"The Man Without Fear" is a solid origin story, whose main flaw is probably being a bit episodic for someone without a pre-existing interest in the character (such as the Elektra chapter that's -- for obvious resons -- never picked back up on). "Love and War" has a good core story about the Kingpin, but I personally found the huge page count spent on a mentally ill assassin to be a dull distraction from it, and the very artsy artwork only moderately warranted itself. The collection also has an unimpressive Spider-Man/Daredevil crossover for completist reasons, and the (quite excellent) "Badlands" one-off.

But the third main graphic novel collected here, "Born Again", is sublime. In my opinion by far the best Daredevil work Miller ever did, this is the story that manages to perfectly marry his heightened pulp noir sensibilities to the character of Daredevil. ( )

This massive book contains the some of the collection of Daredevil comics that Frank Miller did for Marvel. This includes the penciling work he did on two Amazing Spiderman comics that featured Daredevil. Like everyone else, Frank started at the bottom of the business, as hard as it is to imagine someone of his talent doing. This also includes the one time he collaborated with the legendary artist John Buscema for a comic under the Daredevil name called Badlands about a man without fear that's intriguing and has no masked Daredevil in sight.

The comic that really put Miller on the map was the Born Again storyline he did with Mazzucchelli where Daredevil's former girlfriend Karen Page sells out his name to a dealer for some heroin and Daredevil's real name Matt Murdock finds it's way to Kingpin. Kingpin, for whom Daredevil has long been a thorn in his side sets out to destroy Matt Murdock by taking him to the brink of insanity and therefore destroy Daredevil. The art is great of course, but the way the panels are set is really amazing and leads the story. And what a story it is. This is storytelling at it's best.

Miller's pairing with Bill Sienkiewicz produced the beautiful War and Remembrance which also features Kingpin. The art in the book is just plain gorgeous. There are hints of Monet, Toulouse Le-Trec, some Japanese influence and some modern art influences as well. It's rather dreamy in nature which fits the plot. Kingpin has kidnapped a doctor's wife in order to motivate him to cure his wife who is in a dream-like state. The man who is watching over the doctor's wife is unstable and the artist chooses to depict him as a Japanese macaque or snow monkey, at times. Daredevil gets involved of course and nothing goes as planned.

The last story in the book he did with John Romita JR. (his father was one of the original Daredevil artists) is called Daredevil: The Man Without Fear and it goes back to his childhood and tells in detail Daredevil's origin story as never before. This would be the Daredevil bible. It was also going to be used as a script for a TV movie and after the comic there is a script for a TV movie. The 2003 movie did use this comic as the basis for the beginning of its movie and followed Romita's artwork shot-for-shot. The paneling and artwork will blow you away. And the story includes a bit of everything: how he lost his sight, more information about Stick, meeting up with Foggy, and his first time being with Elektra, as well as the shadow of Kingpin.

Overall this book is really worth reading if you are a Daredevil fan or merely a superhero fan. Maybe you watch the TV show on Netflix and would like to know more. This book is a good place to start. It doesn't hold all of Frank Miller's Daredevil work. If it did you wouldn't be able to pick it up. But it will make you hungry for more, so beware. ( )

A little less hefty than the other Daredevil Omnibus, but perhaps of higher quality. This volume contains two great arcs, the Miller / Mazzuchelli "Born Again" storyline (in which the Kingpin learns Daredevil's secret identity), and the Miller / Romita Jr. "Man Without Fear" (an extended retelling of Daredevil's origin). Miller fans should note that he is writing both of these, not doing the art-- the only Miller art in here is two relatively standard-looking issues of "Spectacular Spider-Man," in which Dardevil features as a guest star. The book is rounded out with some extras-- script pages, pencil roughs, etc. If you're not interested in that level of thing and wanted to save some money you could probably buy the "Born Again" and "Man Without Fear" stand-alone trades. ( )