Daredevil #177-184

Daredevil #177-184

Originally released in 1981

Written by Frank Miller

Art by Frank Miller

I'm nearing the end of Frank Miller's first run on Daredevil (this run ends in issue 191, though he returns for issue 226 with the Born Again storyline), and without any nostalgia attached, I can clearly see why this is the definitive Daredevil run.

From the span of issues 177 to 182, it feels like an epic tragedy - various hired killers, masterminds, and people trying to do the right thing are heading on a collision course with each other, and you know that they're going to crash together and someone's going to die as a result, but you don't know when or how it's going to happen.

As Daredevil is training with Stick to regain his radar sense, the Kingpin is propping up a mayoral candidate who will be under his control, and Daily Bugle reporter Ben Urich has found evidence of the candidate's connections to organized crime.  With Bullseye in jail, Kingpin needs a new top assassin to do his dirty work.

Enter Elektra, who passes the Kingpin's test and agrees to work for the big man.  Her first assignment is intimidating Urich into silence, which she does by trailing him to a movie theater, where he's meeting with an informant.

She cuts the meeting short by stabbing the informant through the seat behind him before getting Urich to bury the story.  Ben is close enough to Daredevil to know his true identity, and when word starts going around the underworld that Kingpin's mayoral candidate has a mistress that he meets at a specific building, Daredevil immediately pegs it as a trap.

Upon arrival, he's attacked by Elektra.  Miller does an amazing job here with making the fights feel like they flow from panel to panel, with each movement feeling well-choreographed.  It's like a twisted ballet.

Unlike ballet, however, there's a winner in a fight, and Elektra had set traps in the building, including a bear trap that injured Matt's leg to the point where it was put in a cast.  Spotting Ben Urich taking pictures of the conflict, she throws her sai at him, which stabs him in the back.

Between that and his claim that smoking was going to kill him, I honestly thought that he was dead, though it turns out in the next issue that he survived.  I guess Frank Miller didn't want to make Elektra irredeemable.

Ben Urich had taken a picture of a suspicious homeless woman earlier, and upon developing it, it turns out that this woman is Vanessa, the Kingpin's wife, who survived her apparent death with what appears to be amnesia.  She's now living in the sewers, forced into loving the diseased King who looks like a demonic or mutated version of the Kingpin.

As Daredevil battles Kingpin's disgusting doppelganger beneath New York City, Kingpin is tightening his grip on the city above it.  His candidate is going to win a landslide victory, and all of the people who could stop it can do nothing about it.  His entire plan, likely one that was years in the making, is derailed by Daredevil throwing a wedding ring on his desk.

Knowing that Vanessa is alive but having Daredevil holding that information over his head, the Kingpin is furious, and in his eyes, someone needs to die in order to send a message.  He can't go after anyone at the Daily Bugle or Matt Murdock, so he picks someone who has ties to these events but won't be missed.

Meanwhile, Bullseye is stewing away in prison, furious that Daredevil saved him because it results in him being seen as a has-been.  Making matters worse is that someone took over his job while he's in jail, so he sets out to earn his position as Kingpin's top enforcer back the only way he knows how - through murder.

As Elektra is preparing to kill Foggy, and Bullseye is preparing to kill Elektra, a thought crosses Bullseye's mind.  Noticing a physical similarity between Murdock and Daredevil, along with Murdock's reaction to hearing Bullseye's voice, he starts to consider - could Daredevil be Matt Murdock?  The thought of Bullseye finding out is a chilling one.  Unlike the Joker, where he doesn't care about who his arch-enemy is and just wants their game to go on for as long as possible, Bullseye just wants Daredevil dead.

Elektra manages to capture Foggy, leaving her with a choice - does she kill an innocent man and permanently stain her soul?  Foggy recognizing Elektra as Matt's ex-girlfriend pushes her in the right direction, and she lets him live - even when he's not there, Matt Murdock still manages to serve as a conscience for her.

However, in that time, Bullseye manages to catch up to her, setting up their fatal duel.  The narration is from Bullseye's perspective, as we see him trying to figure out what Elektra's going to do; she's more disciplined than he would ever be, but Bullseye's almost supernatural marksmanship is too much.

In one of the most infamous panels in Daredevil history, Bullseye stabs Elektra with her own sais, leaving her to stumble away, ultimately collapsing in front of Matt Murdock's home and dying in his arms.

Despite all of this, Kingpin won't hire Bullseye again, rightfully feeling that he's too unstable.  He'll only take him back if Bullseye can bring him Daredevil's corpse.  Acting on his earlier suspicion, Bullseye breaks into Matt Murdock's house to kill him.  Matt apparently realized that Bullseye might have figured out his identity, or maybe he's extremely well-prepared, because a dummy and a recording of himself are all that he needs to throw Bullseye off of his trail and get him doubting that Matt Murdock is actually Daredevil.

Bullseye tries to kill Daredevil with Elektra's sais, figuring it would have been even better if Daredevil was actually Murdock but not wanting to let an opportunity go to waste.  Bullseye pursues Daredevil across the rooftops, but slips and falls.  He doesn't want to be saved by Daredevil again, but Daredevil seems to intentionally let go, letting Bullseye plummet to the ground where he is left paralyzed and ultimately confined to a hospital bed.

It's an interesting parallel between Elektra earlier - Elektra is an assassin who is motivated by Matt's memory to do the right thing, while Daredevil is a hero who is motivated by Elektra's memory to walk a darker path.  By all appearances, he would have had no problem with Bullseye dying then and there.

The issue after this has Matt being erratic to the point of coming across as insane, insisting that Elektra is still alive - she faked her death, set up a doppelganger, altered her dental records or autopsy... something, anything, that would mean that she's still alive.  It's only when he digs up her corpse at the cemetery that he has to face the cold hard truth - Elektra's dead, and she's never coming back. (well, actually, only the first part of that is accurate, though I'm not sure how long it will be before she returns)

As all of this is going on, Matt's girlfriend, Heather Glenn, is out of her element.  She inherited a business from her father, but despite being an executive, she's being manipulated and conned, and she knows it.  She wants to do her best at running the company, though Matt thinks she should put that behind her.

The last few issues that I'm reading today involve Daredevil's first meeting with the Punisher as the two of them separately try to crack down on a drug epidemic that's targeting children.  This is a role that I feel like the Punisher works well in.  I can't connect to him as a lead, but as a darker foil to a hero, it works.

It helps that the Punisher's methods are shown to be ineffective - if the Punisher had his way, he would have killed a junkie on the rooftop, but Daredevil saves the junkie, whose testimony manages to prove that a child didn't murder a drug dealer.

As Daredevil's relationship with Heather is falling apart, he winds up being manipulated by his own client, a gangster and drug dealer.  The kid that Matt had defended earlier grabs his father's gun and goes to kill the gangster, claiming that he saw the gangster murder a witness.  As Daredevil rushes to stop him, the Punisher also steps in to deliver his own brand of justice.

This set of issues was a thrill ride from start to finish that kept me guessing and had me holding my breath at points.  I don't have long until I reach the end of Frank Miller's Daredevil run, and with the big events that I was aware of covered in here, I have no idea how Daredevil, Stick, Elektra, Kingpin, Foggy, Heather, and Vanessa are all going to fit together, or how it's going to end.  I'm honestly tempted to finish off this run on Tuesday, though it's probably better if I space it out.