Daredevil #24

[arbre_rieur]

"And I also didn’t want to do the 800th “Oh he has cancer in a superhero book! What will the superhero do? Surely there’s a way to fix it! Oh wait, you can’t beat cancer.” I don’t want to do that kind of story. You know, the story where Daredevil walks around the Marvel Universe for an issue trying to get people to cure cancer for him and being told, “We can go to the Negative Zone, Daredevil, but we can’t cure cancer.” So that’s the first trap you have to avoid when doing that kind of story." -- Mark Waid

The issue starts off with our closest look yet at the mysterious mastermind who's been behind all of Matt Murdock's latest woes:



The reason Matt hasn't followed any leads is that he's been keeping Foggy company at the hospital.

Comments

[filthysize]

I find that first scan hysterical.

"Foolish Murdock... He'll play right into my hands, with no choice but to walk into my trap... and into his doom."

2 DAYS LATER

"Hmmm... He's a bit slower than expected. Maybe my clues were too ingenious."

ONE WEEK LATER

"Geez, more like Late-Devil, amirite? What is up with this guy?"

TWO WEEKS LATER

"Where. The. Hell -- What is going on?! SERIOUSLY? GOD!!!"

[rainspirit]

I'd kind of want to see Dirk Anger levels of self-agony at that point. Building handguns four times their size that twirl back so he could shoot himself with it. :D

[porcupine_advocate]

Procrastination is contagious:

[cainofdreaming]

What the? Is that a giant cocktail shaker?

[mrstatham]

Oh shit - the villain is TOM CRUISE.

[captainbellman]

That opening quote is a nicely subtle dig at...well...everything that we've been saying is stupid about Spider-Man for the past 4 years or so. I like it.

[dcbanacek]

I was thinking more "The Death of Captain Marvel" myself. Although, doesn't Wakanda have the cure for cancer but won't let anyone else use it? (not sure if anyone outside of that country knows they have it for that matter)

[skemono]

Although, doesn't Wakanda have the cure for cancer but won't let anyone else use it?

Yup.

[blunderbuss]

I may be extremely biased, but holding back the cure for cancer is EVIL. FUCKING EVIL. Like, 'too bad Namor didn't sink the entire country while he was at it' kinda of evil.

[mastermahan]

Well, I doubt your average Wakandan civilian had any say in the matter, but yes, it's an utterly monstrous thing to do. There's a reason Hudlin got so much flak.

[cainofdreaming]

Wakanda and Norman Osborn. Maybe the US government now too, if Osborn left any kind of documentation.

[damar148]

So DD's identity is known? It's rather confusing and for a moment I thought 'Matt, you're blowing your cover' at the rock wall.

[rainspirit]

It's an open secret at this point. Matt Murdock has publicly disputed the claims but the public is all, "C'mon, we totally fucking know you're Daredevil, okay." And the girlfriend has been teasing him with it at every possible opportunity.

[turtlefu]

Right, that's why she throws the water bottle at him. Little detail I didn't notice before!

[cyberghostface]

One thing I like is that none of the writers after Bendis have really disbanded with the status quo he set up. They're still dealing with the repercussions.

Meanwhile Spider-Man's identity was public for less than a year before Mephisto wiped the world's collective memory of it.

[protogarrett]

Red Batman.

[crazycomiccult.blogspot.com]

"Look it's Red Batman!" just might be my favorite line in any comic ever. Or at least that panel is up there with my favorite panels of all time

[cainofdreaming]

But where's Batman Blue?

[protogarrett]

Batman is always blue.

[namey]

Because his parents are... ah, nevermind.

[icon_uk]

Ah, but IS he?

[rainspirit]

Best response.

[halloweenjack]

0:34--that's Tony Stark, isn't it?

[thanekos]

Try the Red one.

[auggie18]

...why am I not reading this yet? I mean, honestly don't care that much about Daredevil, but the art is beautiful and the writing is awesome. Need to start picking this up.

[turtlefu]

Like Hawkeye and Iron Fist before it, these focused solo series really make me love characters I have never had any interest in before.

[pyynk]

Daredevil and Hawkguy are, imo, the two best books Marvel is putting out now. I can't recommend either enough.

[seisachtheia]

Yeah, same here. I keep hearing that it's pretty great, but I've been all "yeah, yeah, sure." But now I'm sold. Dammit. I'm pretty new to this whole comics thing, but I'm starting to think a drug habit would be cheaper.

[thatnickguy]

"I'm blind! No worries!"

Oh god, tears are rolling down my face from laughing so hard.

Also, speaking as someone who has rock climbed, I hate Matt for leaping around so easily like that.

[icon_uk]

Sort of reminds me of an episode of the much missed "Pelswick" cartoon, where the wheelchair bound title character cheerfully points out that he's the absolute best person to go on a school trip to the forest, because he's the one person they DON'T need to worry about being paralysed in an accident, since he already IS!

[q99]

Yea, that was an awesome line :D

[jlroberson]

I like what Waid said there. And it reminds me of something I recall from when I was much younger: The Death of Captain Marvel. Where they threw everyone even remotely connected to being a doctor into a room and duh, none of them could help.

One I remember was Thor, and wondering: okay, Don Blake is a doctor, but what the fuck is THOR doing there? Will he smite cancer with his hammer? And then there's Stephen Strange--a surgeon , not an oncologist.

And then it occurred to me: what do doctors do? They consult with other doctors. So surely one of these KNEW an oncologist and could have brought him there. But no, it has to be all members of the superhero club baffled at what to do about CM's nega-bands.

Which by the way, another thing: could he not have taken them off at least for a while?

But to this day I've always thought of it as a bullshit way to deal with the subject, so I find Waid's viewpoint here refreshing. His current run at Marvel has brought my opinion of him up many, many notches.

[coldfury]

I don't believe it was his Nega bands, was it? I thought it was radiation he picked up fighting a villain? The same guy who blew up Stamford in Civil War whose name escapes me... Nitro?

[jlroberson]

No, no. The nega bands were the reason they couldn't CURE him. According to Strange. Not what caused it, which is what you said--although it was in fact a gas that caused it, not radiation.

Leading to another question being begged: so, Dr. Strange, you're saying you have a cure for cancer that would work if not for that? THEN WHY DON'T YOU SHARE THAT WITH HUMANITY YOU JERK.

[coldfury]

I don't have a copy of the GN with me, but this is from Wikipedia:

Mar-Vell discovers that his past exposure to the "Compound 13" nerve gas[30] gave him cancer. Compounding the problem are Mar-Vell's nega-bands, which keep the cancer at bay but also cause it to resist all known forms of treatment, and lack of access to the Kree Empire's medical experts since the Kree consider Mar-Vell a traitor.

So... it's not that Dr Strange has a magic cure for cancer, it's just that the cures they DO have (ie radiation) don't work because of the Nega Bands.

Good memory though, I'd forgotten that whole plot point.

[halloweenjack]

The main problem with the logical, reality-based approach to the question is that most comic book scientists are presented as ridiculous polymaths, going way beyond superscience into super-engineering as well. Reed Richards not only invented his own rocket (heck, his own private space program, and, in some revisions, faster-than-light travel), but he also built a permanent, stable gateway to another dimension and cures for Ben Grimm's condition of varying permanency. Hank Pym similarly rewrote particle physics and developed an extremely advanced (and dangerous, and pernicious) artificial intelligence and pioneered new fields in entomology. Victor von Doom independently developed advanced robotics and time travel and is a literal technomage. And so on. The only one of them that is particularly close to oncology in their known work is probably Henry McCoy--because cancer is a sort of mutation--but these guys are usually shown as being a long weekend of cracking a few textbooks away from mastering any scientific discipline. Once, just once, I'd like Reed to say, "Sorry, not my field."

Not that any of them should have felt particularly defensive about Rick Jones' question because, you know, Galactus, and whomever else could threaten a body count that makes cancer look like the heartbreak of psoriasis. (As with that old Green Lantern story, where Hal's answer to the old man should have been, "Well, I saved his planet. You good with that?")

[silverhammerman]

I really really like that Hank Pym has become Matt's go-to scientific contact, because Hank's usually shown in relation to the other Avengers and it's nice to see him as a solitary character for once.

Any speculation on who the villain is? I've seen it pointed out that the photos make a bullseye pattern, which suggests.... Bullseye, though this kind of scheme seems different from his usual MO.