Daredevil: Yellow (Graphic Novel collection)
Written by Jeph Loeb
Art by Tim Sale
Colors by Matt Hollingsworth
Cover by Tim Sale
Published by Dan Buckley
Daredevil: Yellow (January 2003) by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale (Superman For All Seasons, Batman: The Long Halloween) is a part of Marvel Comics’ “Color Series” which also features other titles such as Hulk: Gray (June 2011, six issues) and Spider-Man: Blue (August 2011, six issues). This six-part series is a unique retelling of the beginnings of the blind acrobat from Hell’s Kitchen. A wonderful blend of action, romance, and comedy provides an entertaining adventure for all who turn the page of this beautifully written, drawn, and colored masterpiece.
Daredevil: Yellow follows our hero, Matt Murdock, through the origin of both his crime-fighting alter ego and the law practice he and his business partner and close friend, Franklin “Foggy” Nelson, start. While Nelson tends to the business, Murdock tries balancing his responsibilities in and out of the office. On this journey, Daredevil encounters many familiar faces such as the Fantastic Four and the nefarious Electro, but one individual has the power to turn Daredevil’s world completely upside-down – Karen Page.
Jeph Loeb is able to capture the essence of Daredevil – his pain and his suffering – in the way he retells this Marvel story. Noteworthy of Loeb’s writing in Daredevil: Yellow is the ongoing “monologue” Daredevil “shares” with the readers. The narrative from the perspective of The Man without Fear directs the reader from page to page at a very sympathetic level: when Daredevil is hurting, the reader is hurting with him.
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Jeph Loeb does an outstanding job of writing such a heartwarming and heartbreaking story, Tim Sale takes these words and brings them to life with the way he illustrates each page. His signature style of drawing breathes fresh air into such a classic story. Along with Tim Sale’s lines, Matt Hollingsworth (Batman: Nine Lives) brings story and picture together by adding his style of coloring. Hollingsworth’s use of bright yellows and piercing crimson reds against shades of black and gray tell Matt Murdock’s story just as well as Loeb does with his writing and Sale does with his drawings. While the overall colors of the graphic novel seem muted, they do not take anything away from the whole book. If anything, this muted approach Hollingsworth uses in coloring makes each panel individually expressive. On one panel, the audience will see a dimly lit apartment – drab and cold – but in the following panel, the signature red and yellow of Daredevil’s first costume pops against that same drab and cold room.
Daredevil: Yellow gives readers a thrilling ride of adventure and heartbreak. The collaboration of Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale, and Matt Hollingsworth enhances readers’ senses and allows for a new graphic novel reading experience. Audiences of all ages will be “without fear” when scaling buildings and jumping across rooftops with the crime-fighting attorney learning with Daredevil that “the measure of a man is not in how he gets knocked to the mat, it is in how he gets up.”
– Peter Abigania