thoughts on the Inferno arc from Dematteis?
  I have to admit, that arc isnât one of my favorites, and Iâm not a big fan of DeMatteisâs run as a whole. It just doesnât do much for me. The dead sex worker plot point is one of my least favorite parts of Man Without Fear, and I dislike that DeMatteis felt the need to drag it into 616 continuity. Matt already killed someone during his first outing as Daredevil, as established way back in DD #1, so all that addition/retcon/whatever it is did was muddle up the timeline. Itâs also one of the few Daredevil stories that depicts Matt as kind of religious, which is a characterization that, personally, isnât my thing. (Thereâs nothing wrong with it, of course! I just donât find it interesting, and Iâm often baffled that so many people seem to see it as an integral part of his character, since itâs practically nonexistent in the comics.) And Sir is an uncomfortable villain for a number of reasons, mostly involving depictions of transgender characters in media, which I donât feel informed enough about to properly discuss. Thematically, their story aligns with Mattâs plotline of self-discomfort and repression, but character-wise, I will say that I donât find them to be a particularly interesting or memorable antagonist. Overall, itâs a strange, somewhat convoluted story.Â
  On the other hand, there are parts of âInfernoâ that I really likeâ most notably, the reintroduction of the ârealâ yellow-suited Daredevil as a symptom of Mattâs identity-centered mental breakdown.Â
[ID: Two panels from DeMatteisâs run. Foggy is sitting in his office at his desk, and Yellow Suit Daredevil is perched on top of the desk.]
Matt:Â âBetter spread the word, counselor: Daredevilâs back. The real Daredevil. And tell that phony running around abusing my nameâ to watch his back!â
[ID: Foggy watches in shock as Daredevil jumps out the window.]
  The identity issues in this arc and the arcs that come both before and (especially) after it are a little difficult to follow, since they are so abstract, but conceptually, I find them interesting and fun. DeMatteisâs run takes place after Matt has faked his death and reinvented himself yet again. He is isolated from his loved onesâ Foggy and Karen at the timeâ and is living a life that is, by design, almost entirely separate from his existence as Matt Murdock. His civilian identity is a con artist, and his Daredevil identity is notably dark and brutal. He has been through two major psychologically-jarring experiences: Elektraâs resurrection and Gloriâs sudden violent death, the latter of which serves as a direct catalyst for his mental breakdown in âInfernoâ and the following arc. As much as Iâm not a fan of the actual reason for thisâ the Man Without Fear plot point being clumsily integrated in 616 Mattâs past, as discussedâ I do really enjoy the side-effects of Mattâs shattered psyche. We learn that he has repressed a horrible memoryâ a memory that directly impacts his sense of self by making him feel like a murderer. Even before he fully unearths the memory, it causes him to feel like he doesnât know himself. And this, coupled with his mental breakdown and lack of tethers to his former life, causes his decades of identity compartmentalization to come to the surface and make him literally feel like multiple separate people.
[ID: A panel of Yellow Suit Daredevil posing dramatically on a rooftop in the rain. The faces of other DD characters are outlined in the cityscape behind him.]
Caption: âHeâs haunted⌠as much by what he can remember as what he canât. He knows who he is, at least: Daredevil. The real Daredevil! The one who stopped the Owl, the Purple Man, and Mister Fearâ the Daredevil people admired and emulated. He knows, too, that something drove him away from this city. From his friends: Karen, Foggy, Matt. Matt? Was Matt his friend? Maybe once. A long time ago.â
  Yellow Suit Daredevil insists that he is not Matt Murdock, that he is a Daredevil who existed before Matt Murdock took on that identity. In other words, he is a product of Mattâs very earliest approach to heroing and the first Daredevil creative teamâs way of presenting his identity. He is, in fact, this quote from Daredevil #1 brought to life: Â
âIâll see to it that Matt Murdock never does resort to force⌠but somebody else willâŚ! Somebody totally different from Matt MurdockâŚâ
  This initial compartmentalization was necessary for Matt to allow himself to directly disobey his fatherâs wishes. It was only later that Matt Murdock and Daredevil stopped being written with two distinct personalities, and Matt relaxed that sense of identity separation. In DeMatteisâs run, Yellow Suit Daredevil doesnât think he has hypersensesâ because heâs not Mattâ but he doesnât know who he actually is. (Technically, heâs⌠probably Mike. Iâm just sayinâ.) Yellow Suit DD identifies himself as the happy, upbeat Daredevil, the one people look up to and admire, and resents Matt Murdock for becoming a darker and more morally complex figure after taking on the identity. In a metafictive way, DeMatteis is commenting on the tonal shifts in Daredevil comics over the years, and I love that.Â
[ID: Two panels of Yellow Suit Daredevil punching a heavy bag.]
Caption:Â âHeâll stop Murdock the way he stopped Batlin. No more frauds. No more liars. Itâs time for Daredevil to be a hero again. A real hero. Not some cheap, soulless thug hiding behind a heroâs mask.â
  In-universe, the implication is that Matt, as part of his mental breakdown surrounding his repressed memories of committing murder, is reverting back to that first DD identityâ the safe one, the uncomplicated one, the PG-rated Silver Age one who would never kill anyoneâ at least, not directly. (This in itself is funny, because Matt indirectly killed people all the time in early Daredevil comics, but this story is more about Mattâs warped view of the Good Old Days than it is about accuracy). From that safe vantage point, Matt feels comfortable resenting himself for all of the darkness in his recent life. His discomfort with his own actions causes the identities he has built for himself over the years to literally manifest separately in his mind. This becomes exacerbated in the following arc in wonderfully mind-bending ways. I donât think thatâs how mental breakdowns actually work, but this is comics, and I find it compelling⌠if a little hard to follow, logistically.Â
  I also enjoy the fact that this horrible point in Mattâs life is when Foggy learns his best friend is Daredevil.
[ID: Karen is kneeling on a bathroom floor, holding Matt in her arms. He is wearing the yellow Daredevil suit but his mask is off. Foggy is standing over them, scratching his head.]
Foggy:Â âI donât understand any of this! Mattâsâ alive?! Wh-whatâs he doing in that costume?! How did heâ?!â
Karen:Â âNot now, Foggy. Not now.â
  Itâs random, itâs accidental, itâs incredibly upsetting, and it is a while before Foggy is even able to discuss it with Matt, at which point Matt basically brushes it off and they both move on. On the one hand, I would have loved to see more emphasis placed on this momentâ arguably one of the biggest events in DD historyâ and I was delighted that the Netflix adaptation gave that to us in Season 1 episode 10. But I also enjoy the imperfections of the 616 version. Itâs not a big fairytale moment, and something about that messiness appeals to me.
