I generally enjoy Smith's movie & comic scriptwork - it's energetic and unique, even at its most strenuously didactic (e.g., Dogma, which, in retrospect, plays like a live-action Vertigo comic). The man's not the most organic dialog writer, but he uses his position as celebrity to get away with things in comics that less empowered writers wouldn't even consider trying. Too bad so many of his ideas are half-baked.

While it may not be totally kosher to parse a writer's themes on the basis of just one chapter, I still find myself doing so with ish #1 of Smith's mini-series. Rendered by Glenn Fabry in dogged big-knuckled style, "The Target" opens w./ our hero Daredevil reflecting on events that we're told took place a year ago: 9-11 (real time in superhero comics - now that's unusual!) He links this with an event we're told occurred three years earlier, the death of Karen Page at the hands of professional assassin Bullseye. DD rages against this more than he does the assault on the World Trade Center, but you just know he'll get his shot at avenging both by series end.

Cut to a building elsewhere in the city, where two Middle Eastern terrorists are meeting to arrange an assassination: through an intermediary, Bullseye is brought in, though initially Smith plays coy with revealing his identity (c'mon, Kev, the front cover tells us he's gonna be the adversary!) Soon as we see him playing with a toothpick, we know it'll be put to murderous use. But first we get several pages of B-movie Ay-rab dialog and a few slurring statements from good ol' American Bullseye. When the intermediary lets the assassin into the room, even he makes a comment about how the two Middle Easterners reek. But the bulk of the insults come from our psycho baddie, who nonchalantly calls the unnamed terrorists "Balki" or "Akbar." "You people are cartoons," he sez at one point, reacting to the awkward dialog Smith has given 'em.

One year after 9-11, I'm not surprised to read this kind of overblown stereotyping in mainstream comics. But I've gotta admit, I wasn't expecting Smith to so thoroughly immerse himself in it. You also have to wonder when two murderous Yankee mercenaries are given the upper hand, dialogue-wise, over foreign true believer types. It's a fairly standard pulp ploy, but it's a pandering one. And are we to believe that the type of morals-free capitalism repped by Bullseye is somehow superior to the bigotries of the religio-types?