Daredevil #185-191

Daredevil #185-191

Originally released in 1982

Written by Frank Miller

Art by Klaus Janson

This is the end of Frank Miller's continuous run on Daredevil, and it is a roller coaster in terms of tone.  After what happened in the previous issues, it must have felt like some comedic relief was needed, so while investigating Glenn Industries, Foggy poses as "Guts" Nelson, a wannabe tough guy who accidentally develops a reputation and gets in way over his head.

Heather Glenn discovered that the board of directors is using her father's company to develop explosives, and with Matt trailing behind to keep him out of trouble, Foggy has to figure out why.  His trail takes him from lowlife Turk Barrett all the way to the Kingpin, who had the bombs developed for his own purposes.

While stopping Kingpin from getting the shipment, Matt gets caught in an explosion that messes up his radar sense.  Rather than deafening it like before, it amplifies his senses to the point where an ordinary conversation or a strong smell can render him woozy.

With Bullseye hospitalized, Elektra dead, and Kingpin fretting over Vanessa, Daredevil has a vacuum when it comes to his central antagonist.  There's only one man who could fill that role:

That's right, Stilt-Man!  He's been hired by Glenn Industries to intimidate a prosecutor, but Turk Barrett knocks him out, steals his armour, and tries to fill the vacancy in Kingpin's organization that was left by Bullseye and Elektra.

Like most situations, this doesn't work out for him.  Still, he figures he can get in the Kingpin's good graces and finish the job that Stilt-Man was hired to do.  He immediately botches it, dropping the prosecutor when he tries to threaten her.  Daredevil saves the prosecutor, leading to a confrontation between the two.

A confrontation that lasts about two pages before Daredevil effortlessly disables Turk's stolen armour, leaving the would-be supervillain collapsed on a rooftop.

Still reeling from the change in his senses, Daredevil is forced to seek out Stick to help him overcome this problem.  Stick is looking for Matt as well, for his own reasons: the Hand are acting openly against his organization, and he needs to strike a blow against them.

Meanwhile, while investigating an increasingly large number of reports of ninja activity worldwide, Black Widow is poisoned.  As no cure can be found, Fury's recommendation is for her to get some rest, which is the last thing she wants to do.

Both the Hand and their opposite number, the Chaste, demonstrate a wide array of supernatural abilities.  The Chaste can communicate through thought, allowing Stick to speak to Matt while Matt's in a sensory deprivation tank, and they can heal severe poisons (and possibly raise the dead), though it drains a lot of energy to do so.

The Hand can definitely raise the dead, though they're far more willing to sacrifice the lives of their followers in the process.  They bring Kirigi back from the dead to lead the charge against Stick, the few followers that he has left, Matt, and Natasha.

As the battle against the Hand is going on, Heather Glenn's life is unraveling.  She's slowly been isolated and pushed away from everyone that she knows, and is losing her father's company, until all she has left is Matt Murdock, and she's starting to feel like Matt is doing this intentionally.

Even when she agrees to marry Matt, she sounds so broken down and defeated.  She quickly turns to drinking, messing her up further to the point where she walks in on Matt in his Daredevil costume and doesn't even react.

In an attempt at sparing both Matt and Heather the pain, Foggy has the Black Widow forge break-up notes to send to each of them.  We don't get a resolution to Heather's plot in Frank Miller's run, but it doesn't seem like it's going to end well.

The Hand attack Daredevil's apartment in droves, and there are far too many of them for even trained warriors like Stick to take on.  Stick and another member of his order are forced to sacrifice themselves to kill the remaining Hand members, though this process seemingly destroys the bodies of Stick and his ally, making it impossible for them to be resurrected. (Though it could be misdirection; I could see Stick turning out to be alive, with his ally dying while Stick goes into hiding)

Kirigi's body is thoroughly burned to prevent a resurrection, so the Hand is forced to turn to reviving another former agent of their.  This causes issue 189 to end on a dramatic cliffhanger:

The Hand are going to bring Elektra back from the dead, and using the process to brainwash her so that she's fully loyal to them.  Throughout these events, Stone (the last surviving Chaste member of the group) acts as though Matt is incompetent, unable to do what needs to be done to help the Chaste, and while Daredevil's skill is unquestionable, his personality flaws do cause problems.

He essentially has to make a deal with the devil to get the Hand's location, turning to Kingpin and finding out about the Hand's local headquarters once he defeats one of Kingpin's treacherous lieutenants.  Once there's even the slightest possibility of Elektra returning to life, Matt develops tunnel vision, focusing entirely on her as a battle rages around him.

It works out well in the long run, though.  Stick made an earlier comment about how the healing abilities that the Chaste members demonstrated is just moving around energy, and while Matt doesn't know how to do that, his attempts make it so Elektra is purified - the Hand's control over her is removed, and (unbeknownst to Matt) she is revived when Stone transfers the last of his energy to her, as he is dying anyway.

After seeing Elektra's struggles, failures, and undignified end, along with a flashback where she's rejected by the Chaste due to her anger at the world, seeing a full-page spread of Elektra climbing to the top of a mountain, clad not in the red uniform of the Hand but the white uniform of the Chaste was so satisfying.  Elektra came back much sooner than I expected (or maybe it felt that way because I read these issues all at once rather than one a month), but I'm glad that she did. Frank Miller wrote a satisfying conclusion for Elektra's character arc while leaving the door open for future writers to bring her back into Matt's life when he least expects it, and the build-up to this page alone makes this run worth reading.

The final issue is a darker one, and an unorthodox way for Frank Miller to end his run on the character.  Daredevil has gone to Bullseye's hospital room, where he plays a game of Russian Roulette with the paralyzed assassin.

As he does so, Matt reflects on a recent incident where he met the son of a client.  The boy admires Daredevil after watching a tape of him fighting Bullseye, though it quickly becomes clear that he looked up to the Man Without Fear because Daredevil can beat up anyone who gets in his way.

This causes Matt no end of angst and grief as he worries about the message that his actions are putting out in the world, and his attempts at fixing things just seem to make it worse.

The ending left a hollow feeling in my gut, like my stomach had just dropped. These seven issues ran the gamut from wacky to uplifting to tragic to horrifying, and it's amazing how much Frank Miller and Klaus Janson could accomplish, and how much the writing and panel layouts differ, from issue to issue. Frank Miller's Daredevil run might be one of the best comic runs that I've read, and given that I struggled to get into the Dark Knight Returns (also written and drawn by Miller, with Janson also involved with the art) for a while due to the writing and art, that says a lot.