Originally written December 14, 2015

Guardian Devil is an 8-issue comic book from Kevin Smith, the man most known for his film career of movies like Clerks, Chasing Amy, and Dogma. Smith decided to mix his love of comics with his talent of writing to enter the world of comics and create a Daredevil story. The result is pretty interesting. Kevin Smith is a good writer, and excels at dialogue, no doubt. However, when it comes to comics, sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Given Smith’s style, it isn’t surprising then when a picture is taken up by 1000 words (obvious exaggeration, but still). I’m not saying this as a slam against the book, but I could understand how this might detract potential comic book fans from wanting to read it.

The story is actually quite bizarre. Guardian Devil finds Daredevil having a baby delivered to his office. Multiple people come to visit him about the situation, with some mysterious people claiming that the baby is going to be the next Messiah, while others claim he’ll be the Antichrist. Both situations sound equally ridiculous, but Matt Murdock/Daredevil starts wondering if there’s something to it when people start coming after him when he’s looking after the baby. From there on, Daredevil finds tragedy striking his life in multiple areas. It’s hard to talk about the events that unfold without spoiling the book, but it’s a very personal story for Daredevil where he’s struggling to pick up the pieces that are falling apart because of a mysterious baby that’s entered his life.

I really enjoyed the storyline and wasn’t sure where it was going most of the time, but in a good way. I think Kevin Smith’s writing talents work really well in this story. Some pages are a bit too dialogue-heavy, but it’s usually written really well at least. Joe Quesada does the artwork, and while it’s nothing special, it’s not bad by any means either. I find comics hard to review sometimes because I feel like it’s a medium that you either enjoy or you don’t. Not to minimize it, but I don’t usually find comics that I wind up hating. I usually just enjoy it or absolutely love it, and I think Guardian Devil is somewhere in between. It has its strange moments, but generally I think it has a really strong story and writing, and I think that’s what counts.

4/5