Daredevil, Wilson Fisk, and the Language of Violence

SPOILERS FOR FIRST 5 EPISODES OF DAREDEVIL

I am, I gather, hardly alone in finding Vincent d'Onofrio's performance as Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. Kingpin, fascinating in the new Marvel Netflix series Daredevil. But there is an aspect of the writing and performance that I want to highlight and discuss in slightly more detail, and that aspect is the language of violence.

A big part of what makes d'Onofrio so compelling in the role is how much effort it seems to cost him to say every word. Each syllable is a deep whisper and feels deliberately labored. I say deliberately because this sort of fundamental difficulty is a theme that runs through the entire performance. Every movement and gesture is made to look difficult and even forced, from courting ambitious art curator Vanessa to simply drinking a glass of wine. Normal human behavior is something that it looks like the character of Wilson Fisk has had to learn by rote.

However, there is one aspect of behavior that is not performed with this same awkwardness, and that is violence. The scene in episode 4 in which Fisk brutally murders Russian gangster Anatoly is the only time up to that point in which we have seen him move, speak, or do anything with ease. He fights as if he has been doing that his whole life, and we learn more about his emotional state through that scene than through any of his conversations heretofore.

Essentially, the Language of Violence is the only one in which Fisk is fluent, and this point of characterization is driven home in his dinner scene with Vanessa in episode 5. This scene plays host to the longest sustained conversation we have seen him conduct in the series, but it is not until he takes Vanessa to the window to see the burning hideouts left by his extermination of the Russian Mafia elements in the city that we get the sense that Vanessa truly understands him. All of his rhetoric about rebuilding the city is lovely but vague - when Vanessa sees him express his goals in his native language, violence, she suddenly comes to understand him in a way she never did before.

This is a beautiful bit of characterization all around, and it is only possible through a coordination of writing and performance that I do not see nearly as often as I would like to. To all those involved, I would just like to say, well done.

Review - The Superior Iron Man #4

Comics writer Tom Taylor has only been in the public eye for a relatively short while, cutting his teeth on the videogame tie-in Injustice Gods Among Us and somehow making it one of the best comics that DC has put out in recent years. With The Superior Iron Man, Taylor has gone from a dark reinterpretation of DC superheroes to a dark reinterpretation of a Marvel superhero.

It has become routine, therefore, for reviewers to assert that his talent clearly lies in writing alternate versions of familiar characters, but the last three issues of this series has demonstrated a remarkable aptitude for writing Daredevil in his classic form.

To be sure, in its portrayal of a Tony Stark robbed of his moral compass by a freak accident, the series has provided a fascinating look at the dark side of a popular character as well as using that theme-and-variation format to address the dark side of the starry-eyed futurism that has defined the character ever since the Warren Ellis reinvention of the character, Extremis.

To be fair, this new series is very true to the spirit of the Ellis reinvention, what with its cynicism and moral ambiguity. But the secret weapon of this series is and continues to be its use of Daredevil as its counterpoint and moral compass, and the greater and greater lengths that Tony has gone to in order to silence this representative of his last pangs of conscience. I will not spoil it, but at the end of this issue, he tops himself.

As compelling as this series is, if Mark Waid is really leaving Daredevil after issue 15, I would be happy to see Tom Taylor replace him, in part because Taylor seems to have the same knack Waid does for imaginative plot twists and consistently entertaining character work, but largely because he seems to understand the Man Without Fear remarkably well.

Until then, the way Taylor handles the two characters in his care approaches the masterful, and each issue is at least eminently entertaining, and I continue looking forward to pretty much anything he writes.