Daredevil Visionaries: Guardian Devil. Written by Kevin Smith. Illustrated by Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti. New York: Marvel, 2001. Softcover, color, unpaged. $19.95 USA, $29.95 Canada. ISBN# 0-7851-0737-1.

AUDIENCE: Definitely R-rated. Copious violence, gore and murder; adult themes including religious philosophy and AIDS. Very little adult language (and one is a typo: the word “damn” is used at one point when “dam” was obviously intended).

SYNOPSIS: Matt Murdock is still moping over ex-girlfriend Karen Page’s breaking up with him six months earlier, and goes to confession to seek guidance. Meanwhile, a homicidal massacre decimates a New York maternity ward (body count: unnumbered). Meanwhile, a 15-year-old Catholic girl with a baby in her arms, Gwyneth, is being chased through the streets of Hell’s Kitchen by two henchmen in a car with California plates. They’d killed her parents the night before (body count is now 2 plus unnumbered maternity ward victims). Matt abandons his confession to rescue her. Daredevil stops the goons, but the girl vanishes. We see a glimpse of the shadowy figure who sent the henchmen after the girl. Unhappy with their failure, he sends them to a quick death. (Body count is now 4, plus the maternity ward victims.) Gwenyth then shows up in Matt’s law office with an astonishing story: she gave birth to the baby even though she’s still a virgin, and an angel appeared in a vision telling her to turn to Matt Murdock for protection. The angel also told her that he was Daredevil! She turns the baby over to him for safekeeping, telling him it’s the Christian redeemer.

Another of Matt’s ex-girlfriends (XGF, for brevity, from this point on), Natasha Romanov AKA the Black Widow, stops by Matt’s apartment and helps with the baby, while at the office Matt receives a visit from Nicholas Macabes, representing some mysterious organization called “Sheol.” Macabes ALSO knows Matt is Daredevil, and states that the baby is the Antichrist and that unless he turns it over to Macabes, its mere presence will poison everyone he, Daredevil, loves. Matt sort of freaks out, but Natasha keeps him from doing anything rash about the baby. But then Franklin “Foggy” Nelson is arrested for the murder of a woman he was committing adultery with (body count: 5 plus MWV), and XGF Karen return to sob on Matt’s shoulder, with horrible news…

And that was only up through chapter two. I’ll stop the synopsis before I reveal any more of the twists and turns this roller-coaster ride takes, except to say that the religious mysteries deepen (Matt even consults Dr. Strange), there’s a memorable battle between Daredevil and Bullseye, and the final body count is at least 44 plus the MWV.

There is an introduction by Ben Affleck (who plays Daredevil in the movie) and an afterword by Kevin Smith. Trivia: Penciller Joe Quesada has an uncredited cameo appearance in Chasing Amy; tit for tat, look for an uncredited cameo of Kevin Smith in the funeral scene of this GN.

EVALUATION: When you lift this book you’ll note it’s pretty hefty for such a modestly sized volume. The density is really due to the high-quality paper and tight binding, I’m sure. But sometimes I couldn’t escape the notion that it was so heavy because of all the words in it! You’ll elbow your way through dialog balloons and narrative boxes, dense with print, as you make your way through this GN. I exaggerate, of course (I do love my hyperbole); there are plenty of pages with moderate amounts of text, and Smith makes good use of striking panels with just a word or two, or none at all, when the story calls for it. Still, if you’ve seen Smith’s movie Dogma, you’ll recall Chris Rock having to talk at high speed in some scenes to squeeze in all his explicatory dialog – it’s sort of the same effect here at times. The storytelling doesn’t falter due to the word density, though. The plot moves along nicely, with both excitement and reflection in due measure, and is complex and juicy.

Alas, I couldn’t suspend my disbelief enough to fully accept the conclusion. Without giving away any spoilers, I hope, I ask the reader to count the months in the plot’s timeline (remember that the baby is about two months old as the story opens). Not impossible, certainly, but a very shaky plan! Another aspect of the plot that had me *tsk*’ing my tongue was the reaction of one of the characters to a positive HIV test – immediately proclaiming “I have AIDS!” Unfortunately, this is probably a realistic reaction to an unexpected test result, despite the actual difference between having full-blown AIDS versus testing HIV-positive. So I’m actually *tsk*ing at human foibles, which is after all the whole point of fiction. Chalk one up for the author. :-)

There’s plenty of fun to leaven the dark storyline, but it comes primarily from the superhero name-dropping and in-jokes. Tony Stark, Dazzler, the Incredible Hulk and others get a mention, while there are scenes with Dr. Strange and the Amazing Spider-Man. There’s even a DC character, or at least an unidentified TV news anchor who is the spitting image of Clark Kent. Graffitos on various walls (“The End is Nigh” and “Who watches the watchmen”) pay homage to Alan Moore’s seminal Watchmen, and there are also scattered references to “Silent Bob” (AKA Kevin Smith) and Kevin Smith’s movies.

The art and layout are very nice; these guys are at their peak form. The splash pages especially are ornate, deco showpieces. Old religious woodcuts serve as backdrops to a few pages, in keeping with the pages’ tone. The coloring is very beautiful, particularly the luminous sheen in the women’s hair. (Whatever conditioner the Black Widow uses, I want some!!) The one thing that bugs me about the art is how all the characters’ eyes seem to be pointing upwards. It’s what you’d expect for Matt, as a blind man – but all the other characters also display a bunch of white under their irises, making them look blind themselves unless they happen to be looking at something in particular. I found it annoying, to the point where I wondered if it was intentional. Is the artistic point here that all of us are metaphorically blind, or perhaps that we ought to spend more time looking to heaven? Or perhaps just to drive home the fact that Matt is not so different from the rest of us, after all.