Changes

The series begins with Paul Young’s Young's <i>Frank Miller’s Miller's Daredevil and the Ends of Heroism</i>. Young, a professor of film and media studies at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, engages both with Miller’s Miller's work on Daredevil and how it compares to Miller’s Miller's later legacy in comics. Young argues, “Daredevil "Daredevil was an early volley in the industry’s industry's shift from an oligopoly that assigned work-for-hire staff and freelance creators to write, draw, letter, color, and edit the adventures of corporate trademark characters to a more complex market in which retention of rights to characters and stories has become a common work incentive for creators.”" <ref> Paul Young, Frank Miller’s Miller's Daredevil and the Ends of Heroism (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016), 7. </ref> Further, Young acknowledges Miller’s Miller's use of the comics medium to tell more expressionist stories.<ref> Young, Frank Miller’s Miller's Daredevil, 12. </ref>

Young’s Young's focus on the medium itself relies on the theories of Scott McCloud as well as his own belief that proper study requires examining the comics themselves, printed on off-white newsprint rather than computer-retouched reprints. He also draws upon the techniques of film theory, specifically those for analyzing Soviet montage and film noir, as well as studies of crime novels. Young concludes that Miller’s Miller's run on Daredevil helped the creator movement in comics and the weakening of the Comics Code. Further, it coincided with other shifts in media, such as in film tastes, and with the introduction of the direct sales system of comics, which further also shook up the industry. Ultimately, Young uses his examination to reconcile the creative talent of Frank Miller in the 1980s with his later intolerance in the 2000s. Young’s Young's work also demonstrates the more personal nature of the Comics Culture monograph series, as this reconciliation acted as a catharsis for his inner conflict over the trajectory of Miller’s Miller's work.