Daredevil Returns to Red Costume

Like many superheroes, Daredevil has his story arcs where he goes against the status quo in an interesting way, only to bounce back sooner than later. He was married to a blind woman until she was written out of his books and Matt had to divorce her. He was in prison until he wasn’t. He was an evil ninja master until he stopped. He was publicly Matt Murdock until everyone was forced to forget. These days, Wilson Fisk has moved on from feared crime boss to sketch New York City mayor for as long as that lasts.

Then again, that’s not the most important status quo change that’s been going on in Chip Zdarsky’s current run on Daredevil. You see, after taking some time off due to injury, a sloppy Daredevil jumped back into action and one of the criminals he was brawling with ended up dead. At first, he was all determined to figure out who framed him (all while the Punisher looked at him with hearts in his eyes), but he later admitted to his Defenders buddies that he accidentally killed the poor mook. Cage and the others told him that accidental deaths happen in their line of work, which just spooked Matt even more.

To vindicate his feelings, Spider-Man told him to hang it up or else. Daredevil had become too erratic to the point that he was getting in street fights with cops.

And that’s how Zdarsky’s Daredevil began. “Daredevil No More.” Matt was able to move forward in the world and live without the stress of his double-life. Even though there were Daredevil copycats out there, an empty Wilson Fisk knew they were fakes and decided to step forward to a higher society of corrupt businesspeople. Then there’s the very large police officer Cole North – the man who fed Daredevil his teeth in that street fight – who feels the need to apprehend vigilantes, but is disgusted by how corrupt the police department really is.

Now, Fisk’s attempts to move up have allowed him to cross paths with Quinn and Una Stromwyn, who are part of one of the richest families in the world. It was a real Stringer Bell from The Wire situation for Fisk, who became the small fish in the big pond. Now that they’ve broken Fisk, they’ve set their sights on Matt Murdock and Hell’s Kitchen. Mainly for gentrification reasons.

Oh, and there’s a big, dangerious war to be the new Kingpin terrorizing the streets of New York City with police told to back off.

Matt’s been doing some Rocky III training with Elektra to get his groove back, all while wearing a black costume because he doesn’t want to be Daredevil, but he wants to still do Daredevil stuff.

To be fair, Superman did the same thing back in the day when he killed Zod and friends.

As the Zdarsky Daredevil run continues to move forward at an exciting pace, we’re about to rubber band back to how things are meant to be. Starting in May, Matt Murdock will complete his groove-get-backing by returning to the red devil tights.

Daredevil #21 will feature art by Marco Checchetto and the vigilante swashbuckling will continue!

The real irony is that much of this vacation from Daredevil has been because Matt can’t trust himself to beat people up without killing them. It’s a moot point because even though he won’t go too far against the Stromwyn siblings, Wilson Fisk kind of definitely is.

And it’s going to be sweet.

Gavin Jasper writes for Den of Geek and is just glad Matt isn’t going back to the yellow and black monstrosity. Read more of Gavin’s articles here and follow him on Twitter @Gavin4L