DAREDEVIL #17

Cover shows clean, sharp corners and no visible creases or spine stress on this David Mack watercolor cover. Colors appear bright and unfaded with no notable staining. Book is currently housed in a protective sleeve which limits full assessment of edges; minor handling wear may be hidden by glare/sleeve reflections. Interior and back cover were not assessed.

Daredevil #17 is the second chapter of "Wake Up," the four-part story that opened Brian Michael Bendis's tenure on the title and shifted the book's focus from Matt Murdock to Daily Bugle reporter Ben Urich. David Mack supplies both the painted interiors and, with Joe Quesada, the cover, and the issue's structure — Urich circling a traumatized child, Timmy Lange, whose father was the costumed criminal Leap-Frog — leans on Mack's collage-and-watercolor approach rather than conventional superhero storytelling. Daredevil and Maya Lopez appear here only inside the boy's fractured imagination, which is part of why the chapter reads as a character study; it is the arc, not this individual number, that carries the historical weight as the prelude to the Bendis and Alex Maleev run that followed.

Market behavior matches that standing. This is a widely printed 2001 direct-edition Marvel comic with no first appearance and no origin, so raw copies move as run filler and as fill-in for readers assembling the Bendis stretch in single issues rather than collected editions. Certified demand is narrow and driven by two constituencies: Mack completists, who treat the Wake Up chapters as among the strongest showcases of his painted work, and buyers who followed Echo's move to live action and reached past her introduction into the surrounding Mack-scripted and Mack-drawn material. Signed copies, which Mack produces steadily on the convention circuit, form a separate and firmer tier than unsigned slabs.

Collecting outlook is stable rather than dynamic. Low-grade examples of a book this recent have essentially reader value, and mid-grade copies sit close behind them, since condition scarcity does not begin until the top of the scale; the practical spread in this title only opens at 9.8, where census counts remain small and offerings are intermittent. Dealers are best served presenting it as part of a complete #16-19 arc run, where the set carries more weight with buyers than any single chapter, while high-grade certified copies are worth holding for the Mack audience and for the recurring attention that Echo adaptations bring to this corner of the run.