Welcome, dear readers, to another week of comics and commentary at Comics! The Blog! We kick things off, as always, by handing out awards for the Best of the Week – beginning with two Award postings, followed closely by the past week’s Best.

Well, that didn’t take long, did it? Thank god.

Two weeks ago, Daredevil ended its current volume, with Matt Murdock deciding to uproot his life and move to San Francisco after the fallout of his war against the Sons of the Serpents. It’s a natural place to start a new volume and take a break, but what’s really interesting is that Marvel didn’t take a break. Not only is the new volume of the series starting only a month after the old one ended, but in the meantime, they’re doing a digital comic to bridge the gap between the two series! Written by Mark Waid and drawn by his Insufferable cohort Peter Krause, Daredevil: Road Warrior kicked off last week with its first issue, not even a week after Daredevil #36.

Yessssssss.

Not only is Waid an incredible writer who just completed one of the GOAT runs on a comic, and not only is Krause a super talented artist who’s able to capture really fine, minute moments while also showing the full impact of a kick to the face, and not only do the two work well together, but they’re also two of the perfect guys to do an Infinite comic. The line takes advantage of the ability of digital comics to showcase comic transitions in non-traditional, non-panel-based ways, and with Insufferable, Waid and Krause have shown pioneering skill at that kind of comic. To my tastes, motion comics were always gimmicky and I usually just wanted to go back and read my copy of Spider-Woman instead of listening to it while the panels moved, and what Waid and Krause know and showcase in Road Warrior is that digital comics can incorporate things only digital can do while still preserving the things that only comics can do without emulating film.

To see evidence of that, look no further than the first scene of the comic, where the Man-Bull runs at Daredevil, whose radar sense gradually shifts to show a more traditional sighted view of the characters involved. It’s elegantly masterful; in that quick scene, not only does Waid give exposition about Matt Murdock’s background just in case this is the first Daredevil comic you’ve read (because every comic is someone’s first), but it’s built into the format of the comic, with between-panel transitions moved to within the panel, while still preserving what makes comics special versus other visual media: the control of the reading pace. It also matches what Krause is doing at the same time with the art, and it’s all held together by John Kalisz‘s colours (particularly the panels where the two different “views” of the characters are superimposed) and Joe Sabino‘s letters, which move through the panel as the transitions happen to guide the reader’s view. In non-traditional digital comics like these, each person has to be on point in a different way than usual; good lettering has to become great lettering to keep the reader inside the story, and Sabino kills it.

And by keeping the reader in the story, it means the creators’ story can shine, which it does, because Mark Waid didn’t get his reputation as one of the all-time best by slacking. A simple task - flying from New York to San Francisco - is made harder by a superheroic mystery, and the great twist of someone without a heartbeat asking suspiciously. It’s a perfect way to build a genuinely interesting hook while also doing so directly into the lead character’s entire premise. Matt Murdock’s senses are so good he’s a human lie detector; of course he notices what’s amiss here while almost any other hero in the Marvel Universe would have let it pass. And more than that, the comic spends just enough time building up little things - Matt’s relationship with Kirsten McDuffie, or how an airplane ride is almost literal hell for a man whose advanced senses heighten the discomfort of all those cramped smells, circulated air and constant hums of machinery. But why is he doing it? Friendship. Because he’s a hero, even if it doesn’t involve fighting Doctor Doom, even if it just means putting up with mind-numbing everyday torture. It helps that while it’s an exaggerated situation, it’s exaggerated from something so blasé, an inconvenience almost everybody can relate to. Air travel sucks, even if you don’t have a superhuman sense of smell and there’s a deadly mystery happening. It’s all built together to tell a story that could only be told with this medium, in a situation that anyone can relate to but only this hero is right to be in. Waid, Krause, Kalisz and Sabino are telling a story that almost tricks you with how good it is.

Buy Daredevil: Road Warrior #1 here.