PopSyndicate.com

I’m going to send a greeting card to Peter Parker. It’s going to go like this: ‘Congratulations! You’re no longer Marvel’s whipping boy!’. The reason that I would send that sentiment to Peter is that because of the sum of events in Matt Murdock’s life, especially lately, has usurped that very thorny crown from Spidey, and now it rests on Daredevil’s head. Thanks to works of pretty much every writer of Daredevil since the mid-1980’s, he has just had an amazing amount of misery and suffering. Frank Miller, Ann Nocenti, Kevin Smith, Brian Michael Bendis, and now Ed Brubaker have just been crushing the lapsed Catholic soul of Matt Murdock and now, with Daredevil #106, we’re starting to see that soul just may be beyond repair.

This issue directly follows the aftermath of the events of the “Without Fear” arc, where Daredevil faced his most evil and calculating foe since The Kingpin, Larry Cranston aka Mr. Fear, whose most horrific blow to DD wasn’t using his fear gas to drive Matt’s wife Milla insane… it was giving him hope that there was a cure for that insanity. Daredevil chased Cranston all over Hell’s Kitchen, cutting a swath through the underworld, crushing all the pawns Cranston put in his way but even though Cranston lost the battle, he won the war. Milla is perhaps incurably insane, Cranston is in a prison that can never truly hold him, and Matt Murdock is stretched over the abyss very much in danger of falling. In many ways, this is not dissimilar to how The Kingpin almost destroyed him back in the famous “Born Again” storyline, but it has a more frightening prospect since this is pain that Murdock is all-too familiar with and too many straws may end up breaking the devil’s back.

This issue, for the most part, is really interesting due to its use of the Greek chorus of the supporting cast. Instead of getting a glimpse inside Murdock’s own mind, we get the reactions and thoughts of the people around him, like Ben Urich, Foggy Nelson and Dakota North. Daredevil’s assault on street crime is getting more violent and more intense, and it has not escaped the notice of the people that care about him. They know that Murdock is in Hell, and they also see how he keeps getting dragged further down. In one instance, the doctors caring for Milla refuse to let Matt see her for the fear that his constant visits are exacerbating her condition. And in another, while having a few drinks with Dakota, Matt attacks two potential stick-up men in a bar in his civilian guise, telling her afterward that he overheard them planning the robbery. All of these events are leading the people who care for Matt to believe that the tightrope of his psyche is beginning to fray.

Again, Brubaker takes an unusual and flawless approach to telling the tale of the titular character by having his strong cast of supporting characters talking and thinking about him. It’s a process that’s served him well in the past and will continue to serve him in the future. Under a weaker writer, this method would fall apart. The only real problem with this issue is its art by Paul Azaceta. It has a nice indie feel, but by and large, it’s far inferior to the work by regular series artist Michael Lark, and at some points, the characters seem so poorly rendered that it, at times, really distracts from the storytelling.

One can only hope that Matt will find a way out of this, and it just may be with a little help from his friends.

Daredevil #106
“Sympathy For The Devil”
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Paul Azaceta
Colors by Matt Hollingsworth
Letters by VC’s Chris Eilopolous
Cover Art by Marko Djurdjevic

3