The Return of Matt Murdock 3

[mrosa]

The final part of Ann Nocenti's farewell to Daredevil:

Matt is being asked by his coach to throw a fight. The Kingpin threatened to kill him in the previous if he didn't:



Matt of course is pulverising his opponent until his coach tells him that the Kingpin has Nyla in his power. So he starts losing the fight:




And then he starts remembering who he really is:




So many good moments in this page alone: "I know who I am now. They can't hurt me!" His helping his beaten opponent, the smile as he takes off the blindfold.




Matt overhears the thugs talking and discovers that it's the Kingpin behind Nyla's kidnapping. He bursts into his office, rescues her, and exchanges some words with Kindpin, vowing that this is the last time he's meddled with his life.



Issue #290 is one long fight between Daredevil and Bullseye, and as far as I'm concerned it's their definitive battle. It starts with Daredevil finding Bullseye's costume and putting it on. If the villain is pretending to be the hero, the hero is going to play the villain:





You can really tell Matt is loving this. He smiles throughout most of the fight.




So they keep fighting. My favourite part, though, is the page below; you can't tell who's speaking anymore, it can be either of them.




Matt beats him and regains his costume and cleans up his reputation in Hell's Kitchen. Then he pays a visit to Foggy Nelson and they embrace, estranged friends who hadn't seen each other in years finally making peace, and bringing closure to Frank Miller's Born Again arc.

How I loved this storyline!

Comments

[rainspirit]

That is such a perfect, crazy ending. Holy crap.

[filkertom]

Okay, that whole thing is excellent. Don't suppose it's collected, so it can go right next to my copy of Born Again...?

[silverhammerman]

Oh man, that fight scene reminds me how much I love love love Daredevil's origin story. It's probably one of the few superhero origin stories that I think is a good story just in it's own right. Seeing Matt relive it is awesome, and I mean that in the in the dictionary sense.
And that last fight between Matt and Bullseye is great, very crazy and so so perfect. I love when writers really go all in with making Bullseye come off as genuinely unbalanced and not just an evil bastard. Fantastic.
I usually don't care to go out of my way to dig up old comic runs, but I might be forced to make an exception for this.

[fungo_squiggly]

That Daredevil/Bullseye fight really is amazing. Bullseye's craziness (and Matt's own issues) makes it extra funny, yet also kind of sad, especially towards the end.

I wonder if the later, even goofier "Herc"Thor/"Thor"Hercules fight owed a debt to this?

In any case, it's a fun, loopy dynamic that I wouldn't mind seeing more of.

I'd never seen the end of Noceni's run before..

[steverodgers5]

I unfortunately lost touch with her run some at some point when Matt was traveling round the country. So I'm very glad to see this now. Thanks for posting it! As it answers a lot of things I'd been wondering about.

Oh and I agree about Nocenti's time on the title..

[steverodgers5]

It was a very underrated run. Still think John Romita, Jr did his best work on it as well.