who has, up until now, quite happily taken the Ash family shilling. When she meets Daredevil (dressed, rather amusingly, in her late 80s aerobics gear), she fills him in on the appalling conditions in which the animals her father keeps live. She blasts the apathetic view of the citizenry, who she feels have a rose tinted view of animals roaming free in the beautiful countryside until their time comes. There then follows a couple of pages that could have been drafted by Morrissey, where we see scenes of animal production splashed with ugly red splurges that drip down the pages.
Animal mistreatment is an intriguing, if irregular, theme for a comic story. However, Ann takes things further here when she introduces an even more sinister element to Skip's work with genetics. Before I come on to that, I think it's worth commenting on Skip's relationship with his daughter. As stated above, Brandy has been happily living off the funds of Skip's immoral gains, albeit with the intention to eventually screw him over. With this in mind, though, Skip's telephone conversation with Brandy early on is, to say the least, pretty creepy. "Sure you want daddy's drug money?" Skip asks his daughter. Brandy's response, "Don't do this" feels ambiguous, almost as if she is a victim of her circumstances or she is being abused in some capacity.
Having set up Skip as a controlling, nasty piece of work, Ann brings us to the piece de resistance about half way through. Skip is not only modifying animals but has a laboratory full of beautiful, naked young blonde women too! There's something Stepford-ian about Skip's plan for a perfect wife or "living barbie doll" as the charming man refers to her. When one of Skip's scientists tell him that 'number nine' is exhibiting a more independent, fiery nature than the others, Skip is pleased - "I didn't ask for a boring mate".
Skip goes on to reveal that the girls are not clones but willing volunteers who came forward, seemingly in order to achieve some kind of physical perfection.
It's a disturbing, yet somewhat convincing, twist. Over 20 years since this was written, modern culture continues to invoke anxiety in young women that they are somehow not good enough, not pretty enough, not thin enough. Skip's plan seems ghastly but one could believe that there would be young minds willing enough to be exploited by him.
The most eerie moment, however, appears right at the end. Bearing in mind his peculiar relationship with Brandy, when Skip's daughter's plans kick off and the farm is ransacked, Number Nine is freed from her shackles. Her first word? "Daddy".
Erk! This is positively Electra complex territory we're entering now!
What's intriguing to me about this whole story is how nasty and irredeemable Skip appears. And yet this was also the character that Daredevil neglected to interfer with in issue 267 (due to his own state of mind). Perhaps there's a slightly pessimistic sense that men like this - the rich, white man with connections - have so much to protect them, so much going for them in society that even a superhero can't stand in their way. Whatever the case, this may not be typical comic book fare, but it's very dramatic cohesive material.
Cast
Daredevil/Matt Murdock
Skip Ash
Brandy Ash
Number Nine
Harry
Jack
Rating: 8 out of 10
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