#daredevil 101

[pluckyredhead]

I know your daredevil 101 series was originally meant for people who haven’t read the comics but I have found them very helpful for refreshing my memory of arcs I would not reread if you paid me so thanks 🫡

Ha, that's what I use it for too!

[pluckyredhead]

Daredevil 101: Cruel & Unusual

Hello, friends! I am back to fill up 10 minutes of your pandemic self-isolation downtime. Today we’re covering the storyline “Cruel & Unusual,” which ran through Daredevil v2 #107-110. Greg Rucka joins our usual team of Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark as a co-writer, which means a hardboiled dame investigating corruption, because Rucka has a #brand.

Content Warning: Severe violence against children is described but not shown; attempted suicide.

In the aftermath of what happened to Milla, Matt has sunk into depression. His friends are understandably concerned:

While Foggy pleads with him, Luke has a more assertive approach: yelling. Matt doesn’t take it well:

Yes, Matt breaks his hand. Yes, I laughed.

Anyway, Luke wants Matt to help him on a case, but Matt’s not hearing it, so Luke goes to the rest of Nelson, Blake, and Murdock:

MCU viewers will remember Big Ben Donovan from Luke Cage and Daredevil. They didn’t change much for the show, except that in the comics he sometimes beats people up in addition to being a super sketchy lawyer.

Anyway, he is currently on death row for decapitating three children - siblings, specifically. Not only that, he confessed to it. But Luke doesn’t think it fits his MO, and is hoping Matt - or barring that, Foggy, Becky, and Dakota - can do something to save Ben’s life. As they all agree, Ben sucks, but he doesn’t deserve to die for a crime he didn’t commit.

They try to get Matt on the case but he’s not interested. Dakota talks to a cop friend of hers, Detective Kurtz, and finds a few weird loose ends:

She then goes to see Ben in prison:

With Ben’s permission, she records his confession. On her way home from (I’m assuming) Sing Sing, she stops at a diner - and is attacked in the parking lot by a stranger, who beats her up and tells her to stay away from the Donovan case.

Furious, she goes straight to Matt and tells him to get his head out of his ass:

She wants Matt to listen to Ben’s confession and see if he hears anything off - that is, if he’s not too busy sitting around feeling sorry for himself. I know she’s coming off really aggressive here but the implication in the comic is that Matt has basically shut out the world for a worryingly long time by this point.

Anyway, Dakota storms out and Matt decides to listen to the recording - and realizes that Ben is definitely lying about killing those kids. So he finally pus on outside pants and heads out to do something about it:

Ben tells Matt the same thing he told Dakota - he did it, he has accepted his punishment, leave him alone. But Matt knows he’s lying, so he sees if the other Ben has any information for him:

That missing dad is still the loose end. Is he alive and thus probably the killer? Or if he’s dead, why won’t Ben (Donovan) confess to killing him too? Matt asks if Ben knows anything else about the dad, and Ben says he worked on the docks.

Meanwhile, Dakota continues to poke around and get in trouble, because that’s who she is as a person (I love Dakota so much). The same dude who beat her up before attacks her again, but this time she’s ready:

Also, surprise! He’s with the FBI. Which a) means there’s a cover-up happening, and b) freaks everyone out a bit because Matt and the FBI don’t have the greatest history with each other.

Matt, meanwhile, keeps digging and discovers that the missing dad didn’t just work “on the docks.” He worked specifically for this dude: 

Eric Slaughter, one of Fisk’s early rivals! We haven’t seen him in a while but he was a regular foe in the early Miller years - here he is in the Guts Nelson issue. Anything, this can’t be good.

Meanwhile in prison, Ben attempts to kill himself and is stopped just in time:

(Please note if you read the comic that the attempt and method are shown on the page.)

This man is on death row, so why would he try to kill himself? He’s clearly terrified of the consequences of Matt and Dakota digging into this case, but why?

Meanwhile, Dakota’s father, a CIA agent, also shows up to warn Dakota off:

Dakota’s like, uh, how did covering up the decapitation of three children become about national security, and also why are the CIA and the FBI working on the same case? This is extremely stinky.

Meanwhile, Matt and Foggy go to see Ben, who is even more insistent that Matt drop the case, this time practically to the point of hysteria. It does a number on Matt:

Foggy is such a good friend! Matt is so sad! That is a very specific photo reference!

Back at the office, Becky gives Dakota some very good advice:

As I said, I love Dakota, but she is a liar liar pants on fire. LISTEN TO BECKY!!! She had a crush on Matt and got over it! She has survived for three decades (now four)! She knows whereof she speaks!

Dakota and her flaming pants head out on the trail of another lead Becky has dug up, this time up at Columbia:

Yeah. Big Ben Donovan has a son, and if he doesn’t take the rap for the triple homicide, whoever is actually behind it will kill his son.

As Dakota leaves the building, she is shot by a sniper. Meanwhile, Matt attempts to confront Slaughter and finds himself in a trap:

In an extremely Murdocky move, Matt escapes by leaping out the window and through the sniper helicopter outside.

Meanwhile, Dakota is taken to the hospital. Matt blames himself. Becky, who has witnessed five fridgings by this point, is officially Done With His Shit:

You tell ‘im, Becks! No but seriously, she’s completely right, because this is a Greg Rucka storyline: Dakota got shot because she’s a hard-nosed investigator whose personal demons won’t let her leave a case alone even when it puts her in danger. It actually has nothing to do with Matt except that he’s also working on the same case, and blaming himself won’t help her.

Instead, Matt tracks down the FBI agent who attacked Dakota, leans on him, and learns the truth: the children and their father were actually killed by Eric Slaughter’s right-hand man. Slaughter had ordered the father killed for stealing from him, and his killer went rogue and murdered the kids as well. But the feds are in bed with Slaughter, because they’re using his smuggling operations on the docks to track terrorist activity:

If Slaughter’s man got arrested for the quadruple homicide, Slaughter would stop cooperating with the feds. So they gave him a fall guy, figuring Ben was a shitty person anyway and an acceptable loss in the ~War Against Terror~. It’s pretty disgusting all around and depressingly plausible.

Matt’s like “Well, arrest the real killer and let Ben go or this ends up on the news.” And he brings Ben a visitor:

Little Ben is, unsurprisingly, rather touched to hear what his father was willing to sacrifice for his safety!

Agent North tells Slaughter that his free pass has expired:

With all the loose ends wrapped up, Matt goes to see Dakota:

Aw that’s nice. And hoo BOY that last panel is a Charlie Coxish expression if I’ve ever seen one. Can Michael Lark see the future???

Next Up: Greg Rucka leaves and the book gets lackluster again. But, um, there’s a lot of ninjas and more Milla-related ableism? Yay? Hold on to your butts, kids, it’s almost Shadowland time!

[pluckyredhead]

Daredevil 101: What Happened to Milla, Part 2

So I guess we’re back to this, huh? Ugh.

We’re continuing our coverage of “To the Devil, His Due” and “Without Fear” (Daredevil v2 95-105) by Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark. Last time, Melvin Potter was institutionalized for sudden bouts of murderous rage - and Matt’s wife Milla seems to be going down the same path, after she kills a random bystander in a subway station.

Content Warnings: Ableism, sexual assault and implied threats of sexual violence.

Ever since Milla’s incarceration, Matt has been pursuing Mr. Fear even more aggressively than he was before, to the point that criminals on the street are commenting on this new level of violence:

Hey, it’s Turk! Hi, Turk! Congratulations on being probably the smartest you’ve ever been in this scene.

Matt is also allowed to see Milla, who is being kept under heavy sedation because when she’s not sedated, she, like, tries to keep people:

I don’t know, though, I feel like her reaction here is completely rational, considering she doesn’t remember what happened in the subway. I’d also be like “WHAT THE FUCK.”

Matt sneaks in to be with her at night, in hopes that being together will bring them both a little comfort:

Matt does his best to help Milla regain control of her emotions, but the drug proves to be too powerful:

...Yeah. It doesn’t look great.

Which is why Matt’s so surprised when he comes home a day or two later and Milla is waiting for him:

Yeah, so basically Lily recanted her previous testimony that Milla threatened and pushed her, which means that the state can chalk Subway Man’s death up to a terrible accident caused by Milla’s illness but not anything criminal. Milla has been released, but she still has to be kept under sedation. Also, the woman in the second panel is a nurse who basically needs to live with the Murdocks until this is all resolved.

“I guess I’m just a better lawyer than you, pal.” <3

But just in case you think things are going well for Matt, we get some foreshadowing from a smirky Mr. Fear:

Two things you should know about Larry Cranston:

1. I’ve mentioned it before in these recaps, but he hates Matt pretty much solely because Matt beat him out for valedictorian back in college.

2. I haven’t included any of these images but you will encounter them if you read this arc in the comics: aside from his traditional fear gas, the anger drug, and Lily’s perfume, he has created basically a roofie gas, so he’s constantly shown with naked women draped over him. You know, just a little “check out all these women who have been raped” sprinkled in for flavor, Game of Thrones-style. Ugh.

Meanwhile, Foggy goes with Lily to the DA to confirm that she is 100% not pressing charges against Milla. The DA points out that it’s super shady that Foggy, who is representing Milla, is also somehow representing Lily. In the elevator, Foggy agrees that the whole thing is shady and he’s not comfortable lying like this, even to help Milla and Matt:

Oh, this is going to go well!

Meanwhile, Milla’s recovery is...not happening:

I’m going to talk about this more a couple storylines from now, but there’s something particularly foul to me about taking a disabled character and writing a story that completely breaks down her agency and self-sufficiency, to the point that Milla can’t walk around her own house without literally being led by the hand. This happens earlier, too, when she tells Foggy she doesn’t need help taking the subway. Every time Milla says anything in defense of her own capability, the story immediately smacks her down for it. The ableism is only compounded by the fact that she now has a mental disability as well as a physical one.

As Daredevil, Matt is still on the hunt for Mr. Fear, and he’s gotten increasingly ruthless about it. In that he tortures Ox (remember Ox?) with a blowtorch:

Yeah.

Flashback time! A couple days ago, Lily got a visitor:

Mr. Fear created the perfume, so Mr. Fear can undo the effects of the perfume. I don’t think he created the perfume on commission for Vanessa Fisk so that she would give it to some random woman from Monaco who would then come seeking Mr. Fear’s greatest enemy for help and then he also drugged Milla so that Milla would try to kill the random woman from Monaco and be arrested, thus emotionally destroying Matt, because that’s getting a little too far into Robot Devil territory:

I think he’s just playing things by ear, but there’s a quality of “ah, yes, just as I planned” that makes it all a little...implausible and stupid. Sigh.

(Fun fact: I looked up what people from Monaco are called and they are Monegasques, while non-native residents are Monacoians. I wasn’t sure which term applied to Lily so I whiffed it.)

ALSO, apparently Lily does in fact have designs on Matt??? After all, she’s a woman, what other motivation could she POSSIBLY have? BARF.

Back in the present, Ox gives up Mr. Fear’s hideout. Matt goes to there, but he’s already gone:

Part of what makes this whole arc so tiresome is how repetitive it is. This beat is exactly like the moment in Part 1 where Matt comes to in the back of a cop car to a mysterious voice telling him Milla’s in danger, and it happens like three other times between then and now. It’s like Brubaker is just treading water to use up issues or something. I don’t know if this is because of editorial interference - there are pages and pages and pages of a turf war between Mr. Fear and the Hood, as part of a crossover with whatever was going on in Avengers at the time - but it’s effectively like watching Milla get fridged over and over and over again.

Matt races home but it’s too late. Milla has gone off the rails again and attacked her nurse, who is unconscious but thankfully still alive. Matt finds Milla huddled on the floor, bloody and scared:

Foggy shows up to handle the paperwork, and once Milla is in custody, Matt goes looking for revenge - on Lily, who he smelled in his house earlier tonight and who clearly triggered this latest incident:

He’s so angry he literally almost chokes her to death - the panels depicting it are genuinely disturbing - before catching himself and backing off. Lily says that she had no choice, Mr. Fear promised to cure her as long as she got Milla out of jail and then went to visit her. The minute she walked in, Lily says, Milla started screaming, and when the nurse tried to calm her, Milla attacked her and Lily fled.

Disgusted, Matt tells her to get out of the city and leaves to go hunt down Mr. Fear. And that’s a series wrap for Lily! She hasn’t been seen since.

Meanwhile, Matt finds Mr. Fear and proceeds to beat the shit out of him as he demands a cure for Milla and Melvin, but that’s when Fear plays his final card:

There is no cure. Milla’s like this forever.

So that’s that. Melvin and Milla will be institutionalized for the rest of their lives and have been permanently removed from the roster of useable Daredevil characters (well, Milla is used as a McGuffin a couple times after this, but that’s not the same thing). Just because Fear felt like it, as the capstone to an interminable plotline that fridges a fifth woman in Matt’s life. It’s just the goddamn worst.

Next Time: We lighten things up with a story about *checks notes* murdered children. Hoo boy.

[pluckyredhead]

Daredevil 101: The Devil in Cell Block D, Part 2

That sweet sweet Matt-in-jail-and-suffering goodness continues! Reminder: this is DDv2 82-87, by Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark.

Last time, Foggy was stabbed and killed while visiting Matt in prison, and the supporting cast is determined to figure out who ordered the hit - Matt from inside Riker’s, Ben and Dakota from outside.

But in this story, EVERYONE GOES TO JAIL, and we haven’t stuffed enough people inside Riker’s yet. Enter the Punisher!

That couple in the last panel are a pimp and a prostitute. Frank looks at his newspaper, goes outside, and kills the dude. (I will spare you the panel of Frank murdering a black man with his bare hands.)

Okay, but why on earth would Frank get himself arrested just because Matt is in jail? Was he lonely or something?

UM YEAH, APPARENTLY HE WAS. This is just endlessly hilarious to me. THEY AREN’T EVEN FRIENDS, but Frank was so worried about Matt’s delicate psyche that he DELIBERATELY WENT TO PRISON to give him Mufasa’s “remember who you are” speech from The Lion King. BRING BACK THE NETFLIX SHOWS JUST FOR THIS. PLEASE.

Alternately, maybe he heard about Foggy’s death and thought there was an opening for a new best friend. Quick, Frank, put on a bowtie!

In more serious news, the prisoner who stabbed Foggy is found hanging in his cell (notably, before Matt can get to him). It’s staged to look like a suicide, but it’s clearly murder, and rumor around the prison is that Fisk was behind it. This was obviously always Matt’s first guess, so he confronts Fisk about it:

To be fair, Matt, it’s been firmly established that Fisk isn’t 100% sure who Foggy is. (“Is he the reporter? The blond girl? That twin brother of yours?”)

Anyway, Fisk didn’t have Foggy killed and doesn’t know who did, and aside from the anguish it’s created in Matt, he doesn’t really care. What he does care about is getting out of Riker’s alive:

Fisk tells Matt that there is a riot planned soon. The ringleaders plan to take the warden hostage and demand an escape helicopter. Oh, and in the chaos they also plan to kill both Fisk and Matt - Fisk as competition, Matt for putting so many of them behind bars. But, Fisk proposes, if he and Matt team up, they have a chance of making it out alive.

Matt doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t see another alternative, so he tentatively agrees.

When recess is over (okay I don’t know what they call it in prison), he discovers that he has a visitor: his wife. And she’s worried:

“REMEMBER WHO YOU ARRRRRE.” This storyline loves Mufasa.

Anyway this is probably why Foggy’s will has a line that says “I leave everything to Matt if he’s not dead already. Matt, please don’t go feral if I die first.” (Matt will go feral.)

Milla leaves just in time, because the riot is popping off. And Matt, just like Simba does, decides to thwart it by rescuing the warden:

Matt’s going to get the eff out of here, even if that means teaming up with Fisk. Meanwhile, another volatile element is about to be added to the fire:

Hey, Turk is here! I told you everyone was in jail in this story! Anyway maybe don’t let Bullseye out?

(He’s gonna let Bullseye out.)

EVERYONE IS IN JAIL. I literally don’t even know why Melvin is there. He hasn’t done any crimes in a really long time! Maybe he got himself arrested to hang out with Matt too.

Matt fights his way through to where Fisk is taking on all comers:

Part of what makes this story so good is how viscerally satisfying and downright thrilling it is to see Matt and Fisk fighting a sheer wave of opponents side by side. It’s never happened before or since, and there’s something about how very surprising and badass it is that is absolutely Diana in No Man’s Land, Nightcrawler in the White House, Avengers vs. Chitauri levels of cool. It just makes me want to yell (in a good way!).

AND THEN THEY UP THE ANTE! Because Bullseye comes to join them, gleefully firing rifles into the crowd - and that’s when Matt hits his line. Even for his freedom, even to avenge Foggy, he can’t team up with Bullseye. He can’t be party to this. That’s not the man Milla and Foggy love.

Lol whoops. Matt knocks Bullseye out, and just like that, his two greatest foes are incapacitated.

But Matt’s got one more trick up his sleeve:

Frank, hilariously, has just been calmly sitting in his open cell, shooting anyone who attacks him and reading in between. Presumably said reading material is a script for a porno set in a prison, because “You plannin’ to use that thing?” while Matt waves a rifle around at crotch height is just. *chef kiss*

See, the rioters have already gotten the prison to call that escape helicopter. So for the benefit of the security cameras, Matt and Frank make it look like Frank has taken poor innocent blind Matt hostage in order to commandeer said helicopter. This means that theoretically, once this is all over, Matt still has enough plausible deniability to return to his old life - something he hadn’t cared about between Foggy’s death and now.

Thus Matt and Frank escape:

Still so fucking funny to me.

Matt’s next order of business? Figure out who the hell the Fake Daredevil is (remember him?). So Matt confronts him and it’s...pretty clear right away:

It’s Danny!!! Did you guess it?

Danny’s confused that Matt’s confused, because he thought he was working for Matt. Or, more specifically, he was hired to be Fake Daredevil by a lawyer named Alton Lennox, and assumed Lennox had been brought in by Foggy, to cast doubt on Matt’s identity while keeping Foggy’s hands clean. Alton Lennox, remember, is also the man who hired the man who killed Foggy:

Matt and Danny try to track down Lennox and run into Dakota and Ben, who are doing the same thing. It turns out that Lennox has fled the country and gone to Monaco, so Matt decides to pursue him. Ben thinks this is Matt being an idiot and throwing away what’s left of his life:

“It’s already cost more than I could bear.” ABLUBLUBLU ;_______;

So Matt heads off to Monaco, hot on the trail of the one man who can tell him who ordered the death of his best friend in the world, Franklin “Foggy” Nelson. And meanwhile...

GASP!!! Foggy’s alive!!! And he’s in the witness protection program somewhere in the suburbs (Matt’s worst nightmare, obvs).

Now, obviously you and I, 15 years or so in the future, knew he wasn’t really dead, but the readers at the time did not. This final page of the storyline is the first indication. I cannot imagine how livid I would have been while reading this comic, and how relieved at the end.

Next time: Why is Foggy in witness protection? Why hasn’t he contacted Matt? Why did he grow that luxuriant mustache? All will be revealed in...Matt Murdock’s Monaco Madness! (Sadly not the actual name of the storyline.)

[pluckyredhead]

Daredevil 101: The Devil in Cell Block D, Part 1

Y’all, I am so excited. “The Devil in Cell Block D” is one of my all-time favorite Daredevil stories and I have been chomping at the bit waiting to share it with you for...*checks watch* four years. Um. *cough*

Anyway, we ended the last Daredevil 101 with Matt in Riker’s Island, awaiting trial for charges of, essentially, Being Daredevil and Thus Annoying the FBI. We also ended with the final Bendis/Maleev issue of the regular series, which means we have a new creative team: Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark, who provide a very seamless transition, not least because Lark’s art is very similar to Maleev’s in style.

This storyline covers DD v2 #82-87.

Content Warnings: There are two incidences of murder that are made to look like suicide in this story. I have not included the images here but if you look up the storyline for yourself be warned that both “suicides” are shown on the page. Also, there’s a lot of prison violence, unsurprisingly.

We begin with Matt, unsurprisingly, not having a very good time:

No one in jail believes that he’s not Daredevil and pretty much everyone is looking forward to him inevitably being killed, guards and supervillains and regular prisoners alike. Poor Matt.

Also, there’s someone else running around on the outside as Daredevil, and Matt has no idea who. And neither do his friends:

EVERYONE IS SO CRANKY. But yeah, as Ben points out, obviously having someone operating as Daredevil while Matt’s demonstrably in jail reinforces their defense that Matt isn’t Daredevil, but it would be profoundly unethical for Foggy to be involved with that. Which he tells the Fake Daredevil when he runs into him:

Foggy going “LA LA LA I LEGALLY CAN’T HEAR YOU” is a very wonderful thing for my heart. Anyway Fake Daredevil will stay a mystery for now!

But the next morning, it’s more bad news:

Of course Foggy, old-fashioned bougie fussbudget, shaves with a straight razor. And of course Foggy, exhausted workaholic, shaves in his office.

The woman is Dakota North. She was a preexisting Marvel character who’d debuted in her own miniseries about 15 years earlier before bopping around with cameos and supporting roles in other heroes’ books. Basically, she’s a former model turned PI, and right now she’s working as Nelson and Murdock’s investigator.

Anyway, she’s here to warn Foggy that the feds are going to argue that Matt can be put in gen pop (general population) with the regular prisoners, since if he’s really Daredevil, he’ll be fine. Of course, even if he is Daredevil, sticking him in the middle of 10,000 other inmates, most of whom have it out for him, is not going to end well - but then, the FBI has made it clear that they’d be as happy with a prison death as a conviction.

Meanwhile, things continue to go poorly for Matt. On his way back from a doctor’s visit, the guard tasked with returning him to his cell instead leads him into a room full of other prisoners. They work for the supervillain Hammerhead and are very much there to beat the crap out of him. Matt manages to defend himself, but then has to explain how he defended himself:

So Matt has been manipulated into solitary. But why?

He’s let out to meet with his lawyer:

I love this beat, because, like, neither one of them wants to commit perjury or fraud, but they also want to get Matt out of there. It’s rare that we see Matt and Foggy wrestling with an ethical issue from the same side because as a narrative device it makes so much more sense for them to argue it with each other, but I love this moment where they’re trying to figure out, together, how to solve this problem without sacrificing their souls. Which will become thematically important later.

Also, they’re in love:

I’M NOT CRYING YOU’RE CRYING etc etc

Anyway. Matt is led back to solitary. Foggy and Dakota are escorted towards the exit.

And then Foggy is attacked.

Foggy’s heart stops beating. And deep within the bowels of Rikers, Fisk laughs.

What a way to attend your best friend’s funeral, jeez.

(Also, I believe this, like Foggy’s wedding, is confirmation that he is at least nominally Catholic as well.)

I always like scanning the crowds in funeral scenes to see who turned up, and there’s some noteworthy appearances and omissions in this one:

So we’ve got Jessica, Luke, Danny with some very Robert Redford hair. Becky and Dakota and Ben are juuuust barely visible in the very last panel (and Ben is narrating). And Rosalind is here, in her last appearance ever, and touchingly, she’s clearly deeply upset over Foggy’s death.

Not in attendance? Literally any Nelson. Also any of Foggy’s other superhero clients, including the Fantastic Four, Tony, and Carol. Nice, guys.

Matt returns to jail with only one thing on his mind: vengeance.

“He was so scared.” NOOOO FOGGY. SOMEONE HUG HIM. SOMEONE HUG EVERYONE.

Becky Blake - remember her? - has gotten a law degree and taken over as Matt’s lawyer now that Foggy’s dead. They go to the hearing to determine whether or not Matt will remain in protective custody, and, well...

I! LOVE! THIS! MOMENT! It is some POWERFUL “I’m not trapped in here with you. You’re trapped in here with me” realness. Matt’s going to gen pop, and that means he can finally start beating up anyone who knows anything about Foggy’s death.

Also the Owl, just for fun:

I mean, not really for fun, but the level of viciousness at play here shows you where Matt’s head is at.

Meanwhile, Ben and Dakota team up to discuss the case:

So: whoever has Foggy killed is cleaning house, and Matt has gone totally apeshit in prison. Neither of these things are great news.

And in more not-great news, guess who’s coming to Rikers!

Party in jail! Bullseye’s bringing the beer! Uh, maybe don’t drink it, though.

Meanwhile, Matt’s reign of terror has even spread to the guards:

As you’ll recall, Hammerhead’s goons attacking Matt was the reason Matt got put in solitary, where he was unable to help Foggy or contact anyone who could help. So Matt puts on a mask, avoids the security cameras, and pays Hammerhead a visit to find out why:

Matt makes it very clear here that the nerve pinches he’s used on Hammerhead are basically torture, and usually he doesn’t use them for that reason. But with Foggy dead, all bets are off. I LOVE MATT GOING FERAL OVER FOGGY. But it does him no good - Hammerhead doesn’t know anything.

Meanwhile, Ben and Dakota get a lead:

This lawyer, Alton Lennox, is the person who hired the prisoner who shanked Foggy. But why?

I’m going to pause here because this is getting looong, but we have a lot of questions on the table: Who is Alton Lennox, and who hired him to have Foggy killed? Where is the prisoner who actually did the stabbing? Has Matt gone irrevocably over the edge? And who is Fake Daredevil?

Next up: Milla, the Punisher, and a prison riot!

[pluckyredhead]

Daredevil 101: Eurotrip!

This is going to be a long one, folks. I tried to trim it down as much as I could, since I don’t want these sort of intermediary stories to be taking as long to cover as they have, but I was left with cutting it up into two short chunks or giving you one hefty meal. I chose hefty meal, so loosen your belts and tuck that napkin into your collars, kids!

...This metaphor may have gotten away from me.

Last time, Matt escaped from jail and headed to Monaco to track down Alton Lennox, the elusive lawyer who, for some mysterious reason, hired the convict who killed Foggy - who the reader (but not Matt) has just found out is actually alive! We’re picking up with more of the Brubaker/Lark run, DD v2 88-93. The official storyline name is “The Devil Takes a Ride.”

Content Warning: Image of a dead body, mention of murder made to look like suicide.

We start with Foggy, who is trapped in Witness Protection, unable to contact Ben or Dakota or anyone else who might be able to get through to Matt:

It’s not actually clear who the FBI is claiming to be Witness Protecting Foggy from, at this point? All they know is that he was stabbed by a guy at Riker’s, who is now dead, and also Foggy isn’t in Riker’s anymore. Matt’s enemies in general, maybe?

Anyway, this issue is called “The Secret Life of Foggy Nelson” and it’s basically a love letter to Matt. Foggy's narration boxes are all directed at Matt (who can’t hear him, of course), as he explains that he’s always wanted to do the right thing, but he’s been so afraid, especially with the dangerous life they lead:

I’M CRYING. Also, I’ve always loved that Foggy envisions Matt saving him, not Daredevil. Even after he learns that the two are one and the same, Matt is always the part he loves.

Foggy eventually gets so desperate to escape Witness Protection and talk to Matt that he sneaks out of the house he’s being held in and hails a cab that is...idling around this remote suburban neighborhood...suspiciously...

Hmm, yeah, that’s not good.

Luckily, Foggy is rescued! By ninjas!

Foggy’s face in that first panel is amazing.

Anyway, I LOVE THIS SO MUCH. Elektra is leading the Hand at this particular point in time, and she has ordered them to keep Foggy safe. Matt has no idea she’s doing this, of course - he doesn’t even know Foggy’s alive - but she knows what Foggy means to him. Also, she has a demonstrated soft spot for Foggy. I just love everything this says about all of them so much, even if I don’t know why the mafia wanted to kill Foggy. I guess they just be like that.

Thwarted in his escape, Foggy settles in to essentially wait for Matt to settle things in Europe and come rescue him. Meanwhile, Matt is being tormented by dreams of a bucolic Silver Age life with a living Foggy (and Karen!):

Aw, baby.

You can see that as is traditional for when Matt goes to Europe (or imagines going to Europe), he has dyed his hair black.

Matt is in Monte Carlo, because the only client he can find for Alton Lennox in Monaco, a mob boss named Tybold Lucca, runs a casino there:

Matt and his ill-fitting suit - I’m sorry, “Ray Mallory” and his ill-fitting suit - have been using his powers to win like crazy and thus draw Lucca’s attention. It works, as Lucca’s daughter Lily herself shows up to invite him to an exclusive party at the Lucca estate:

When Matt gets to the party, Lily doesn’t seem to be having a great time:

The scent thing is important. Lily reminds Matt of something, and he’s conscious of it enough to realize it’s making him want to bend over backwards to help her, without realizing exactly what - or who - she reminds him of.

The centerpiece of the event is a bullfight. After the bull is killed (Matt doesn’t enjoy that), Lucca announces the aforementioned deal with his “Spanish associate,” i.e. the bullfighter, Juan: Lily’s hand in marriage!

Matt’s moralizing over these strange cultures in the first panel makes me laugh. I know it’s another continent, Matthew, but it’s the same century.

Anyway, yikes! Juan has just killed Tybold Lucca! Also I don’t know how Matt knows the guy with the gray temples is Alton Lennox but whatever!

Matt Daredevils up, but Juan kidnaps Lily and Lennox and escapes in a helicopter. And that’s when something clicks into place, nose-wise:

I love this page. Why does Lily smell like Karen? Who is the mysterious mastermind behind, uh...a matador stabbing a gangster and said gangster’s daughter being kidnapped? What does this have to do with Foggy’s death? It’s a bonkers and extremely extra way of "explaining” this plotline, Brubaker, and I salute you.

Matt pursues Lily and Lennox, because they’re his only lead and because, well, it would be shitty not to. Lily’s scent haunts his dreams:

I love that all of Matt’s sweaty shirtless dreams about his conflicted feelings towards his love interests have Foggy in them, too. Just bro stuff!

Matt tracks the kidnapping victims to another opulent European mansion and finally catches up with Alton Lennox...but too late:

The man who hired Foggy’s killer has taken his secrets to the grave. But Lily is still out there. In fact, not only is her scent all over Lennox’s room, she’s actively being re-kidnapped:

This is Tombstone, who I don’t think has shown up in these recaps before? He’s a mob guy, gray skin, very strong, basically made of stone. A better sparring partner for Luke Cage than Matt “The World’s Most Breakable Bones” Murdock.

Tombstone gets away with Lily. Matt goes on the hunt:

This just makes me laugh. (In the first panel, I believe he’s saying “I can’t promise that you will land in the river.”)

Finally, one of the people Matt beats up mentions seeing Tombstone - and the woman he’s working for. And the whole plot flips over in Matt’s mind:

Yeah, Lily’s not the victim here - she’s the mastermind, or at least she thinks she is. Tombstone is working for her. She killed Lennox, or at least was there when he was killed. And that dude is Juan, the bullfighter, who killed her father so that they could be together and have all her father’s ill-gotten gangster money.

But how can she smell like both Juan’s mother and Karen? IS KAREN JUAN’S MOTHER??? (No.)

Matt finally catches up with Lily and her “kidnappers”:

Matt, you absolute tart.

Matt manages, rather ingeniously, to take down Tombstone, and the powerless Juan absolutely panics - like, to the point of something chemical going weird on him:

Juan kind of collapses after slicing Lily with the sword (not too badly; also wasn’t it a rapier before?) and Matt knocks him out. Matt then tells Lily he knows she’s been playing him, and demands that she come clean:

And so Matt finally confronts the mastermind behind all of this, the person who had Foggy Nelson killed, who hired Danny Rand to pretend to be Daredevil, who hired Lily and Juan and Tombstone, and who has had at least four loose ends murdered by now:

VANESSA FISK???

But why? Well, as far as she sees it, her life was destroyed by Fisk and Matt’s endless battle, in which she was essentially a pawn. (They don’t mention it directly, but it’s very worth noting that Matt once essentially held her hostage, after she had spent god knows how long as a presumably sexually abused prisoner, in order to manipulate Fisk. Matt didn’t, like, promise not to be a gangster and then marry her and then go back to being a gangster, but he’s not exactly innocent here either.) She is now dying of Killedherownsonitis - seriously, she’s like “the doctors don’t know why all my organs are failing, but it’s because I killed Richard” - and before she goes, she has a deal to offer Matt:

She has enough pull to get the charges against Matt dropped, meaning he can resume his normal life. In exchange, he will get Fisk out of jail. And from then, he’ll know that every time Fisk kills, it will be on his conscience. This is the kind of tortured logic superhero comics end up with, in a world where no one except civilians stays dead and jails have revolving doors, but trust me when I say that this reveal and all of Vanessa’s supervillain explanations absolutely work in context.

Matt’s like “YOU USED TO BE COOL, MAN”:

He refuses to take the deal and storms out. Vanessa tells her minions to put everything into motion anyway, because as she sees it, Matt is essentially selfish, and will ultimately act in his own self-interest.

And so, the FBI Guy who has been trying to bring Matt down for issues and issues and issues is found dead in his apparent from apparent suicide (killing people and making it look like suicide is Vanessa’s signature move, it’s the third one in the Brubaker run so far), along with a note saying he framed Matt who is totally super duper not Daredevil. And Really Incredibly Blind Matt Murdock is found wandering a road back in the States, having “escaped” from being “held captive.”

Matt being Matt, he decides to hold a press conference to explain his kidnapping/disappearance/reappearance, because Matt fucking loves holding press conferences:

Fratt shippers, please take Ben’s line as the gift it is.

Rather than spin the erotic tale Ben is clearly angling for (and that Frank, watching his on his Murder Van TV, is dreaming of), Matt spins some bullshit about Frank hating defense attorneys for putting criminals back on the streets and wanting information on Matt’s clients and yadda yadda. Basically no one actually believes him but everyone likes Daredevil so they’re all like “Welcome home, Regular Matt Murdock Who Isn’t Daredevil!” and then they wink a lot.

Matt is back home, reunited with Milla and Becky and Dakota, when he senses something impossible in the hall:

I will never be over this hug, or those tears, or Foggy’s joyous face in the fourth panel.

Anyway yeah, now that Matt’s officially Not Daredevil, Foggy I guess no longer needs to be protected from Daredevil’s enemies? Or more accurately, the only reason the FBI was really holding him was because of Vanessa’s machinations, and she’s now released him.

What I find really interesting is that she basically justifies it to her minion by saying she’s showing Matt how sweet life can be so that it will hurt more when he inevitably ends up bleeding out in the trash again, but Matt sees it as proof that the Vanessa he knew, the good person she once was, wasn’t totally gone. I think he’s closer to correct.

In return, even though he got what he wanted from her and never promised her anything, Matt gets Fisk out of jail. (Which is, again, the tortured bullshit morality of comics, where you have to get the villain out of jail to do more villain stuff.) The FBI case is so hopelessly compromised that it’s not even hard. But he makes Fisk promise to renounce his American citizenship and leave the country forever, AND he waits until after Vanessa has died so that Fisk can’t bury her, which is pretty vicious. (Matt’s, like...not a nice person, guys.)

And thus this storyline’s all over but the rooftop heart to heart with Foggy!

They are textually talking about Fisk here. They are also textually talking about Karen, who Matt admits that he’s still not over.

But Karen’s death didn’t change Matt so much that the freaking Punisher had to get himself arrested to remind him who he was. Matt has acted erratically since Karen’s death, but Matt has always acted erratically. Foggy’s “death” made him go feral.

So yeah, I think Foggy is talking about two people here (and I think Brubaker wrote the conversation to be about two people). But Matt is talking about three.

Next Up: Lily Lucca comes to New York! It doesn’t end well for anyone!

[pluckyredhead]

Daredevil 101: What Happened to Milla, Part 1

For the past while in Daredevil 101, Matt has been somewhat rockily married to a woman named Milla Donovan. Sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that Matt is no longer married in comics continuity. What happened?

*sigh* “To the Devil, His Due” and “Without Fear” happened, aka Daredevil v2 95-105 by Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark. Aka an absolutely interminable parade of pointless cruelty riddled with dangling plot threads and misogyny. Yes, the team that gave us the masterful “Devil in Cell Block D” has now gone off the rails so hard that Amtrak is still working on the repairs. (Sadly, their run never improves, so strap in, I guess.)

Now, Milla is not exactly my favorite character, but very few things in DD history make me madder than the way she was written off. It’s so clear that Brubaker wanted to fridge her but realized he couldn’t get away with a fifth dead Daredevil love interest, so he figured out a different “fate worse than death” (hoo boy we’ll have to unpack that in Part 2). No price is too high for a woman to pay if it means Matt Murdock suffers, amirite?

And with that tempting introduction (?), let’s get into it!

Content Warnings: Ableism, sexual assault and implied threats of sexual violence.

We begin with Melvin, who is in jail thanks to having attacked Matt back when he was blackmailed into doing so. Specifically, we begin with Melvin in a room with a bunch of dead bodies he swears up and down he isn’t responsible for.

Matt and Foggy and most especially Becky Blake believe him and take his case, but just a few days later it happens again - Melvin is found surrounded by dead bodies and claiming to have no memory of what happened but that he didn’t do it. The psych eval doesn’t go well, in that, well, he passes:

According to the doctor, this isn’t Melvin being taken over by his Gladiator personality or an actual second person stepping in - this is just Melvin himself killing people. Which for Melvin’s legal team (and friends) is the worst possible option, of course.

Meanwhile, Milla appears to have taken up therapy:

Aside from what this story does to Milla and Melvin, part of what makes it so bad is the structure. This was partially due to a couple of company-wide crossovers that we’ll see marching through the book in a little bit, but also just lots of things being set up and then dropped without going anywhere. Here we see Milla in therapy, which is never returned to or discussed. The sinister way this is framed makes it clear that the person she’s speaking to is the villain of the piece, but the fact that he met Milla at therapy is never revealed or mentioned at all. Later in the scene he says something about how he hasn’t told his wife that he’s in therapy but he should stop underestimating her, which is clearly meant to get under Milla’s skin in regards to her relationship with Matt, but that kind of subtle manipulation is too interesting for this story and leads absolutely nowhere. And of course we don’t get to actually see Milla talking to her therapist, which would require her to have an interior life.

Which means we have an entire scene that could have been replaced with a single panel of Milla bumping into someone on the street that would have had exactly the same effect on the plot. And the pacing problems only get worse from here, folks!

Anyway. The state decides to move Melvin, but he escapes his prison transport - and attacks Matt, who’s been keeping an ear on things:

Melvin kicks the crap out of Matt and escapes, but Matt realizes that there’s something wrong with Melvin - it may not be the Gladiator taking over, but this isn’t his friend, either.

The next day, Nelson and Murdock receive a surprise guest: Lily Lucca, who you may remember as she of the Karen-smelling perfume who aided and abetted in multiple murders and lured Matt into a confrontation with Vanessa Fisk:

As you’ll recall, the perfume Vanessa gave Lily to entrap Matt with makes her smell like every man’s fondest memory [INSERT GIANT EYEROLL HERE], which is why Foggy’s falling all over himself here. But now she has a problem: even though she’s not using the perfume anymore, she still smells like it, which means men are constantly creepily following her around, getting into fights over her, etc.

This is...sigh. There’s an aspect of “female character is punished for using her sexuality” here that makes me super uncomfortable. Certainly 90% of comic book villains have some kind of monkey’s paw in their backstory (“I tried to make a cool suit of armor and now I have robot tentacles!” “I tried to cryogenically freeze my dying wife and now I am really cold all the time!” etc.), but there’s a way in which it’s weaponized against certain types of female characters that’s deeply gendered and often kinda rape-y. (I got this vibe with Debbie and Micah Synn as well.) Lily wanted to control men through their desire to her? Well, now they might desire her so much they’ll assault her! That’ll show her! I guess. Ugh, it just grosses me out.

Anyway, Matt reluctantly agrees to help her, or more specifically have Dakota help her, since she won’t be affected by Lily’s scent the way he and Foggy will. Even with this caveat, when he meets Milla for dinner she does not like this:

I think we’re meant to be reading Milla as not being entirely rational about Lily because she’s so jealous of Karen’s memory and Lily reminds Matt of Karen, but she’s not wrong. I have no idea if we’re meant to read Matt as being sort of a douche in this scene but if my husband was like “Keep your voice down” and “Don’t be so hyperbolic” I would walk out of that fucking restaurant.

Or run, as the case may be:

Matt distracts Melvin so that Milla can get away (lotta Ms in this storyline), then somehow quick-changes to Daredevil for a fight. Melvin knocks him out and Matt wakes up handcuffed in the back of a police car:

The cops are arguing because it’s the middle of Civil War, which didn’t touch the Daredevil book very much but Matt was firmly on the anti-registration Team Cap side, unsurprisingly. As an unregistered superhero, just being out in a mask made him a criminal. (They don’t do anything with the fact that his secret identity was basically an open book at this point, which would have been interesting.)

Anyway, The Mysterious Voice Speaking On A Frequency Only Matt Can Hear gleefully tells him that he left his wallet at the restaurant, which has his home address, which means Melvin knows where to find Milla. Of course, Melvin was one of Matt’s bodyguards when his identity was first exposed and definitely already knew where he lived, but whatever.

Milla is, of course, wandering around the apartment in nothing but a bra and panties when Melvin shows up, because Daredevil artists apparently love putting her in her underwear to terrorize her and this is the last chance they’ll have to do it.

Melvin takes Milla up to the roof to wait for Matt. I’m including this exchange, where Milla tries to talk him down by appealing to his better nature, because it’s basically her last moment as herself. Reminding others of their better angels has always been one of her strengths, and she deserves to have that highlighted before...everything else.

Matt shows up. Melvin throws Milla off the roof:

Matt miraculously saves her and returns to fight Melvin, but Melvin has pretty much given up at this point and it’s all over but the crying. He’s bundled off to maximum security, and that’s...well, that’s the end of Melvin. This storyline came out in 2007, and this sweet, interesting character who has been around since the Silver Age has been unusable ever since. So thanks for that, Brubaker.

Matt’s furious, and determined to figure out who did this to Melvin:

“What did your sensei say about fighting angry?” always makes me laugh. Also, why would you ever suggest Matt follow Stick’s advice, Foggy, honestly.

(Foggy is A+++++ in this storyline and it makes me mad that I can’t even enjoy it because he’s just frantically trying to salvage a steaming pile of shit the whole time. Also given the overall ableism in this story I’m a little :/ that he basically takes over being the functional adult like Matt’s incapable of it.)

Matt runs into another dropped plot thread here because he gets on the trail of a street drug that makes people angry, which, like, how would Melvin have even gotten that in prison anyway, especially nonconsensually? Also, every other depiction of this drug shows it putting the user into a senseless rage, but Melvin sure was able to find his old lair, put on his Daredevil costume, track down Matt, and kidnap his wife when the plot required him to. How very Guardian Devil.

Anyway, Matt starts tracking the drug to its source. Meanwhile, Milla shows up at N&M:

Yeah, from here on out Milla is all tears and hysteria. Sigh.

Foggy decides to take her home, and Lily tags along, even though Foggy thinks that’s a REALLY REALLY bad idea because a) she's upsetting Milla, b) she fucks with Foggy’s head, and c) every dude in the subway is going to be all over her. But Lily insists, because she’s...manipulative? Genuinely feeling guilty and choosing the absolute worst way to fix that? Flimsy plot reasons? Let’s go with flimsy plot reasons.

While waiting for the train, Milla pretty much loses her shit at Lily, and also the world in general:

“I don’t know what I’ve done to you” is pretty rich, Lily. YOU LURED HER HUSBAND ON A MURDER CHASE ACROSS EUROPE.

Meanwhile, Dakota is still trying to figure out where Vanessa got Lily’s original perfume from - and Matt has followed the drug trail back to the Enforcers, a bunch of goofy-ass Silver Age villains we haven’t seen in decades. (They are specifically named the Ox, Fancy Dan, and Montana. They are ridiculous.) They clobber him and take him to their leader:

LARRY CRANSTON. MISTER FEAR. He made the perfume. He drove Melvin insane. And he’s the reason behind what happens next:

Lily lives. The random bystander does not. And when Matt, having been literally thrown out of the window and into the garbage by Mister Fear, returns home, Foggy is waiting for him:

Next Time: Milla is taken into custody, and Matt searches for a cure.

[pluckyredhead]

Hello! Your Daredevil 101 is great! I was just wondering, why did you skip the Alan Brennert issue?

Thank you! I do like that issue, but DD101 isn’t meant to be a recap of every Daredevil story. I try to cover major arcs, but one shots tend to get skipped unless they’re really, really crucial.