After Brubaker and Lark's first Daredevil arc, I was really expecting something big from the second one. Instead--and I don't know if it's Brubaker's fault or if it comes from editorial--The Devil Takes a Ride is a story on fast-forward. Very little happens in the first three issues of any importance whatsoever, except to provide Lark with some really neat stuff to draw, but it's mostly just a long, drawn-out chase sequence. More happens in the last issue than happened in the other four issues. It's still good, but the pacing makes little sense. Brubaker gives the least important stuff three issues then the most important stuff two pages. For a lot of the story, it feels like a grafting of a James Bond movie to Out of the Past to Daredevil. Once Brubaker gets Daredevil orientated, in time for the last issue, the story's over and The Devil Takes a Ride feels like a spoonful of ice cream from a carton somebody's just going to throw away.
I didn't read Daredevil waiting for something to happen, but I did read it waiting for something unpredictable, something cool. Brubaker's first arc had a lot of cool and unpredictable things in it and it was an exhilarating experience to read the comic book. The first three issues of this story are a bad travelogue of Europe. Lark draws an mean Eiffel Tower, but there's something better he can be doing with his time. It's a bad travelogue because Brubaker doesn't spend any time there--it's either exposition scenes or it's summary shots of Daredevil's European vacation. In a large sense, I get why Daredevil has to go on the European vacation, but it doesn't work on the scenic one. There's no texture to the experience....
The last issue, which is incredibly effective in three or four major scenes, is also vanilla wafer. All the effective moments are big whopping effective moments.
It just doesn't seem like Brubaker's having fun.
