Written by: Marc Guggenheim
Art by: Ramon Bachs & Garry Brown
Publisher: Marvel Comics
The original comic story Civil War had plenty of tie-in comics to hold readers over from week to week until the next main story release came out, so it’s no surprise that Marvel is putting out a good number of tie-ins this time around as well. If you’ve been following along with the main story so far, you are well aware of the surprise deaths that have been seen. The Accused #1 is a direct result of one of those deaths.
While we want to be spoiler free for you, we will assume you know of the deaths we’re talking about. I’m not going to come right out and say it, to save you the shock and awe that you may not have felt yet, but I do want to touch on some points of the comic.
Clint Barton is on trial. He is accused of murder in the first degree. To some this seems very harsh, yet to others, it’s completely fitting. This issue focuses, rightly so, on the trail itself. The main character of this story isn’t Barton though. It’s actually Matt Murdock, as one may have guessed from the cover, which looks fantastic. Take a good look at the cover here. You can see the themes in this comic laid out directly for you. Innocent, Guilty, Conspiracy, Justice, and of course, Friend.
One of the tie-ins for the first Civil War was called Frontline, and it focused not on the action of the heroes, but of the normal people. It was a story about journalists during the conflict and it was a much more grounded story. This could be Civil War 2’s Frontline. It is a much smaller story, taking place during the main story. It is in a courtroom rather than a battlefield, it has to do with a singular part of the Civil War 2 story. This makes Civil War 2 feel like it is taking place in a real world, even if it’s not our real world.
The Accused doesn’t seem to be a story concerned with what should be, and instead does it’s best to be a court drama. That does very well in many issues of Daredevil, but it falls a little short here. Some of the character interactions seem a little off, and it doesn’t have the intrigue that Frontline did. Then again, comparing it to Frontline may be a bit unfair, as they aren’t very similar except for the aspect of being “grounded”.
I wanted to read this and think, “Man, this would be an awesome episode of Daredevil,” but that’s not how I feel. I feel like this was alright, and something that I’d like to see continue, but on it’s own, issue #1 isn’t stellar. I can recommend it to people trying to get a bit more insight as to what happened next with Hawkeye after the bombshell in Civil War 2, but other than that, it can be skipped.
