Daredevil Book 2: West Case Scenario (#1.50, 6-10)

"You're a good man Matt. A lot like your father" - Maggie

Time for more Daredevil action with the Mark Waid penned acclaimed Marvel Now run.  Art is by the fantastic Chris Samnee.  Daredevil here is a littl different than he has been in the past, instead of being based in New York, he's in San Francisco.  This because he revealed his true idenity and was disbarred from practicing law in NYC.  Not hiding behind a secret identity has its advantages,  Matt Murdock seems more stable and at peace with himself than he has for a long time.  His law partner Foggy has gone into hiding while he recovers from cancer because Matt revealing he was Daredevil has painted a target on Foggy.  Matt also has two new women in his life, his law partner and girlfriend Kirsten McDuffie and the mayor Charlotte Hastert.  Another advantage of revealing his identity is that he can consult with the cops and be useful to them as a human forensic tool.  This volume contains what appears to be a "What If?" style story that takes place in the future and has Matt with a son.  Then his mum gets herself involved in a diplomatic incident which Matt must resolve and finally the sinister Purple Man is back, how can a man who's commands you MUST follow be beaten?

OK, first issue and it's a look at a (possible?) future for Matt Murdock. Daredevil the comic had it's 50th anniversary and this was the commemorative comic.  It begins with him sitting on a bench, ruminating on how age has only intensified the gifts he has.  He's holding a gift, it's a crown with the note saying "Happy 50th Counsellor" and the box has the label "Enjoy your reign" and it's then revealed he's in the middle of a crowd of people, all of them having lost their sight.

A city of the blind.

It begins with him pulling his son away from his books and making him come and train with him.  Matt notes that he's become just like his own father, he tells his son he needs to be "active and social" and partake of sports.  "There's more to life than mouldy old books" he says.

His son, Jonathan has inherited Matt's supersenses, it hit the poor kid like a storm and it took Dr. Valeria Richards sometime to bring him down to normal.

Matt: "He still jumps at every noise, still flinches at every contact.  Every second of every moment he's like a Jack-In-The-Box with one note left to go."

The doorbell goes and Jonathan jumps in fright, but it's only "uncle Foggy" come to visit. Matt's wife won't be with them tonight, "mayor stuff".

Foggy tells Jonathan that Matt became mayor not long after he moved to San Francisco.  And even handed the Daredevil identity to "you-know-who" (I don't know who) alhough he reclaimed it when he was done mayoring before retiring when Jonathan was born.  Matt says if he hadn't of been elected who wouldn't have met his wife, then he pauses and suddenly his senses pick up chaos going on outside which Jonathan reacts to as if he is in pain.

Matt's son Jonathan.

Then Jonathan goes blind.  And Foggy, looking at the TV, says he's not alone.  Matt is about to leave to investigate but Jonathan cries "don't leave me!" so Matt doesn't and hugs his son.  A watching woman outside says "oh for god's sake."

Later when Jonathan is asleep Foggy and Matt discuss the situation.  72% of the city has been rendered blind.  Then Matt hears his name being called via his supersenses and leaves, this takes us to him sat on the bench holding the crown.  There is a small communications device and a woman speaks to him over it telling him to open the other package.  It has the Daredevil uniform in it.

He puts it on, then Foggy calls him saying he has found out what caused the blindness.  It's an eye-drop like dispenser that people use to put in liquid "cyber-optics" which are what people use to connect to "the Worldstream" to stay connected 24/7.  Matt is annoyed that Jonathan used them, he told him not to spend his life behind a heads up display.

He knows who hacked the feed, the crazy "Jubula Pride."  Daughter of his old enemy The Owl.  He has tracked her down and smashes into her office screaming "you hurt my son!"  She says he's an ingrate who should be flattered by what she has done, "I worked hard to build this world for you!"

Jubela takes on Daredevil.

He detects a radioactive power source and realises she planning to expand her target area than just The Bay.  They fight and she is angry he retired when he has a kid. She says he was master of this city and she can make him "king of the world".  When everyone is blind, they'll look to him for help.

Jubula: "That's my present to you!  I'm going to give you back your courage!"

She says he's giving him the chance to be the father he never had, but Daredevil knocks her aside and says he'd be lucky to be anything like his dad.  And that the one thing they have in common is they both died young.

He starts smashing the radioactive power source.  As he hits it, liquid splashs on his eyes, but it seems to be working and it powers down.  Things go black as he thinks "I saved my son".

Then we jump forwards to Matt with a guide dog.  He has gone properly blind now, no more supersenses.  He talks with his son who wants to stay home reading, Matt says it's fine and walks away thinking he'd like to see some "spark of courage" in him.  Then suddenly a car nearly knocks him down but Jonathan dives forwards and tackles him out of the way.   He holds his son and tells him "I love you so much".  And the story ends.

Jonthan shows his inner hero.

Then there is a short and rather moving text story written by Brian Michael Bendis (whose Daredevil run is one of my favourite runs in all of comicdom) which is a letter written to Matt by one of his million wives, which ends with us seeing Bullseye coming to kill her. Then there is a short and very silly story about how Matt managed to deal with the time he pretended to be his own twin brother and "kill him off" so to speak.  And that brings the anniversay issue to an end and we return to the series proper.

It starts with Daredevil thinking about recently getting caught up in a crossover.  He admits he's pretty useless in these mass brawls, but one thing that happened to him was he and many others got flashes of scenes they had otherwise repressed or were too young to remember.  Matt is super disturbed by his because it shows him an image of his father with his face contorted in anger looming over his cowering mother, he's holding Matt and has his fists balled.  Matt is being super-emo about it, and is kneeling on his fathers grave using mud to cover up the words "A Good Man" on it.

The offending memory.

It's made him question everything he remembers about his dad.  So he goes to find his mum who is a nun in a New York convent, who left when he was very young to ask her about it.  But when he goes to her convent he finds she isn't there.  He manages to track her down to prison, which was hard from him with his lack of lawyerly privileges in New York now.  He has to call in a lot of favours to get to see her.

She hasn't been charged, just arrested for an act of civil disobediance.  She and a couple of other nuns broke into a base that was storing chemical weapons, having exhausted legal methods to bring this to people's attention, they illegally went and graffited all over the walls hoping their arrests would highlight what was going on there.

But they have been treated like illegal combatants, paraded before a military tribunal and then told they will be extradited to Wakanda.  The charges are unknown and when their time she tells Matt "the Lord watches over us.  Have faith".

Matt's mum Maggie is some serious trouble.

Matt keeps looking into it, even going as far as asking SHIELD what it's about, and they just tell him it's a federal matter.   But everyone on a federal level says it's a municipal matter, "it's like a Kafka novel" he thinks dispairingly as he fails to even find out what they have been charged with.

He becomes Daredevil and investigates the facility the nuns targetted, but it's been abandoned.  Matt considers the Black Panther a friend, but he's disappeared and Wakanda is being ruled by his sister.  Hawkeye reminds him Wakanda has an embassy in New York, so Matt goes and sits on the roof and lets his supersenses go into full scan mode.

He hears a conversation between a Wakandan representatve and a US General.  They discuss how the Wakandan's cleared the base and the Wakandan tells the general he did an exemplary job containing the media.  The general is uncomfortable about hiding this from his superiors but he is given a memory stick with schematics of some of their weapons on it.

You are too late Daredevil.

Daredevil bursts in and snatches the memory stick saying he'll release it to the media but the Wakandan says he was expecting him and sets off a high frequency device that overwhelms Matt's senses.  He beats him up and takes back the memory stick, then he hurls Matt out of the window telling him he's too late, the nuns are already on their way to Wakanda as the base was Wakandan soil legally, they have the right to try the nuns themselves, "they left and hour ago".

We then cut to Daredevil leaping out of a SHIELD aeroplane over Wakanda, after a mysterious box is tossed out as well.   He lands safely but is quickly captured and bought before the Queen.  She tuts at him saying she expected someone more "cunning, formidable, unless...you're awake".
And Daredevil knocks out the men holding him and stands before her.  She leaps forwards and attacks him, while they fight he thinks on how he planned to get captured so he'd find her faster.  Then he says to her that he knows she is dealing with a corrupt US general called "Eaglemore" and that he knows the nuns were drawing attention to illegal weapons being held in defiance of International Law.

She says the weapons and research are to keep Wakanda strong and the extradition of the nuns was her defence minister's idea, but she rubber stamped it.  The women would bring embarrassment to Wakanda "If I declare that to be a crime, then it is".  Then Daredevil stops fighting her saying he didn't plan on rescuing them via brute force, he going to "lawyer them out."

Matt gets his lawyer on.

He knew his word against Eaglemore wouldn't work, so he surprised the general, bound and gagged him and put him in the box that was dropped into Wakanda with him. He trashed Eaglemore's office and made it so people would know he was missing, booking him a flight to Wakanda as well.

Now the place is going to be swarming with investigators hunting down Eaglemore, who have probably dug into his dirty dealings as well. The Queen could stand with Eaglemore, but won't, he's a sacrificial lamb:

Daredevil: "Just be aware that it's going to be harder to throw him under a bus if you can't produce his kidnap victims."

The Queen pauses.  Then orders the release of the prisoners.  They meet Matt outside by Queen Shuri's personal airship.  But Shuri then tries to arrest Matt for entering Wakanda illegally.  However Matt's mum stands in front of him as the guns are all aimed at him.  Then Shuri is told US soldiers are approaching and she has no wish to explain a dead nun to them.  Matt is free to go with them.

On board the airship, Matt explains about his memories.  He finally asks her the question he's been dying for the answer to, why did she leave? "To save you" she says.  Then the whole story spills out of her.  She was suffering from severe post-natal depression after his birth which turned into a full blown psychosis and she became severely paranoid:

Maggie: "I began to suspect that Jack was working against me.  That he was purposely negelecting me for you. That you were sent here to tear us apart... that you were both laughing at my torment."

And she attacked Jack as he held Matt, but she slipped on some spilled spaghetti and fell, Jack loomed over her his face contorted for a brief second, then he became distressed and concerned.  But Maggie just ran, even as he tried to stop her.

Maggie tells Daredevil the truth.

He kept looking for her, but she was taken in by the local nuns and became one, staying close by Matt so she could watch him grow up from a safe distance.  Thanks to her faith in God and counselling she became at peace with herself and was able to redirect that energy "towards a bigger, better world."

She asks for Matt's forgiveness for never wanting to tell him the truth.  Matt says there is nothing to forgive and that it explained a lot.  She was dealing with a chemical imbalance and it wasn't her fault.  She says she still thinks she failed him.  He responds that she pulled herself out of depression by sheer force of will and became a source of good for the planet, "we should all fail so tragically".

They finally reach home and she is still apologetic.  Matt says they need to talk more, and she says it would be nice to have her son back.  Matt says he'll also be her lawyer "because you clearly do not understand the statute of limitations".  And they hug warmly.  End of this storyline.

Mother and son sharing a moment.

Next up, a tangle with Zebidiah Killgrave or The Purple Man.  Viewers of the 2015 series Jessica Jones will know that he's a man who can make people do whatever he wants just by telling them too and he's a pretty evil guy.  The story begins with four purple skinned children breaking into another kids home.  Before his mum can call for help, Killgrave appears and whispers that with the loss of her child she has nothing to live for, and she jumps out of the window of their high up flat as Killgrave laughs, and the her son's skin starts to turn purple too.

The next day Matt and Kirsten are walking through a zoo.  She's trying to get him used to identifying all the different animals.  He kisses her saying he's never had a girlfriend with this level of interest in his job.  She then tells him her dad has asked them over for lunch on his yacht and despite her dislike of her step-mother, she wants to reconnect with him like Matt has with his mum.

We then cut to Matt have a charming time with Dana, the step-mother in question, much to Kirsten's annoyance.  They have a pleasant meal and Matt thinks how impressed he is with her father and how down-to-earth he is for a rich guy.  Then "he goes and ruins it" when he tells Matt he has a proposition for him, the autobiography of Dardevil which he's going to hand him an eight million dollar advance for.

Kirsten's dad makes Matt an offer.

Matt doesn't reject the idea out of hand, aware as he is of how his and Kirsten's law practice is struggling.  As they get into a cab after being dropped off at the dock she says that Matt is falling under her father's spell.  Matt says he'll sleep on the idea.  Then Kirsten tells him he's had a message from the Deputy Mayor who wants Daredevil to come over to the Tenderloin district.

He's been called to the scene of the "suicide" of the woman earlier.  The neighbour has got the perp on video but he keeps saying he can't say who it was and if anyone asks... and he grabs the cop's gun and puts it to his head.  But Daredevil knocks it away in time and says the man's vital signs were redlining, he isn't in his right mind.

They check the video on the man's phone and discover it's The Purple Man.  What does he want with a child wonders Daredevil.  Then we cut to Killgrave sitting with the five kids at his feet saying he's always wanted a loving family. He says thanks to his gift he never knows if people are speaking to him from the heart or if their words are hollow.

The Purple Man and his kids.

But the children can give him unconditional love because the five of them together can't be mind controlled by him.  He asks them if they love him.  They are silent.  He yells "Love Me! That isn't an order!".  He asks if they can resist him?  They say they can now and he suddenly gets up and is forced by them to walk out of the house and in front of a train.  After it hits him, the kids then decide to go an explore San Francisco.

The kids walk down the street leaving a trail of panicking people behind them.  The youngest one is "leaking fear" and doesn't seem happy with the situation.  Then they spot a cop car and one of the girls says she wants to drive it.

Meanwhile Matt is out with Kirsten and Foggy who is in a fat suit disguise.  They are discussing his possible autobiography.  While Kirsten and Fogy agree with each other that Matt doesn't have the way with the written word he has over the spoken, he reveals he's accepted the advance and the book will happen.  Foggy says he's concerned because Matt has a lot of sadness in his life and he'll have to relive it, Matt reassures him he can "handle the emotional churn".

Then he hears the speeding car and nips into a public loo to change into his Daredevil costume. He finds the car and stops it by getting into a manhole and attaching one end of his hooked billy club to the ground and the other to the cars axle as it drives over which then rips the front wheels off and brings the car to a halt.

The kids having a wild ride.

The kids get out and use their mental persuasion powers to get the people close by to attack Daredevil while chanting "leave them alone".  In the morgue Killgrave wakes up, his body is shattered but using his persuasive powers on himself, he manages to get up and walk out.

The cops arrive at the scene of Daredevil and the Purple kids, but Daredevil realises they are just more puppets for them.  The cops then fire on Daredevil and he leaps away to a nearby bridge and realises they are the next generation who don't even need to speak to make their victims do what they want.

Daredevil: "They radiate pain, and grief, and rage, and loneliness, and despair and there's no fighting it".

Incapacitated by the overwhelming sorrow he feels lets the kids push him off the bridge.  He thinks to himself that "happy Matt" is just an act and he can't pull it off anymore.  "I can't move. I can't breathe.  I can't do anything".  And as he lies curled up in the foetal position, Killgrave appears and stands over him.

Daredevil:  "This is what depression feels like. Imagine... the people who mean the most to you in the world.  They're reaching out to you with love and concern.  But you can't reach back. You want to, but your arms won't move.  YOu know you should call out, but it's an effort to draw breath".

As darkness envelops his soul,  Matt goes on to describe depression as a living thing that is always hungry.

A depression stricken Daredevil and the nearly fatally injured Purple Man.

He thinks that he hasn't felt this way in a long time but a few minutes with the Purple kids has brought all his "half-buried shadows" back up and amplified them.  The kids have moved on but he's still incapacitated by the feelings, "I am utterly alone" he thinks to himself.

But he isn't, Killgrave is beating him with a plank of wood.  Killgrave can barely speak but he commands Daredevil to put up a struggle, Daredevil thinks that he can't, that he wants to sink into the comforting blackness.  Then Killgrave says "show me some fear".  And that triggers a response in Matt because if he knows one thing, it's how to fight fear.

He kicks out and smashes the plank and knocks Killgrave down.  He commands himself to move, to fight inertia and manages to stand and bunch his fists.  "OK that's a start" he smiles to himself.

Later Kirsten is sitting in their law office going through the red bills and talking to her dad when she hears Matt come in through the window and goes to help him. He tells her that he was forced off the bridge and beaten by Killgrave.  Kirsten helps patch him up and asks if he is OK and that he seems "off." He says he's fine, then worries about not being able to find the kids before Killgrave does.  He asks Kirsten where a kid off the leash would go in San Francisco, she says "too easy!"

The kids having more fun.

And we cut to the kids in a indoor amusement arcade called "Rough and Tumbles".  They have ordered everyone out and are running amok inside.  One of them climbs to the top of a slide and Killgrave grabs him saying he's been a "bad boy".  Then he goes to get another one saying he tracked their "spoor of emotion" and they are forcing him to isolate them because they only have power together.

Then Daredevil appears and hits him with a flying kick.  Killgrave says "drop dead" and Daredevil feels his heart clench, but he resists him.  Killgrave leaves him, and Daredevil finds one of the kids, the youngest, and tells him to be brave and tell him where the music is coming from.

The kid shows him, and Daredevil says into a walkie talkie, "now!".  The cops come bursting in and before Killgrave can command them, Daredevil turns the music up full blast, they can't hear him.  Daredevil then punches him hard and knocks him out.  He leaves while advising the cops that when they find all the kids, to keep them far apart.

Later he is discussing the aftermath with Kirsten.  They have returned to normal, not purple anymore either.  Some of them don't have a family to return to, Kirsten says she's contacted a school that deals with "gifted youngsters".  She says she knows the kids must have done a number on Matt's head, but he says he's fine and kisses her goodnight as he returns to his flat.

He gets into bed and hugs the pillow hard.  Then he reaches for his phone and calls Kirsten saying he just feels like talking, she doesn't have to come over or anything.  She tells him she never left, and she is sat outside his flat's door.  He opens it and she says "thanks for letting me in".  End of volume two.

Some cases hit harder than others...

I think one of the reasons I find Daredevil so appealing is his constant struggle with internal demons as well as external enemies.  Unlike so many other heroes he has a real "inner life" and one I can relate to as a sufferer of bipolar depression.  The part where Matt is overwhelmed by depressed feelings is one of the more accurate I have read in any medium and I like that it's something Matt is personally and previously acquainted with rather than a neuro-typical person being overwhelmed by something they have never felt before.  I wonder if Mark Waid has experience himself, at the least he did his homework, the way it affects Matt physically as well is something people who never have to deal with depression never seem to understand.  When getting out of bed to eat or go to the toilet feels like climbing Everest and you can't even raise a hand in your own defence, that's depression.  It links in quite nicely with the story of Matt's mum suffering post-natal depression and as depression can be inherited when Matt says that it explains a lot he feels like him realising why he's had the feelings he's had.  The fact that Mark Waid can wrap all this stuff up in exciting superhero stories as well shows what a talented writer he is and Chris Samnee rises to the challenge of depicting a troubled and mentally distressed Matt Murdock.  The 50th anniversary stuff is OK, there is some interesting stuff about his relationship with his father that prefigure his angst on acquiring the memory his dad might be a domestic abuser in the main series, but it does make me think how it's a shame most comic characters aren't allowed to age, or stay happily married, or have kids.  So many potentially interesting avenues that go unexplored to keep the characters in stasis.  Ah well.  Overall, good and strong stuff.