In "Reason to be Excited," I spotlight things from modern comics that I think are worth getting excited about. I mean stuff more specific than "this comic is good," ya know? More like a specific bit from a writer or artist that impressed me.

Today, we look at Gail Simone and Walter Geovani's thrilling genre-bending adventure in the Death-Defying Devil's current miniseries.

First off, it is kind of hilarious to see how they try to get around using the name Daredevil but also not calling himself something else. In other words, apparently they're still sticking with Daredevil for the character (this is the original Daredevil, before Marvel swooped in and grabbed the trademark in the 1960s for their own character by that name), only using an apostrophe in front of the Devil part.

I have no problem with the approach, it was just kind of interesting to see in practice. You wonder if DC should have started calling him, 'Tain Marvel.

Anyhow, Dynamite has been doing new stories with these Golden Age heroes for some time now, but Daredevil hasn't had one in, I believe, over a decade, but Gail Simone, Walter Geovani and colorist Adriano Agusto and letterer Simon Bowland cleverly treat that gap as insignificant. Daredevil has just been out there fighting crime as normal over that missing period of time, only now he gets sucked into a situation he had no way of expecting.

The concept is pretty simple, but it's a great one. Daredevil steps in and protects a married couple from being assaulted (and the wife from being raped) but he is beaten severely in the process, so they take him into the boarding house that they share with a bunch of interesting people...

It turns out that a mysterious Mr. Donovan wants to tear down their house, but they won't sell it. He has practically had them holed up inside the house so that if they go outside, they're threatened and/or attacked. This seems like a normal enough situation for Daredevil to step in to help them with. It's like the plot of every third A-Team episode.

However, Simone cleverly goes from the ordinary to the extraordinary as the next two issues see Daredevil displaced into different realities, all centered around this house. One, a western (well, a western FILM, that is)...

and the other, with the house now a nursing home and Daredevil an elderly patient there...

This works really well because Daredevil is just your ordinary "punch the bad guy out or use a boomerang on the bad guy" hero and so it stands out more when a hero who pretty much relies on his fists being thrown into a supernatural adventure. It's a clever contrast.

Geovani has worked with Simone on both her Red Sonja run at Dynamite and then her Vertigo series, Clean Room, so this is his first superhero work and I think it's nice that Simone has made his first superhero work a genre-bending deal that plays well to Geovani's strengths.

The whole endeavor is an enjoyable ride and well recommended.

Okay, this feature is a bit less of a reader-interactive one, as I'm just spotlight stuff in modern comics that specifically impressed ME, but heck, if you'd like to send in some suggestions anyways, maybe you and I have the same taste! It's certainly not improbably that something you found cool would be something that I found cool, too, so feel free to send ideas to me at brianc@cbr.com!