Punch Up: “To Me My ❌-Men”
Chapter Thirty-Six:
1985-1986
Born Again
October-December, 1985 & January-April, 1986 Daredevil 227-233 by Mazzucchelli, C. Scheele, M. Scheele, Rosen, Miller + Macchio
Mixtape tracks: The Game by Love & Rockets, As the Worm Turns by Faith No More, No One by Minutemen, Jordan, Minnesota by Big Black, When I Think of You by Janet Jackson, Welcome Home by Metallica, Turbo Lover by Judas Priest
Chapter 36 of “to me my ❌-Men,” is a long winded (even for me, I blame the traditions of Claremont and Faulkner), diary journaling & recounting read along of Frank Miller & David Mazzucchelli’s Daredevil masterpiece. Our 6th masterpiece; Chapter 7’s Wolverine, Chapter 17’s Demon Bear, Chapter 21 & 30’s Life Death, Chapter 27’s Legion, Chapter 32’s Longshot, being our other five+ masterpieces, thus far.
Previously on “to me my ❌-Men,” we have celebrated the tradition of finding a random comic in the wild, like a lost puzzle piece. Knowing, you may never complete the puzzle.
We have utilized these, as we connect a sequence of issues in one title to arch in another. We have ignored issues, based on art or character, but hardly on intent. We celebrate diversity of vibes. We have fallen into the middle of the story, more than once, as this is how it begins for nearly all. We have a desire and goal to find our ending. As we had an onramp…we eye our off-ramp. We are calling this our ❌-Men.
Along the way we have been able to connect pieces to something bigger than this story. One is through the joy of sharing our version of events with others. Another is connecting together on the adaptations, which tell a different story perhaps. And in my most cherished way, we have found within these pieces to this puzzle (incomplete as it will be), comics that are celebrated beyond Marvel, beyond superheroes, beyond comics even, in some cases beyond Art.
We have anointed them masterpieces; Wolverine Limited Series, Demon Bear, Life-Death I, Legion+, Life-Death II+, and Longshot.
These comics have fostered cottage industries, careers, generations, billions, these being some of the least important of effects. As the art effects each who read them in far more intimate ways.
It will take us days to explore.
The first time something was stolen when it came to Batman, it was when Bob Kane stole from Bill Finger. In comics it’s not worth debating who got a worse deal. Most of us got no deal at all. We spend a lot of time giving Stan Lee a hard time, but in reality how things ended for him might make a believer out of those who question Karma and the scales being settled at the end. When it comes to Bill Finger. I’d be surprised if there is a person in the comics community who thinks Bill got a fare shake and Bob wasn’t so bad. It’s one of the worst stories I have ever heard. Real life aside. Batman was stollen from more then once. Heck, more than once by Marvel.
Iron Man, Daredevil, Nighthawk, Punisher, Moon Knight, etc…
Most of the time, they don’t point fingers. At least after the Superman lawsuit in the 40’s. It’s a two way street. Literally. Especially when considering how they treated creators and how they hired the same creators, sometimes even to copy themselves.
A year after Daredevil 227-233 came out, Batman 404-407 came out. Both are by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli. If you are familiar with both works, you begin to see some of the exact same panels show up in both works. Not all…but enough to understand, as brilliant as Bateman: Year One is, it is also a derivative of Daredevil: Born Again. Which is only fare, given Daredevil is a derivative of Batman.
It’s actually remarkable, considering the arch and range of David Mazzucchelli’s cartooning. Though, I guess a year is a short enough period for some similarities to be linked.
I have mentioned already, we celebrate Frank Miller as a Vermonter. I am also influenced by Mazzucchelli through his work and as someone he taught once. His lecture on Born Again was impactful and in the context of his career story and his relationship with Miller is profound. Especially considering, Miller was 28 and Mazzucchelli was 25 when these were made. The amount of intentional Catholic symbolism alone is remarkable.
In the morning I’ll be cracking open the first issue. Hopefully we don’t get to bogged down. Luckily, we have talked about Daredevil, Miller and Mazzucchelli before. So we can focus a bit more on the work.
I’ll also get this out of the way. Since both Netflix shows, Daredevil and Jessica Jones mine major portions of this, it was really weird to have the Disney+ show titled Born Again. To me it is offensive. If you are reading this, perhaps you will understand why I struggle with it. Especially when you think about how the industry treats its creators.
How it just let a deal with Bob Kane lead to Bill Finger being unrecognised as the creator of Batman in his life, and this left him alone, dead in an apartment, the body to be discovered days later. Or perhaps, you look at the living Miller and Mazzucchelli and think, well they didn’t get what Bill Finger got. Which I suppose is a take.
The corner box of 227 has Daredevil poised with his sense circles set on the city. It visually leads us directly into that now classic logo. Which wraps our eye around into Kingpin’s eye and down smoke over his shadowed face and into his cigar gripping hand and the middle ground Empire State Building, across the city scape to the twin towers we role over these ven diagram circles of three scopes. Daredevil in their sites. Orange Red, Purple Green Blue, Black and yellowed white.
APOCOLYPSE
The cover does the job.
In 1997, or was it 1998. Have to check my transcript. I had done a decade of cartoooning. I had seen “how to draw the Marvel way,” so many times. I had taken Mark Kneece’s scripting class. I had my Image comics rejection letter. I had done the punk zine underground comics 90’s thing. And I had produced on proper Bristol at the 11 x 17 size a few pages. But I was just now taking“Penciling and Inking I.” I was in that top corner tower of Preston Hall, in Savannah, GA. Listening to my classmates Chris Brunner talk with Prof Bob Pendarvis about how he used film for reference. How all day, all he does is sit there and watch film and draw comics. It shows. He will get work right out the gate.
Must be nice. I still work 32 hours a week, so I can afford to be here. I think to myself. As I sit there transferring a self portrait from a sketchbook onto the board with pencil. Me in my usual white shirt, black slacks & suspenders.
I don’t know where I got this effect. Life, comics, film…life reminding me of comics and/or film.
I do know that back in 1985, when I was in Shang Fu’s apartment, and he was giving me that lesson on how to hold a comic, bag it, and what comics collecting was. Making clear I had been far to casually consuming comics for nearly a decade, that I wasn’t focused on the Spider-Man issues on his shelf. Certainly not the ❌-Men. It was the Daredevil.
I think I remember 166, 184, 189, 210, 214, but it might have been 226 that left the most indelible mark that day.
Here in 227, on page one I see the same light through parted shades creating inked contours on the forms of humans in a bleak and contemplative room. The same effect I was utilizing in 1997 or 1998.
Frank’s pulp detective narration in that NYC branded 70’s & 80’s hard boiled way. Karen is that sad story fathers and mothers of daughters struggle with, and the rest either identify with or sickly enjoy. The guy is basic pathetic slime in flesh.
“That’s no way to think growing up. It’s the eighties. You do what you have to. And you have to do it…”
He knows her from film and parties. He knows her vice. She is giving up Matt’s identity for a fix.
Mazzucchelli is 25 in 1985, and does this like he has been for 30 years. I was 22, 23 and I was 100 years away in 1997, 1998.
“Six weeks (and a page) later, all just as hot…”
Raldo hands Toni the envelope, Karen had placed in his hand. They pass it as if it is a a ticket to Disney world. It is a ticket to Hell.
The faded white, yellow and the fade to black of the page one, with pink on fair skin to indicate the bit of color one can get, on page one, has a spot of color in a bottle which doesn’t quite do it as a vice is red. A hint.
On the page turn three panels indicates the temperature is unchanged, as the letter has passed into a light tan and blue hued casual delight of day. The whites are crisp as the envelope passes between men.
And then the red hues of dusk on the sea say one thing, but the words another. This is Hell by the looks of it. It is dark in vibes and shadows, but we are told it is much cooler. The introduction of the Kingpin is removed from the man, his men’s fear is how he is presented. A meeting on deck, is brisk. Speech of diversification into legitimate industry is instructed. Stilson hands over the envelope, he received from his cousin in Mexico.
His ticket to Hell presented, the Devil himself, Kingin receives it, as a mass of muscle in beach casual.
Wesley, in his debut stands unassuming, awaiting additional instruction. All others, including the doomed Stilson, have scampered like “men.”
“Turn the yacht back to New York. Locate everyone who has touched this envelope - - spoken to anyone who has - - and await the kill order. In the meantime … … I shall test the information.”
-Fisk
Another six months pass. A year in three pages. Three hues. One world controlled granularly by Wilson.
Frank Miller was raised in Vermont, and had been living in NYC for a dozen years.
You can tell by how he describes snow. “Drops in with no warning and seems to stay forever. It spreads a thick white blanket that makes the city clean for a few hours - - until the snow gets stepped on and driven over and made gritty and dirty grey.”
Miller is one of five. Has a small permanent gallery of his work in a corner booth at the local Applebee’s off the high way in Berlin, over the hill from the state capital in Vermont. Less then an hour up the high way and up a couple turns less than a mile from my place, and less than three decades later, I met one of the five one summer . A typical Vermont encounter of mutual familiarities that hold the quilt of community together. Sustaining through winter.
“Matt Murdock is blind - - so he misses the prettiest morning of the year,” Miller wrote. The page, as Mazzucchelli, taught us in an intimate lecture in Savannah, was one of 8 that are designed to infer the crucifix. These crucifixes meant something to Frank and David. There is intention here. They mean something to me, in how they work here juxtaposed with the crucifi❌es we have seen and will see in “to me my ❌-Men.” For in comics, in our community, in this Meta Modernist Era and in this medium, as designed, and by tradition, the audience has agency in creating continuity, narration, interpretations, and impact, in concert with Frank, David, Christie, Joe, and Ralph.
Matt’s name is in the envelope. And the page balances through instruction and execution, that this moment lays casually at a presuppose.
If Kingpin is the devil of this realm, than Daredevil is a local saint with chutzpah. But like any half decent New Yorker, he kvetches in his head, as he stews, stirs, and paces in the wake of NYC working itself way into the grogginess of Daredevil’s morning.
We see greens blues browns and his orange hair, pink skin, and eventually a brown bathrobe.
I am really impressed this issue with how Mazzucchelli and C. Scheele are depicting architectural, environmental and interior renderings. I don’t recall how and when intentionally Mazzucchelli precisely began to influence me. Best guess is his adaptation of City of Glass (1994), we read in Sturms class in 1998, or 1999, though it could also be Daredevil in 1985. There are moments where I pick up a hint of it. Here I can see it combining with my Mom’s architectural pen napkin sketches and resulting with an impression in my brushed inked comics settings.
Page five gives you a nice taste on the bottom of what you are getting yourself into, and then the page turn of six and seven have a angle change of Matt’s living space, and the angler layouts of his kitchen with him in it, and you get the sense that Mazzucchelli at RISD or somewhere, picked up on more than the passable apatite for architecture and interior design. Which in the wonderful arch of his career really hits you over the head with that inking in his 2009 masterpiece Asterios Polyp.
The reference by Frank to making the comparison between Matt and future OJ Dream Team Lawyer F. Lee Baily makes me chuckle.
Do we drink when Matt has a coffee scene. Well, it’s about that time for me to get brewing and off to work. But let’s see this scene through. Matt’s mail has landed through the slot like a bag of bricks. Each seeming a thread worthy rabbit hole. Cassette tape from girlfriend has my interest. He notes she lives in town, a bad sign for their relationship. Bank, IRS…Fisk’s tests, probably. Coffee. Message, call, Syd accountant is not helping
A Subpoena first panel next page. The blues are getting deeper, as are the reds and oranges. That one hour later will have to wait till later.
Thing is, that subpoena, wasn’t Mail Dropped. It was as coffee brewed. And came with a NOK NOK and a hand delivery. So here we are pallete inverted from a lightness of cooolness to an enveloping warmth that is heavy with wealth. And wealth has a message:
“You’re a DISEASE Mathew. I’m risking my standing by talking with you.”
The lawyer continues to point out that the witness against Matt is being placed by Nicholas Manolis, who is an upstanding cop. And the lieutenant’s statement indicates Matt paid a witness to purger himself in the HENDRICKS case.
The lawyer says: “we never had this conversation,” as if doing a Matt a favour.
Matt is rude to the secretary on exit.
The page was casually gorgeous.
The scene is switched by a tall panel, originally drawn at near sixteen inches and two across. Buttressing silhouettes of off set darkened borough building edges, angular snow in foreground, falling in the air, back lit by the moon, revealing an unassuming apartment building in the background.
In two panels Foggy walks through the door, to a third of Birds Eye three quarters view. Glori O’Brian picks up the pieces of a life that has been tossed. She equates to worse than Belfast bombing, and coffee will not fix this Foggy. Take me someplace else Foggy.
We keep moving across the landscape of feld dominoes, to the tipe face of Ben Ulrich’s typewriter, per Joe Rosen, as it prepares the news at freelancing Peter Parker’s bread and butter, the Daily Planet.
We don’t focus in enough on the role news papers play in the traditions of superhero comics, thanks to Siegel and Shuster’s school newspaper.
Ben equates this story to dynamite that rustles in Robbie Robertson’s outstretched hand, in the form of dot matrix tractor feed paper. The scourge of 80’s computer printings.
In Ben’s mind he has no time for whatever it is, but then efficiently switches to, I’ll save Matt. Last time I recall we saw Ben, he was doomed. Probably dead even. So whatever transpired, we can assume Matt had a hand in its resolution and here is Ben, saving his arse. Like a clock clicking from 10, to 12, to 2 we have zoomed in from outside to the office scene frozen in a moment to Ben’s eye, alarmed. And now from spiralling clock face we are on the phone with Matt, off the record as a friend. Our body language subtle and well acted from helpful, to defensive, to are you kidding me…and finally the camera pulls out to a darkened office that is Ben’s reality. Matt laughed and hung up. As it was a sick farce and Ben is another domino set to crush Matt.
Fisk’s test is working.
Matt, blind, but unbothered by that, runs through the financial evidence on the apposing page. The pink and blue shaded lights in his office barely illuminate a beautiful panel of pain.
The narrative in Matt’s mind reads: “…I hate money…”
Preach!
His is frozen, never delivered, or…the visual poetry becomes verbal and Matt grabs his DD…escape.
Page 12, our first of seven issues this chapter, Daredevil emerges and flirts with the wintery city in four panels. A relief.
Our first outing in forever. The final panel is a perfected Daredevil mid flight off the edge of a rooftop.
Foggy: “seems like just yesterday it was Fall” Glori: “yesterday it was Fall” In a typical winter scene, Foggy and Glori play out the appeal. Cosiness. 9 panels pull us inside, to the harth, a warm body to lean against, a hand on a lap, intimate…
Foggy: “I’ll take the couch.”
Matt, Daredevil, approaches in the same rotting headspace. Annoyed by the volume of music. The quality of a sitcom. But…admits…
“I’ve got a problem with visual entertainment”
He has broken in, cut a hole in the window…rude…and is standing in Nick’s kitchen, talking it’s been 20 years…why you do me like this?
It escalates as the panels pick up their pace. A casual reach in the fridge turned to heated exchange, broken bottle an out of his league cop v the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen in his own kitchen. Nick ends up SKRUNCH on his kitchen table and then his feet, winter blowing in through the window. All that is left is a phone.
KLIK
whrrr
KLIK
whrrr
Nick: “I did what you said….about my boy…Doctor…treatment soon…”
Daredevil know what he is doing, even if Matt don’t. Another well lit and drawn panel of Daredevil outside and above listening in on Nick’s call.
The theme from “Kojak” is disruptive of Matt’s ability to catch the words or tone on the other end of line.
Matt…is still kvetching about the noises…and their meanings. He knows he is going to far to solve a “Matt” problem.
Returns to an apartment’s with the ultimates shut off. And he didn’t know it for a minute.
“It’s been a day.”
Blood red, much like yesterday here in VT, sunrise, Foggy awakes on the couch to an idyllic city morning, but Matt has news once Glori hands him his phone.
This page of Kingpin at his five screen darkroom smoky solitary meeting, black and white photos of Foggy and Matt working, Matt headshots, Daredevil beating some street muscle. The screen lit dark and smiling Wilson’s face…talks of a man in calculated control, as he picks Matt apart. In the White House resides Mojo not Kingpin. Something that Disney+ Era of MCU made a misstep on. The Netflix Era seemed to have this Kingpin more dialled in.
I am not sure who is talking over these two pages. A mystery in pink. Informed and holding cards.
Kingpin in blue seems right. He considers a second of hiring Matt once he is bottomed out, but waves the thought away. He resists playing with his food.
Foggy keeps Matt out of prison. A failure in Foggy’s eyes. A legal achievement in Matt’s.
Karen in Mexico, is worse off, and now she has seen a beating and survived being shot at. That was after all she felt she had were her withering looks. So has guilt in even thinking, she thinks of Matt’s help.
I am annoyed, because there is not consistency or I haven’t found it easily between narrative boxes and their color schemes. It’s poor storytelling that is pulling at something that works at such a high level. A mystery may not be resolved because of it.
No. 227
Yellow: Narrator
Yellow in Typewriter Font: Ben
White: Matt
Pink: Daredevil
Pink: Narrator
Pink: Narrator…wait a mysterious character
Blue: Wilson
Blue: Narrator
Pink: Matt
Matt’s 30 days from repossession of his apartment. Disbarred. Accounts frozen or drained. Does it matter. $10 in his pocket.
With Glori answering Foggy’s phone, Matt jumps to the conclusion Foggy is part of the conspiracy. His mind is completely broken down. No longer lawyer or vigilante detective. Simply a conspiracy theorist without a clue.
He at least has the sense to not trust himself and trust the faith he has in Foggy.
His senses still work, he feels the explosion before his apartment building explodes in front of him.
He hears a baby and doesn’t react. He finds his shredded DD suit.
“There’s nothing left.”
“So you know.”
“So that’s why.”
“I never would have connected it to you. Nothing about it said GANGSTER - - until this.”
“It was a nice piece of work Kingpin.”
-Matt (Frank Miller)
At the end of Apocalypse we are entering Purgatory.
No corner box. Just Marvel logo, copyright and the M that the three prices, issue number (228) and month are housed in. Bellow the box with the direct issue black costumed Spidy head, right next to DM. Mazzucchelli’s initials. A light lime green yellowed Daredevil logo along the top. A poorly designed Purgatory trying to communicate horror along the bottom off center to the right. In the forgeoind pink cracks that I have always tried to read DD out of, but are random. And the cover filled behind with Matt’s face in extreme alarm. Lite at night. Teeth, gums, green tinted glasses, stubble, nostrils flared, eyes wide looking downward, sweaty droplets, red hair…we are all up in his face.
It’s maybe Daredevil’s best cover ever.
The copyright indicates 1985. The month of the issues is March. It is referencing that can be found inside; 1986. However, this came out on November 26, 1985. I am listing that month and year, none of this March nonsense.
The purpose of the date is to attempt to trick the consumer into thinking these are the current issue months after they are not. It also is to encourage the retailers to remove the product after this date. It’s habit by now. Long since been exposed as a silly scam.
The friendship of Foggy and Glori continues. They try not to think on Matt much. They are an 80’s sitcom. Matt’s Ex and Matt’s best friend. Just friends. Why?!
Matt seems to call on these pages and be the…
…of the scene.
Yellow: Narrator
SFX: ZZZTT from the fire alarm…he has a light bulb…Mazzucchelli is not very handy. This panels…bizzaro world levels.
Blue: Matt
Crucifix page for 228. Matt is in a room. A portion of his $10 kept him off the snow covered streets. He would be dead if he was outside. The fact that he complains and doesn’t see this as a blessing speaks volumes to me. He wants to stay with a friends, but thinks he has none. Glori and Foggy might disagree. Heck. Jossie might.
Now he is realising how he dismissive he was of the evidence that piled to his realisation of what was happening.
Both these trains of thought reveal the privilege and are dismissive of how he got to it. Dismissive of his ability and opportunity in this moment to dig himself out.
It reads as mental health crisis, but I am not giving him this grace.
He is able to name the cause. Kingpin. He is able to wave away the idea of murder. Vengeance is still on the table. It sounds pathetic still. Physically exercising it on his flesh seems insufficient and part of why Matt is here.
“I’m tired…”
Sure. I can understand that part. There’s your grace.
Iconic three pages of Kingpin lit in pink from the room, and blue greens from the outside. The light coming in, the same as the light coming into Matt’s apartment at the beginning of Matt’s side of the story.
Kingpin surveys his kingdom. Fills his room and lunges with smoke. He smiles like Kojak himself.
Three panels. Perfect.
Ack…words…I’ll read.
A mistake. Miller’s hardboiled Stan Lee edict of the onramp, this could be some sad sacks first issue, and now they are caught up…only Mazzucchelli just said it in 3,000 words. Perfectly said in 3,000 words.
Pink: Narrator
Matt’s still in his cot. Drags himself out and to the door. Works. So does the narration of Matt’s mind. What works is when Matt recounts what he hears in granular affecting detail and from how far it comes.
Blue: Matt
Matt is fat phobic and in his feels of vengeance. Well it got him out of bed.
In one panel Kingpin in a bloodied pulp.
Matt wakes up. He never made it out of bed.
So on the other line is Glori answering Foggy’s phone.
Matt hangs up on Foggy’s voice.
Well played Frank and David.
Oh y’all ain’t done…
RINGGG Matt: “I’m on to you, Nelson”
Hangs up for the second time.
Green: Matt
“Then it HAPPENS.”
A different angle from the cover, slightly pulled out. Lighting is less severe. Not outside at night with car approaching (the vibe of the cover)…but it’s the same look.
NOK NOK
Matt is mad with delusion. The landlord or whatever asks for $8 or else, and Matt chocks him out. All Matt needed was the mistaken identity of a man…Kingpin didn’t send this guy. Doesn’t matter. Is this guy dead. Looks dead. Matt’s on the move.
Sorry hotel manager.
Wilson is describing what he witnessed to an iron pumping Kingpin. He has been following and journaling (much as I have been here) with both exacting details and astute observational precision of Matt’s mindset, deduced through contextual actions.
Kingpin work outs depicted by David Mazzucchelli is the Kinpin I found so effective as a kid in the 80’s and now at the middle aged slow slide into dust. This is the work that makes Kingpin terrifying. His process is exacting.
He describes, and we see in alternating segments with the work out/report session, a Matt who is unbothered by criminal activity, until it confronts him directly on a subway.
Wilson describes his response as, “extreme.”
Wilson wants, “every detail.”
Matt bloodies everyone. The cop as well. Some hover away enough to be innocent and spared.
Wilson, laps it up, as he perspires and displays superior strength.
“I envy you blessed worm. You have witnessed the death of a noble man.”
Kingpin expects his arrival.
He is beyond prepared. He desires.
Matt has what seems to be a lucid moment. He is speaking into a payphone. Confessing to Foggy he is sick, needs help, might do the unthinkable, admits to having done some already, and is aware he has been paranoid.
The other end of the line: “…at the time the time will be ten thirty-two…”
We use to call for the time.
In four panels, a more densely and saturated pallet, the warmth of in-ground tavern, Karen must run, as Matt’s number is disconnected. Deep Orange: Karen
In another environment Matt lurks the street blends in like a typical New Yorker. Fisks building lurks in the snowy air. It reflects in Matt’s glasses. But our stop is The Bugle. Ben’s trying to convince patient zero of fake news; JJJ.
“YES. He’s a friend of mine!”
“The KINGPIN? What the devil’s a BLIND LAWYER got to do with the KINGPIN?
Mazzucchelli knows, we don’t need to see their faces. A silhouette through the frosty glasses window is all we need to see their expressions.
Turn the page he shows us Ben as irate. Well go Ben. We see J. Jonah Jameson as cooled.
JJJ: “Isn’t like you to take a stand, Ben.”
Bens!!!!
Purple. Matt is welcomed into Fisk’s castle.
Page is longshots building blocks. The Ben & JJJ role reversal. The entrance to the castle. These two establishment of Foggy’s place & Foggy and Glori staring at a pink phone stuck on what step to take next. Finally two panels of a purple hall with complimentary green plant displays and Matt being escorted so casually to the King.
The next page similarly Matt resolute in the background with Wilson’s lower legs mass in forgoing. Wilson observes over his shoulder. Two of Karen struggles one foot at a time in Mexico. Narration in burnt orange. And finally FAPPPP open panel with Kingpins mass braking the panel boarder above. Matt has taken his first wak at it.
Sets up the two page spread, expertly executed in equal silence to every panel since Matt hung up the phone with an automated clock.
THWAKK
Burnt Ornge: Narrator in Mexico, a contextual blip in the paces; “any way she can”
KRAKKK
THAPP
WHOKK
SKKRAKK
Matt (finally): “Never give up - - never —-
Mazzucchelli and Miller:
Three panels, murky yellows greens and blues. Black grey. Canada closes in on a cab in the east river.
Pink: narration. “It would be a joy to end it there. Something about the man brings to the Kingpin a bloodlust he has not felt since his youth (oh we know, we watched Netflix). It takes an effort of will to retrain himself from tearing Murdock limb from limb.
But the Kingpin is a carful man. There are details to consider.”
Not the White House guy. Not Mojo. Maybe the Man in the Kremlin.
Detail: the cabby beaten to death by Matt’s Billy Club.
Kingpin thinks of Matt submerged and alive. The suffering brings the King pleasure.
Pink narration: “He has disgraced, destroyed and murdered the only good man he has ever known.”
The pink panels are highlighted by the yellow smoke turned yellowed evidence…the yellow cab discovered the window cracked.
“There is no corpse.” “There is no corpse.” “There is no corpse.”
Matt is dripping into an ally of his people. The unhoused.
We turn to Pariah next.
No. 229 the cornerbox is back in full, with a silhouette of Matt, emerged and soaked like the final image of the last issue. Above it “MARVEL” is replaced with
MARVEL®
25th
ANNIVERSARY
a clear sign I was considering you while wondering Comics ‘n Comix in 1986, and am now hunting you down in 2026.
By the end of 1986 I had this poster on my wall though:
Marvel began as Timely in 1939.
In 1950 it became Atlas.
In 1957 Atlas fell into crisis.
1957-1961 it’s hard to place branding label on it.
However: in 1961 Marvel was branded.
And so 47…er…36…er…25 years later, I get with the program.
So here we have Matt ready to fight…Santa?!
Santa has a blade and Matt has been branded: Pariah!
The first five pages of this comic are really smartly done.
First from a schedule and work pace perspective they are efficient.
I’ll get more into this later, but the definition and development of comics is a world affair. Like the pyramids, they show up in spaces that seem to have no shared culture or communication. So when I say comics I mean Manga too! I am not at all speaking of one in exclusion of the other. What is efficient in comics is efficient in comics.
This efficiency is perceived in different context locally over time, and the effects linger, creating narratives about the work.
For example Fantastic Four Vol. 1 No. 1 August 1961’s George Klein’s inking (Mystic Comics Vol 1 No. 5 December, 1940-Super Villains Classics Vol. 1 No. 1 February, 1983) is associated with the instruction of: “simplify simplify simplify.” This was in reference to the line work, something that began to unravel with Art Adams’ Longshot.
The Comics Journal use to have a feature that matched panels with the panels they clearly copied.
In animation of the 20th Century a practice was developed of creating a background that the action could move across and when drawing a the movement of a character, they would overlap the image and simply draw what had moved.
Bauhaus had created an architectural era on the concept of simplicity of design.
Any familiarity with Japanese design or Mad Men the show…you get the idea.
Heck, Warhol took this about as far as you can go. Roy Lichtenstein strait up stole Russ Heath (Marvel, DC, Playboy) comics and simply made them bigger and in paint, not ink, on canvas not Bristol.
Comics were invented for adult commentary on society and culture. In western culture from go, with Cartoon No. 1 by John Leech, the goal was to take something and turn it on its head, exposing something about it and utilizing it in a theft that made it new…for the people.
So like I said, one day, I’ll brake down how I did that for myself. And here we are midstream exploring David Mazzucchelli do it, as he taught me to.
Secondly they find a way to take the edict of the Stan Lee, this is someone’s first comic onramp and find a way to apply it fully integrated into the narrative that provides a new (to me) wrinkle on Matt, that works in this moment.
Third each page utilises the artistic foundational concept we teach PreK-12: Repetition. Repetition is actually required by the state to be taught, learned, and assessed. It is partially because it has such individualised aesthetic and communication utility while also maintaining and building community.
Sequential Art is repetition. Like quilting, fabric arts, music…
In fact the fundamental alignment between comics and music is pace through the utility of concepts like repetition. A rhythm forms over these five pages.
The 1st panel being a vertical beat of intense intimacy in a close up of Matt’s face. Something that has been utilized and increased sporadically over the past few issues is now hitting a rhythmatic message to us.
Only very slowly over the the camera is pulling out over the five pages, setting up a quick and dramatic pulling back to reveal that crucifix element on page six that is carried out over the seven issues.
On page one there are six additional panels, that are about 3 inches shy on a 11 x 17 original board of being a full longshot panel, but have similar effects stacked on each other. This effect forms a repetition beginning on the bottom of page one, as six expands to seven panels on each of subsequent four pages.
Matt’s face is clearly not in a good way. Scraped and marked with blood or dirt. He is fixated on a trope. He is not a Gen❌er, he and Frank Miller are absolutely Boomers, but they are informing Gen❌ers here, and so Matt is questioning the trope. Matt doesn’t by into the cliché of life flashing before your eyes. But he is reviewing the moment Stan Lee requires…only in doing so Miller and Mazzucchelli take what is repetition in the boring sense and juxtapose the final moment Matt could see, exposing that that brightest thing he ever did see in his young life was a tine isotope (I don’t know…I am not a scientist) and then all he saw was black. The page splits the final six panels between these two realities. Making the choice to have the bright day and nuclear lit moment be larger and the darked panel (thanks Spiegelman) smaller. This juxtaposition is extremely powerful and takes what was boring AF and makes it not only a powerful reframing, but relevant to the character in their current state…turning on it head how they are thinking about the trope.
It also, pulls in the audience, as we were constantly being propagandized to that this was the existential threat to our existence. From birth, we were taught, “we are all going to die in nuclear holocaust” and we all understood the visual communication if not the science.
As it was when Matt was a kid, he is in a moment of feeling lost in darkness. In a broken body.
And then the sounds flood into him, deafening.
His memory of it.
A silhouetted understanding develops, through the nurturing of a woman’s soft voice, she wares a cross.
His father’s voice, the memories continue, nurtures him.
Revealing to us on page six, the credits, title Pariah, and Matt with two other unhoused cuddled amongst the insulation of other discarded shit. We are witnessing a corner of the crucifix. As Matt raps up memory lane with his secrets, a teacher/master found, the murder of Dad, superhero and carrier…a life ended by Wilson. He feels as if he was killed. Are we witnessing a resurrection?!
Uptown, where people with money spend it…”
Transition from:
Matt: White
to
Narration: Yellow
Foggy, Gloria and an ironic Christmas caroling are…
…interrupted.
Four panels of normal old comics.
Glori: “No - - Ye WON’T - -“
As she grasps onto the guy with her purse in his grasp.
Nice page.
The hijinks continue, as Foggy slips on the ice.
Glori’s on top of the guy who is clearly the father of a future Ice Officer: “Get OFF me. You crazy - -“
Foggy had a Bowling ball amongst his Christmas presents and it has escaped the packaging to the foreground of the central panel.
This turned fast.
“CRAZY - - I’ll KILL you…”
Foggy, his bowling ball, and his classy yellow Christmas sweeter have had about enough of this DudeBro.
WHOKK
Turn of the page, it’s over in two panels. Guy scrapers and New Yorkers shuffle past.
Full panel of the cornerbox. A single panel update, that Matt has stood up and is using the city as a buttress for support.
Final two are of Ben, per JJJ, kinda, intruding on a kid in “not a MENTAL institution…they treat lots of emotionally DISTURBED patients” BELLVUE. This is his fluff piece for the holidays. “This is my CHRISTMAS story.”
Ben: Yellow typewriter
Two page spread, we have transitioned from Foggy and Glori’s primary colored uptown to a cool blue page juxtaposed with a warm red page.
Ben is confronting Nick, in front of his bedridden kid, who is there for cardiac surgery, that Ben is using to twist in on Nick. Both these men have had Matt’s back…until the pressure of parenting was weaponised and now Nick has turned on Matt to save his child. And Ben knows the equation well enough to twist his own knife.
The nurse looks to be in a mood. Remember that.
Matt moving panel. One arm on a single building, he is on the street. Great job Matt!
In the warm Page, Karen is caught steeling from a blind man, as she tries to find pasos to pay for a fix and a ticket. She ends up assaulting a guy just defending himself.
Turn of the page, the men after her have found the man she assaulted and they are foreshadowing in the right direction.
In NYC Matt is not equipped to cross a NYC street. Gets hit.
Foggy is catching up with Mom. Says over the phone, with Glori in the room, “I’ve met a girl…she’s real nice…”
Our first appearance of Turk (his 23rd, but we just be missing each other). He and Grotto have attacked, what looks like their second Santa and are stealing his cloths. Turk is already dressed, this one is for Grotto. They are broke, because Kingpin “froze” them “out of work.” Turk is selling Grotto on the balancing is economic scales Christmas style. Only Matt’s got this “keep moving” thing going and they happen to be in his way.
Matt: “Take it off”
Turk v Matt. It’s no contest.
Turk: “Bled all over the suit - -“ See Ice Agents just don’t know how to make these things sound endearing.
Nick’s son didn’t make it. Ben is a ghoul, escorting a grieving Nick, by a nurse with a look on her face.
Matt keeps moving. Karen is negotiating a fix.
Karen Page turn, where she uses her porn reputation to negotiates a human trafficking of herself to get El Norte, right as those after he as a loose end approach. Only they are outgunned under the table by the guy who just struck a deal to provide Karen a fix and a ride.
KBLAMMM
“You better be worth this…”
Matt’s at; “…Hell’s Kitchen…smells like Hell’s Kitchen…”
Foggy is making his move on Glori.
They took down Matt’s Dad’s place too.
Nick is confessing to Ben. What’s the point now. The nurse approach’s in the parking lot. She is the heavy and she has these two and messages to deliver them.
THWAKK
KRAKKKK
Ben: “The worst thing is that I don’t pass out. I get to see what she does to Nick Manolis.”
Matt makes it to Foowell’s Gym. He’s got a bag. Mazzucchelli has some panels to work out Batman pages.
Karen gets the one panel. It’s creepy enough.
“Matt”
Matt is passed out and his Nun finds him passed out on the gym floor.
“matt”
Iconic silent splash page of her over his body.
Wilson workout page. We win! The lack of Matt’s corpse is a worm in his mind.
Wilson: Blue
Bottom of the page says:
NEXT: BORN AGAIN
Proper red background, white with the thinnest black outlined Daredevil logo. Born Again right underneath. No. 320 is a placing this subtitle in a special place for this storyline.
Maybe that is why the TPB was shorthand to Born Again. Maybe that is why Disney+ has a show with this subtitle.
It was pretty frustrating seeing this storylines pieces utilised so effectively over at Netflix and then to have the title used for multiple seasons as Matt transferred over to a Disney production.
Keep in mind, these issues are a passion project for Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli. For Mazzucchelli this launched his career into a conversation and trajectory that is well regarded. This is important work, and this title applies to this issue. At least as far as we can see it. In terms of what it seems to be for those who created it. A small slight or maybe not that at all. But to me it seems off to expanded it. The title.
Daredevil’s shadow covers the majority. In proper black. The Marvel 25th corner box has our Nun praying.
And at the center of it, is Ben and his desk oriented just so. His hand broke. Things not quite so.
Watchmen has its 9 panel grid. This page has its 9 panel longshots.
Matt is still holding on and thoughts are slow to come through. We have the proper crucifix page. One that is featured on the Netflix series.
Praise be. Matt lives.
I like these Karen and trafficker driving through the jungle panels. Only for the fresh change of scenery.
And then we have more Kingpin work out panels. Here he just smashes members of his local Dojo.
Page four, Foggy signs a contract. He and Glori are a thing now. But she still keeps track of Matt’s proximity of time. Been gone: “elven days…and six hours.”
And we see Ben and Nick’s body, right after the Nurse brutalised them.
Matt’s recovering. Karen has arrived. Dropped off at Penn station for sentiment reasons by Paulo. Their trip up turned into a bond.
The bond of convenience and mutual exchange.
Kingpin has dispatched his Dojo. “Locate Nuke, Wesley.”
Wesley is getting to comfortable. He mentions, this is not the setting…to domestic. Wilson is terrifying.
The way Kingpin is cartooned is so round massive, and Ben is so angularly slight.
Ben’s wife is worried. Ben doesn’t want to speak things into existence.
Matt’s recovery is opening up senses. To the point of shocking them.
I like the aspect to aspect of these six longshots.
“You idiot”
Maggie (our Nun) introduces herself, as Matt proves he doesn’t have the legs.
Karen is still with Paulo. The panel has a nice “Mazzucchelli” quality to it. The page connects to worlds, probably blocks apart. Reconnecting her hell and Foggy’s privilege. He acts like it’s been a lifetime.
“…‘Old Times’…geez, it wasn’t SO long ago…”
At the beginning of this chapter I went on a bit about how I was working with lighting coming through the blinds, while in this classroom:
Working this out:
This effect is how David started this chapter. And here we are on page 10 of No. 230 with instead of the white, grey, yellow and black of a morning in Mexico, we have the pink, purple, red and black of an evening in NYC. Specifically at the DAILY BUGLE.
JJJ just laying into Ben. Of all of JJJ’s rants…and let’s face it…that’s how we know him…that I can recall at this moment, this is the one that is human, empathetic, and frankly important. Usually you can dismiss him for tone, or laugh for his tone. Here, now, maybe even more so than in 1986 it feels like one of the most critical pages in comics history.
The weight of everything is being held together by J. Jonah Jamison and he is asking for Ben Ulrich to grow a pair, not for some machismo bullshit or that old average joe vs the super science menaces schtick. This is, the truth to power, never give up, ethics, morality, the moment we all find ourselves in, in 2026.
The panel of Ben just sitting in silence, draped in shadowed stripes.
Next panel:
JJJ: “You’re lucky I don’t fire you. Get out of my office”
The lighting, color, and inks meet the moment. It all works in concert. Inspired.
And the final two panels are exactly the sort of deflation that is maddening and leads to our inner JJJ’s to be activated.
From the darkly red lit obscured office of a desperate situation to save the world, to the well lit, openness of a hallway, without fear of retribution the screw is put on Ben. For the monsters don’t smell fear in this world…they casually dispense it with kindness.
Janitor mopping: “That’s a good boy, Ulrich. You stay a good boy remember the Kingpin’s watching. You remember you got five more fingers.”
Unveiled threat. JJJ’s frustration is ours. Ben’s fear is our tragedy. The janitor is our slippery slope. And folks like a slide. Parks are built for the thrills.
Bravo Frank Miller and team!
Two panel check in on Matt’s glacial recovery thanks to Jesus.
A three panel reminder that Karen is not escaped from her hell, just cause she crossed a boarder. Paulo is clarifying, he owns her.
There are so many moments when reviewing media arts where I no longer know where the line is. Like the lyrics of the Dire Straits song I attached to this story’s mixtape…the lyrics are offensive…a time capsule of what we accepted causally…but also…they were called Dire Straits. In this 21st Century perspective, the packaging makes it more enlightening from a reflecting on art perspective. And so here the abuse, likely evokes something to process is many, while also being of utilitarian value in its humanity. I sometimes look at the TV or the movie screen through fingers in my eyes. I almost never have that experience with comics and music.
Well, there are those pages in From Hell. And there are plenty of Pop songs that I complain make my ears bleed.
And so to finish the double page spread we get this panel of a moment in the inner workings of the Bugle. It feels like those lite moments we have seen in “to me my ❌-Men,” or a fourth wall breaking The Jen story…the ones that feel like we are seeing inside the reality of the day to day at Marvel, and in the same moment, connects directly your reality and this fiction.
Morton has his big moment, and he is no Peter Parker, in not so many words. Not great. Never to be heard from. Nameless characters get lines to add color to the scene. And Ben is hearing it from all angles in his corner of the bustling newsroom. Robbie cuts him last:
“what’s the problem Ben?”
Ben: “just a minute…”
We switch to his inner narrator talking deadline and: “I get a PHONE CALL”
At the sound of the tone. Turn the page…
With punches of complimentary oranges browns yellows, negative space of white, chiaroscuro inks, a two page blue scene emerges over 10 longshots.
What began the last panel of the page before, or was it the page before that, or last issue, or when Matt first entered Nick’s apartment, or when Karen was in a Mexico that one morning, or some previous Daredevil comic, or Uncanny X-Men 143, or Fantastic Four 1, or Marvel Comics 1, or Cartoon No. 1, or in a cave somewhere once…well it plays out over the course of these two pages in blue and then on the page turn for four more panels of the same configuration. Only alternating the blue with the pink and then red of a horrified Ben Ulrich.
As Nick is on the other line, as Lichtenstein and Robinson stand over Ulrich arguing the details, while trying to get Ulrich to type something…anything. As deadline takes on another meaning in Ben’s ear. Nick is ready to tell his story from a hospital bed. Ben is denying he knows what he is even talking about. And that’s when our friendly nurse comes in and has Ben listen to Nick’s last moments of breath. The pressure in the room of the Bugle is nothing in comparison to what’s on the line.
“I thanks for listening Mr. Ulrich.”
Dead line.
Back to Matt for three panels over two pages. He is reflecting on the cross and a voice. He recalls, he knew this voice from when he first was in agony as his heightened sense first emerged as a kid (or whenever). He wonders who Maggie is, and how she could be absent from his life for such a duration, as his senses have taught him, she cares deeply in these two moments of pain.
Foggy and Karen meet up. Two panels. Foggy is being polite, lying to her face as a greeting.
These quick scene changes feel like they are more frequent and it seems to be removing oxygen from the room as you read. It’s not that there hasn’t been moments to breath, but the opportunity to do so is playing over the a longer scene of someone taking their final breath. All along Mazzucchelli & Miller have allowed for scenes to stager over a page. A panel or so, here or there bleeding into the next page, juxtaposed with the next scene, but for some reason the pace feels frantic. As if we, the reader are thrashing in a bed, with a nurse choking us out, trying to grasp onto some pattern, narrative, anything that will steady things. And here we have a massive panel taking 3/5ths of a page. And of course the only thing stable enough to hold onto is the source of our gasping for air.
Kingpin. Red inner narrator.
“Nuke is in Nicaragua.”
Part of the White House in 2026 narrative that I have reflected on (like most years), since that faithful day the grown child was playing on the escalator again, and emerged to tell the world their intentions, is, we never actually left the 80’s. Years, election cycles, generations…these are illusions to keep you from focusing on continuity, connectivity and seeing the forest from the trees. It keeps this meme in its place.
But as soon as Argentinian boats was making headlines, I was thinking, “ah, the Nicaragua moment.”
It unfolded in the new from when I was 6 until Reagan’s term was over when I was 13, and then the news cycle kinda needed with the election. America moved on.
So a character we have heard reference to here in this 1986 comic and was central for a season on Jessica Jones, and Fisk is frustrated here at the wasted time it is taking to get his way. His will and power is opposition with Reagan in this moment it would seem. At the end of the Iran Contra Affair. Nuke is what the Kingpin wants. And days is to long to wait.
As he slips his cocktail outside a societal event, he needs to find a way to have Matt show his face.
SNAPP
He has it…a call is made.
Ben is stuck in shock. Alternating scenes with this state of being.
Foggy and Karen are still in the awkwardness of diner booth.
Matt has pneumonia.
Foggy final asked Karen about what happened.
Ben narration: “It took forever too!”
In soft browns, purples, yellows and the patterns of NYC 80’s vibes of gritty comfort, Karen and Foggy catch up. But she doesn’t tell him home everything. He knows about Paulo and is wanting to be impulsive. But Karen understands now to a degree what she has done. Now Matt is gone. They have each other, in partial truth. It’s something. The pages are exacting and full.
Maggie prays.
Ben thinks the unthinkable?! “Matt Murdock” as he removes his cast himself.
Oh!!!! We are at Melvin Potter’s place of business. Fun! He is being commissioned to replicate something….which is painfully obviously Daredevil’s costume. Not loving these pages execution. Since the Maggie prays.
Matt is awake. He asks Maggie if she is his mother. She denies it. He knows she is lying.
So we will turn to Saved in No. 231 soon.
Unflattering 25th Anniversary cornerbox image of Kingpin. Light blue filled logo. Black ink splattering via a toothbrush. 🪥🖋️Miami Vice pink SAVED with a Daredevil smacking Matt. Full swing black costume landscape oriented Spider-Man direct market edition…No. 231 we are all set.
last watched Daredevil and Jessica Jones when I did my completist Marvel TV/Film/Cartoon rewatch in preparation for Deadpool & Wolverine. Never doing that again, but I will go back to both shows. Or parts of them for sure. It has been 20 years since I last read these issues. I have known and been able to identify aspects of the shows that cherry picked from Miller and Mazzucchelli. Nocenti & Romita Jr too in Iron Fist.
I really love how Marvel has produced the MCU as something that understands the chore of the characters and utilized the source material in ways that respect it, but also aren’t wed to the comics beat by beat. Fox attempted this, but in their hands they simply failed to get the characters, motivations, relationships right on a large scale. In part because Chris Claremont made it impossible to do so without sticking relatively closely to the sequence of events and keep the characters in those sequences as they are in the comic. You can cherry pick some, as we are, but the broad stroke events are not action, they are character building in the comic. So if you are creating films and tv that don’t lean into the character work in the source material and the relationships that are formed as they unfold in the source material, you fail.
Here Netflix had a smaller cast of characters, and the sequences could be mixtaped a bit, because it really is about a thematic struggle Matt and friends go through over the course of issues, not a generation.
The part I have been reacting to has been the branding of Born Again on Disney+. It doesn’t sit right with me. It’s a single issue in a story that took it on in reprints. But the story has mostly been told on Netflix.
We watched Netflix. We know who made this costume. We understand what is happening. It doesn’t matter if we are right on who is wearing it or not having watched the show. The effects on Matt are approximately the same.
Six longshots
FAPP
FAPP
We zoom in on Fogwell’s Gym. I like the pallet and rendering of these two panels w/ SFX.
Alternates with a meeting in Fisk’s offices and some of the other bosses (I guess) are daring to bring up concerns over allocated resources when it comes to Matt Murdock.
and finally back to Matt hitting the bag.
FAPP
The pattern continues on the page turn, with slightly variation of settings, integrating Matt’s work out and the meeting conversation to punctuate each other.
Matt hits harder and Kingpin offers a market share payout to Mr. Switzer who dared being the messenger of these concerns. Accept it or die is how Wilson puts it openly at the meeting.
Then it seems separately, Wesley updates that he is skiing in CO. Wilson instructs:
“Compound fracture. Both legs.”
The crucifix splash title page of Matt having broken a punching bag, is like a T. It feels and is a different wrinkle on the theme. “Saved,” is a return to form, for Matt.
Ben Ulrich is in a solid Mazzucchelli page, where he is being interrogated for three hours by six cops, slices and coffee.
☕️ I got mine. But will need a refresher in a few. Take a swig.
In reflection, I don’t know if I could do this. Give a statement, with the hopes that the cops actually do something. In the hopes that I have a job to go back to. With the intention of leaving out the central issue. Matt is Daredevil. He has “superpowers.” From Marvel Nuclear Super Science.
Miller spells it out clearly enough. They ain’t listening if he has Ben tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Even in a world, in a town, where superheroes have been around for generations.
They finish up the page with a nice close up of Matt’s hand finding the Bugle.
Headline: “Coo Strangled in Hospital Bed.”
We assume this is Matt. We assume Matt knows, Nick is dead. We assume Matt is motivated now.
Page turn. We see a Kingpin headline.
We see Matt’s intent eyes.
Ben leaves the station with a cop body man. Ben is in his head, wishing it was Matt, and that he at least knew Matt was alive. Matt is right there. Watching them pass.
Our friendly neighborhood night nurse assassin is named Lois, and she is being told by a Kingpin stooge, she did such a great job, that she is being relocated to Arizona. And she is not exactly happy. She is jumping to conclusions, like I can kill a Ben Ulrich. Not interested in Arizona, vacation or not.
She walks out, not wearing her listening ears.
The overlapping scenes is still a thing. Why change what is working. From there we are onto a diner, called Diner. The cop is not impressed, Ben likes it for its lack of appeal. I get that. A Ben thing?!
Matt is in there, and Ben doesn’t seem to notice.
Ben has to break the news to Doris that he is bringing a cop home for a sleep over. She is going to do this properly. A proper guest.
I adore the “Hello?” panel of Doris at the peep hole here. Has a 1st quarter of the 20th Century vibe.
Our murder friend Lois is on the other side. Nice fisheye cartooning.
They choose not to show us. I really appreciate this. We really don’t require depictions of violence here. Like my imagination can do that heavy lifting just fine. And it does. Horrific and haunting transition.
Ben and the cop at the door. Ben is nocking to make sure Doris is ready for them?! No response, uses his keys, Ben’s down, the cop is smashed.
Whelp I meant what I said…but late turn we find a strung up by the neck Doris. Alive still. Ben’s trying to grab her. Lois is still working the cop over.
When what is clearly Matt’s fist hits Lois. Ben desperately tries to hold his wife up while stretching for a strait raiser of the sink.
Page turn. Lois has a gun, Matt kicks it and then roundhouse or sidekicks her. Ben desperately and successfully cuts his wife down.
Ben finds the aftermath in the other room. Lois is out and tied up.
Matt’s alive. The signs are there.
Phone rings. Melvin Potter on the other end.
In 1985 I was a kid sitting in a friend’s apartment, the remnants of constant Kimchi production wafting from the kitchen, transfixed with Melvin Potter. I don’t know what it was. But here I am in my home, coffee flavored, in 2026, and Melvin Potter has me realizing the outsized role he has plaid all along in my life.
Mazzucchelli does these seemingly simple and rough things in his cartooning. Frank Miller gets out of his own way and bucks to impulse to over tell, and lets the dialogue speak in balance with the simple and rough. They are unconcerned about the scene being a full page. The transitions happening on a page turn. They just know, this is what is needed to gut you.
Melvin on the other end of the line says to Ben, he read the article and they need to talk. Like tonight. And Ben in his shock can’t make it a priority. He delays a night extra, and there is no extra here. Matt overhears Ben’s side.
Next a simple panel of Ben hugging Doris. Feeling the violation.
Matt is on ice rooftops in the next panel.
Kingpin is assessing a potential employee for the job. He’ll do. He has a thing for families.
Matt is above Melvin’s shop.
Melvin is on the horn with his therapist, Betsy. He wants advice. Not another question about feelings.
We learn he hasn’t provided the costume yet and confirmed where in Melvin and Daredevil’s complex life we are. We are at the stage of, Melvin was saved by him, like his whole life, and he is trying to have his back and survive at the same time.
Page turn:
Matt on a car roof, moving, listening to instruction to the guy who just got the new job and a release. He is to take out Franklin Nelson and whomever is there.
May jumps off knowing fully the plan.
When in seven panels overlapping parts of two pages some outstanding use of space and drawing focused on showing sound, figures, and cars involved in a gun fight, we see I am assuming Paulo take out cops and shoot up Foggy’s apartment with Karen in it.
This interrupts the Kingpin’s plan, so his thugs are communicating with update and wanting guidance.
Sit pat. Foggy or Karen make a move, kill them quickly. More cops are coming.
Kingpin things to himself (in blue), no press needed after all. Cops will witness Daredevil kill Matt’s friends. But this needs to be done delicately and quickly. The guy playing Daredevil is psychopath. That’s Wilson’s assessment.
Miller and Mazzucchelli, think we won’t just take Wilson’s word for it. His hench is giving final instructions to the psychopath. And then the psychopath beats him to death as Daredevil muttering “58” over and over. He goes up to do the job.
Karen takes a plant pot and knocks Foggy out while he is on the phone with the police. She is on the run.
The psycho is struggling to get in from the roof. Matt is waiting on the other side of the door and punches through the door and square into the jaw of the psycho. Then he bust the door and the psychopath with a jump kick.
The SFX is economical and effective on these pages.
Karen is running back to Paulo. She see him as her only chance. Sure he will abuse her, but maybe that’s not so bad. She is saving Foggy in her mind.
Kingpin morns the loss of Foggy for a split second. Had just made it so he has that new job. He is an employee of Wilson and doesn’t know it.
Paulo has Karen. She wants to talk. He wants to bash her head into a wall. He gets his way.
Kingpin’s benches fire on them.
Matt is demolishing a man in red, as the man mutters “58.”
Matt mutters: “k a r e n”
Paulo is shot in the alley. Karen (in blue) takes a last fix from his pocket, a dead end no matter how you slice it anyway.
Matt stomps on a rooftop icicle just right that is drops into Pauli’s arm as he is about to use it to pull the trigger on Karen. And then he takes “58’s” billyclub and takes out the hench that is also about to shoot at Pauli and Karen again.
Keren is focused on the syringe in the snow.
Matt hugs her, a despondent mess, in the scene, that has been frozen and shared all over the world through books, social media and for the life of me, I can’t recall if Netflix has too…I can only picture this Mazzucchelli & team’s full page of a key moment in their lives.
Ben in type wraps up the postmortem with well designed panel transitions from the scene to his face, more humanly depicted then it has been in pages.
He talks through the blight of television (we really should have taken this more seriously; in four years time, the Gulf War will be launch a nation into new cycles that morph into a tabloid exploitation of all events, that will erode and destroy the potential of our country; a fable of human destiny). The virtue of newspapers (I’ll substitute comics at this point). Five bodies. The naked psycho on the roof. The doc who released him, being a Gardner in Florida now. Two dead criminals. One a Felix Manning. A criminal investigation will annoy Kingpin. The cops, Spanner & Trumbull.
Two caught; Micheal Kemp, Paulo Scorces. Paulo faces multiple life sentences.
We get in updates on Doris, her neck makes her sound like Brenda Vaccaro.
She wares a scarf now.
A film referenced in Disney+’s Wonder Man…a theme covered by Faith No More.
Ben is in search for Matt. Guess Melvin gave them the suit. Hope he is alright.
GOD a n d COUNTRY & ARMAGEDDON might be my first Daredevil comics. I bought them as they came out. On two weeks at the end of March and then April.
I was clearly in the market to expand “my thing;” a month between ❌-Factor issues was not working for me. As a week after X-Factor No. 5 came out, I was on the hunt again, nabbing my first Daredevil in the wild; No. 232. However, a combination of my interest in what was being released and my budget. It’s possible that it was a stretch to have 75¢ every week for comics. But taking the occasional brake for a week could ease guilt and budgetary realities.
Two week later it was my first Avengers issue; No. 269. Which was confusing enough to throw me off the title right away. Today it gives me nostalgic feels and is the source of my love for Kang.
Then I had X-Factor No. 6 to make it through the next week, I splurged, when I picked up No. 233, of Daredevil.
Keeping my appetite at bay, and coins piling in my pocket, for two weeks until the first week of May. When I picked up Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 No. 208. My first Uncanny X-Men issue. With X-Factor No. 7 coming out the following week.
There were no Marvel comics one week and then, there was a terrible Klaus Janson, Daredevil cover of No. 234 the following week. Daredevil was Shang-Fu’s thing anyway, I told myself. It wouldn’t be until March of ‘88 when I picked up one issue of Ann Nocenti & Romita’s run; No. 256, that I tested the waters there. I went more than two issues of Daredevil in 1998, at the beginning of Kevin Smith, Joe Queseda, & Jimmy Palmiotti’s run. As I had just started becoming friendly with Jimmy and Amanda in Savannah. Meeting a Mazzucchelli turned things around to the 80’s again. I finally realized it was Nocenti writing that last issue Daredevil I picked up and that got me intending on circling back to her run. ‘Cause Longshot!
First week of June, 1986, I picked up the last issue of Vision & Scarlet Witch Vol. 2; No. 12. The final issue of a limited series. Sigh.
And so, I couldn’t afford comics the week Uncanny X-Men No. 209 came out. Dedicated, I thought, nothing of interest the week in between, X-Factor No. 8 & X-Factor Annual No. 1.
Finally, July brought Elektra Assassin No. 1 to the window of Comics ‘n Comix. And my life’s path calcified in that moment. Uncanny X-Men No. 210 had no chance. It wouldn’t be till March of 1987 when I picked up another Uncanny issue, and I dropped ❌-Factor after July of 1986.
Daredevil for the win, I just didn’t realize it at the time. Credit going to Bill Sienkiewicz and Elektra.
The covers of Daredevil No. 232 & 233 by Mazzucchelli and team are horrifying to look at in 2026. I didn’t find them intoxicating in 1986. Like I said, I respected my friend’s taste, and he really loved this title the most. I had a casual interest. There is nothing here that is pulling me in. But it is not rejecting me either.
I was and am pretty judgmental about comics covers. If you turn me off, I tend to make mistakes in purchasing. I missed issues, simply because the cover didn’t work for me. I also, bought issues based on the cover, that I ditched.
I understood that we don’t judge a book by its cover, and that I could (and was) flipping through. But the sales clerks at Comics ‘n comics were not exactly inviting to me. I was always antsy when I was in there. I did a comic once about my palms sweating when I walked in the door. It was inferred touching the products was not encouraged, unless buying. Sometimes I was even discouraged to even look. They actually yelled at me when I got to close and looked to closely at the section that had Love & Rockets No. 1 on it. Guess who is now obsessed with Love & Rockets more than Marvel now?!
Eventually, I got burned enough times by a cover misrepresenting the interior, that I began to judge entire series, lines, and companies by this practice. One of the many reasons I was not much of a consumer of Marvel comics after 1989.
Here though, we have two color schemes forming a ven diagram of horror. I am proud to be an American. But I have also always dismissed the twisted ways in which propaganda has been used to try and twist and rip that birthright from me. As an art teacher or 4-year-olds, I constantly being confronted with identity and color theory. The utility of primary colors and America’s colors here is visceral in how it informs the interrogation of propaganda symbolism here.
Juxtaposed with where we were in 1986, how the cover is continuing narratives from the 40’s and 60’s, and where we are in 2026…these two comics promise to be a lot.
Or so says the covers. We will see.
If you are familiar with Jessica Jones from Netflix, then you have a basic understanding of this Daredevil character, Nuke.
“Give me a red.”
We have been hearing about him, but here he is, American flag oriented down painted across his face, a red pill between his teeth. The page reveals a chapter who spends his minds version of reality in a war over a decade old and an ocean away. He needs the Colonel/Pilot to place him in this time and place. As a thanks, Nuke, gets Betsy his gun ready for murder.
Welcome to 1986 and Nicaragua, Nuke.
Nuke’s internal monologues are in white, praising how Betsy understands how to be a pro here. As Nuke jumps from the chopper and descends, Betsy providing napalm and then bullets that collect lives on her meter. Last time it was 162. Over two pages; 9 panels (12 if you count the meters themselves), she counts 88, ending a red panel. Shout out to Art Spiegelman again.
“Give me a white.”
Done murdering. What’s the plan Stan.
“The General,” has given orders to be of service to Mr. Fisk. So Agent Simpson is on his way. Wilson is to provide compensation, which is anxiously awaited.
On the next page, we realize Miller himself is likely narrating in yellow or white now.
He speaks to how Kinpin loves the directness of Agent Simpson’s monicker, Nuke. How he can direct it at his hate. His fear. Murdock.
The visage of Kingpin in clarity, juxtaposes with the rooftop of a building where Matt holds Karen in closeup cropped inset panels, and a series of narrative boxes that bring in Karen’s mindset. A reflection on black holes that represent the series of films she did seeking stardom and brought her to addiction. Matt holds her. Where she started this journey. She has retuned. Only not at all well.
Of the credit pages this might be my favorite. It, being far from the obvious elements of crucifix. They hold each other. They and the window frame continue the work. Subtlety.
Ben, with his protective entourage, speak to Foggy in the park. You know the classic NYC park bench scenes. This is a solid one. They feel each other out as far as having Matt’s back. Without stating his secrets they find trust.
The wind moves the conversation along. Ben awaits a call from Glori.
Glori is a photographer, in denial.
Aboard a flight. “Give me a blue.”
He aggressively assaults an attendant over a beer. Brewed in MILWAUKEE. Fine.
Our friend Lois is talking. Kingpin is getting an update that is not great for him. She now Ben and Lois might talk.
The commissioner (messenger of the update) is to have Cohan at the interview. Fisk has photos that comprise the commissioner. Wilson, keeping them safe for him.
Glori and Foggy updating over the phone. She has a photo gig at the Bugle with Ben, thanks to the wind. And Foggy is getting wind of the fact that his legal work is not for exactly a legal corporation.
Matt shaves as Karen awakes, in a better place. The DD costume is the third wheel here. She thinks DD might be the one for him. He’s antsy about it.
“…City Jail…The Tumb…” is about to gain four more cases for the name. Ben, Glori, Hegerfors (Ben’s primary body man), Blanders (there because of police detail or per Jameson…a bit unclear to me in the moment…is a loud mouth and is handsy), meet Coogan (the one Kingpin wanted present) outside Lois’s cell.
The use of SFX is economical and essential. Coogan locks them all in with Lois. Hegerfors finds it unnecessary. Sees Coogan pull a gun. Blanders brandishes one too, and kills Lois. Coogan shoots Hegerfors, who is able to get off a return shot. Ben attacks Blanders before he can get a second shot off at Hegerfors. Ben takes Coogan’s gun and beats Blanders to death with it.
What’s remarkable is not the Ben has reached his breaking point and murdered a dude. It’s Glori’s ability to take photos the entire time, in concert with the gun fire. Not for her capability mind you. That seems right to this reader. I am impressed this happens in a comic from 1986.
Ben and Glori alive. Four dead. The keys on the body of the dead hitman cop blocking the cell exit.
Kingpin is giving a schpiel to Nuke. Referencing Cap and how things have changed since the first super soldier, and how Nuke reminds him of Wilson’s veteran son (Richard…forgot about him). He gives maybe his most, I’m in the White House line yet:
“I shall be honest with you. There are many who oppose me. I am under constant scrutiny.”
It goes on like that, conflating the softness hearted in America and the strength of our “enemies.”
Nuke has his own version of “58.”
“Our boys…”
His interjection into Wilson’s “patriotic” rhetoric. A confirmation of being on the same page.
Kingpin: “I am not a villain, my son. I am a corporation.”
Nearly, a quarter of a century before Citizens United v. FEC.
Months before White House occupant was on Letterman.
Nearly, three decades before June 16, 2015. Kingpin puts blame at the feet of Matt. But first. His allies include, “the Press.”
Nuke: “The Press…Where is he?”
Wilson: “Hell’s Kitchen.”
By the way, Frank Miller’s own politics seems to evolve and fluctuate. He has been associated with the label Libertarian. He has denounced the label conservative. Alan Moore has called him as much. They seem to see each other as opposites. Their work to me paints a more complex and fluid reality.
Matt is flipping burgers at “Diner.” Ben is sitting there with Glori and maybe Foggy?! They don’t cross paths as Matt leaves work. Ben is going on about how quiet and terrible his favourite spot to write is. Glori comments on how terrible the neighbourhood is. Whoever is with them is like, “looks pretty crowded to me.” Ben goes on about how he killed a man. Glori is on the my hero train. Whoever is like, “best burger I ever had.”
Erin and I talk best burgers…we have had them in SF and Orlando. Still not sure which is the one.
Again, Matt is flipping burgers, people…and he is killing it!
Matt can hear them taking. Ben has found something about his Mother. Matt shifts to a police helicopter sound.
Nuke drops from the chopper, low. Subtle for him is no napalm. American soil is no napalm. Machine gun and rocket…it’s NYC. Sure.
Shreds “diner.”
Ben to Glori: “Get your camera.”
Blows up where Karen is cuddling w/ DD costume. Everywhere Matt sleeps ain’t safe. Karen’s internal organs are fine. Matt gets into character. SFX is working.
Another chopper fires on Nuke & The Cornell’s.
Matt hits him with a billy club.
“Give me a red.”
Rough yet iconic full page DD.
“Next: Armageddon”
The splash/title page that leads off No. 233 is one of my favorite Mazzucchelli single images. It reminds me of a Bill Sienkiewicz Elektra Assassin painting from a bit after this. Or I guess, they remind me of each other. The water tower exploding off the roof is a bit weird, as that already happened it seemed leading up to DD getting the costume on. But here he is again with it on getting blowed up. I guess there is one of these on a number of buildings in Hell’s Kitchen.
The issue is “respectfully dedicated to Jack Kirby.”
Turning the page to a double page spread of DD v Nuke. The Cornell has lost control of his mad dog and Napalm is in the air.
DD gets his licks in. Getting Nuke’s eyes is a nice touch. Kingpin watches from his place. Enjoying the view, either way.
Ben and Glori are working hard.
Nuke is iconic. Up or falling down…from the sky,
Mazzucchelli is flexing his depiction of a fight scene that is outrageous, grounded and a dance. All in one.
“Our boys” continues the chant.
The SFX and the Fire make the art economical.
Pages of this.
DD has Nuke’s gun. Ben’s jacket or on fire. Cornell has a gattlinggun. Shoot Glori. Matt shoots down the Cornell’s chopper. It blows worse than the water tower.
“This one’s been shot! Medic! Over her, Man!”
It’s Captain America, with Glori in his arms. Thor brings the rain.
Deescalation is here, with one exception.
Matt still runs hot. Keeping the Red head thing alive.
He is chocking out Nuke. Interrogating him. Admit it’s, “Kingpin.”
“Give me a white”
His white flag.
Iron Man wants red to stand down.
Not giving him a choice.
“Give me a white”
Steve looks at Nuke with empathy and sorrow. His fellow super soldier. His legacy.
In one of the scariest scenes I read as a kid, Kingpin in the bathhouse sauna. With his fellow crime bosses. Getting an ear full. After some debate about rebranding, risk and responsibility, dude says Wilson been crazy since loosing his wife. Wilson, chokes ‘em out with one hand. The others get the message.
At the church bodies are laying, recovering where they typically pray. Foggy rushes past Matt, finds Glori. Maggie is there, mothering Matt. Matt is checking on Karen. Kisses her. Has to go suddenly. Rushes past Foggy. It’s as if they are ghosts to each other.
Matt flips himself to a rooftop. Cap is there.
“What do you want?”
It’s interesting. Thor is removed. Iron Man seems tied to the government line. Cap is out of the loop. They took Nuke in, but handed him over to the government, before answers could be made that satisfied Cap. So here is Cap asking Matt. And Matt is like, here is what my super sense tell me about him physically. He’s tough. Tough to burn. Matt suspects he was created, “well made.” Doesn’t buy Cap’s intel of “terrorist.” Questions Cap’s care.
Cap: “He wears the flag.”
Matt: “Hadn’t noticed.”
Me: “how to write a comic.”
Cap is left in a sad panel. Beautiful.
Ben has his story.
Fisk has is assurances from “The General” the matter is contained.
As Fisk and the General hang up, Cap appears in his office uninvited.
“General - - Who is this man?”
Gen gives the BS, we value you. You’re a legend. But clearance levels. Does Tony have it? Appreciate commitment. Your loyalty…
“I’m loyal to nothing general - - except the dream.”
Take note 2026.
The diner like a building in Germany c. WWII. Bertha and Otto Schnapp’s 30 years toast. Matt and Karen are now both unemployed.
Matt the burger flipper is no more.
Cap is sneaking around the Pentagon?
Floors above:
“No. Give me a red. A red.” Holding a blue. Whites and Blue only for you Nuke.
You didn’t do anything wrong Nuke. Just no more reds.
We are sending you over seas bud.
But the enemy is here.
Cap commitment means, acts of treason as he access the computer. Finally finds his project was revived. All dead…twenty…but one. Nuke.
Gen shows Nuke the paper. Ben’s article. Nuke takes out the room, like he is Ben Ulrich. Leaving the General alive…as he plans on finishing the job right. He downs at least five reds!
The building alarms go off. Cap didn’t do this.
Matt gets in character in an ally. Fisk is at another city function. Nuke v Cap. The fall out the building…not the pentagon. army building I don’t know. DD has some henches tied up. There is a kill order. DD heads towards Cap and Nuke who have landed in a building below. Cap takes Nukes body to the roof. gattlinggun on multiple choppers awaits. Army officers too. DD saves them. Cap has the soldiers to deal with. DD is driving a cab (blind) with Nuke in it. Says he is taking him home. “Promise.” Now Cap is working with a chopper pilot. A fellow patriot. They follow the cab. Wilson gets an update and assumes Nuke has DD and headed to the Bugle to finish the job. He contacts Winch on the roof of the Bugle…but Cap has taken out Winch.
And here we are my favorite use of the crucifi❌. The final one. Inverted. On Ben’s desk. Nukes body. Wet. Out. Dripping. Water. Bloodied. DD standing over. Tired. Ben and the Bugle staff stunned,
“The next few weeks go poorly for the Kingpin.”
He escapes the Law, but not the label. Villain. “
Murdock, he thinks. And plans.”
And the final page. That iconic Mazzucchelli, Karen and Matt, happy on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen.
Next: Power Pack
