A Farewell to Ann*

So, that's it.  Ann Nocenti's run has come to an end.  And I've really, really loved it.

What we have had is the antithesis of a comic book fan, a woman who had no real history with comic books in her childhood yet took a job as an editor at Marvel because, hey, it was a job (see here for more information).  When she was given the reins at Daredevil, therefore, what we got was a woman with a disparate range of interests - and not a lot of passion about men in tights. 

Instead, as Ann puts it herself in the above linked article, Kirb Your Enthusiasm, "When I wrote comics, I cycled my private obsessions though the sieve of the form."  For anyone who has journeyed the 53 issues that Annie slid out onto the racks of the corner stores and specialist comic shops, you'll know the truth of this.  Because in her hands, Daredevil was not so much a superhero comic as a commentary on the social issues of the day.  

And yet, I never found Ann's writing overtly preachy.  Often, she presented an issue and let it hang for the reader to think about. She was reluctant to draw the reader to distinct conclusions.  In fact, at times I wonder if she reined herself in so as not to be accused of prosyletism. 

Take Brandy Ash, a character who I've often suspected articulated Ann's worldview more than any other.  She's presented as a flawed, conflicted young woman who has high ideals, but still in thrall to her dysfunctional father.  She wants to help another young woman she views as (literally) brainwashed by  patriarchy yet, in her own way, she is blindsided to disallowing Number Nine to find her own identity.  And ultimately it's Brandy that Ann chooses dies in the central circle of Hell.  Still, to have a nuanced, passionate and beautifully written feminist as a major character in a comic book storyline is so rare and yet Ann developed her so wonderfully.

The Brandy Ash/Number Nine storyline explicitly explore feminist issues within the confines of a throwaway comic book.  But Ann wasn't just interested in one social issue. She was interested in everything.  So we have here meditations on the impact of poverty and mental health on Hell's Kitchen's neglectede citizens, class issues writ large as she shows sympathy for a serial killer who's only interested in taking out the rich, the impact of schizophrenia and sado-mascochism in Typhoid Mary and, in the final story, how racism rumbles on in Daredevil's old homestead.

For Daredevil himself, Ann explores the uncertainty of the male psyche.  Early on, she presents Karen Page as conflicted in her horror at what Daredevil does (Don't Touch Me) and yet her attraction to it (Touch Me).  Ann shows Karen, Brandy and Nyla Skin struggle with trying to know Matt and one can't help wonder if Ann felt that she used Mr Murdock as an exemplar with men's inability to express their feelings.  At times, Matt is ready to run away (emotionally as well as literally) only for one of the women in his life to drag him back on line.  Ann's representation of Matt's only mental troubles comes across as a very real struggle - Matt's mental collapse is portrayed delicately by her and not overdone.  You believe it could be real as opposed to some over the top explosion of dysfunction.

One must applaud Marvel for permitting Ann to write the way she did for so long, because it was atypical to what one might expect.  Two things obviously helped Ann in how she wrote.  Firstly, Frank Miller had thrown away the rule book on what could be written about in Daredevil.  And secondly, by the time Ann took on the book, comic books aimed at adults were beginning to become a sizeable and attractive market.  This Daredevil would have been a hard read for under tens (though they may have enjoyed the Fatboys), but it was certainly great brain food for teens and adults.

Ann's legacy on Daredevil will probably be the creation of Typhoid Mary as well as a great synergy with artist John Romita Jr.  But I'll remember her for her brilliantly, bold, intelligent plotting as well as bringing in phenomenonally interesting characters that I am not sure sustained an afterlife in DD the way Mary did (I'm not sure, I'm about to find out...).  So as well as Brandy and Number Nine, we have the marvellous Fatboys (Daredevil's own Baker Street Irregulars) and the fabulously developed dysfunctional relationship that Bullet has with poor son, Lance.  These characters all work so well because they don't turn up and disappear but because Ann stuck with them and made them both fascinating and believable - people we readers cared about and wanted to know more about.

So, Ann, I'm damned sorry to see you go.  But, hey, comic book fans, she's back in the funny books, writing Green Arrow.  I may be a lifelong Marvel fan, but perhaps I'll be making an exception...

* Yes, terribly poor literary pun; I'm sorry