Daredevil: Know Fear
This volume is the beginning of a Daredevil story arc written by Chip Zdarsky and illustrated by Marco Checchetto. It’s a bit of a “born again” theme, again, but it’s an odd sort of a launch because Daredevil is coming back to life from a near fatal collision (the “Death of Daredevil”) only to get the crap kicked out of him by nearly every bad guy he meets and then being argued into retirement by Spider-Man
The overall tenor is quite dark. Wilson Fisk is mayor of New York City in this timeline, and you know he’s up to no good. Daredevil himself is a diminished thing. He hasn’t fully recovered from his last near-death experience, has a few days’ worth of stubble growing under his mask, and has trouble even taking out street thugs, much less bona fide supervillains. Even the tough-as-nails Chicago cop Cole North can beat him up in a fist fight. On different occasions he has to be bailed out by superpals like Luke Cage and Iron Fist, or the Punisher (who often pops up at such moments). At one point he’s shot, but (you’ll never guess) it’s only in the shoulder, so he can keep going by taking pain meds. On top of all this he’s starting to wonder if he’s maybe doing more harm than good, especially when he accidentally kills a perp. This leads to lots of tortured reflections and flashbacks to his Catholic upbringing, and his eventual decision to get out of superheroing altogether. He’s not only the man without fear now, but a man without a real purpose in life.
When I say the tenor is dark this is what I mean. It’s Batman dark, and that’s the main feeling I got reading it. Matt Murdock is feeling some Bruce Wayne-level angst, and being the Red Knight is the cross his therapy bears. There isn’t a whole lot of story going on either, as it’s mostly character- and world-building. Which is normally not something I’d go in for, but I thought Zdarsky did a good job with it and I came away wanting to read more. You know DD just has to get back up, dust himself off, and start all over again.
Alex Good 
It sounds very religiousy for a superhero comic, and getting shot in the shoulder is not something you can carry on with but hey ho,that’s fiction for ya.
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A shoulder wound is a movie cliché for getting hit with a bullet but being able to soldier on. Of course, it doesn’t work like that. But they have to keep away from head shots and internal organs.
The religious angle with DD wasn’t there when he started out. I think it might have been Frank Miller who introduced it.
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When I think about it, Dwayne Wosisface (the rock person) is the exception to the shoulder rule as his particular deltoid and pectoralis major muscles would surely withstand your average bullet. It is possible he is a real secret superhero that no one has written a comic book about yet.
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Well sure, bullets just bounce off the Rock . . .
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I haven’t seen Black Adam which he had a hand in getting made, I reckon he’s hiding in plain sight!
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Yeah, I missed that one too. He lost a lot of weight apparently for his new wrasslin’ movie.
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You’d think he’d need to keep it for that. No good being a skinny wrestler.
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He should just let the Punisher clean the city up…
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The Punisher is an interesting character. He always seem to be floating around the city and pops up when you need him.
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And depending on his current storyline, he’s a either a gung-ho crime fighter, or a psychopath just killing random people
He feels like a good foil for Daredevil, but not this Daredevil. Punisher needs to kick his ass into gear.
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Yeah I’ll be getting into him sometime down the line. Never seen any of the movies or the TV show so I don’t know what they do with him.
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All these timelines and crossovers and with AI added, there will come a day when you can live and die and watch and read about only one character your entire life.
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And that one character will be infinite. Seems like something Borges might have thought of. Or maybe he did.
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Victor??? Great pianist.
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Jorge Luis, but close enough!
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😉
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He’s on my short story list! : -)
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That will keep you busy!
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Bliddy Chinese! 5,600 today already! 🤷🏼♀️
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Whew! Just checked and I had 1,000. Maybe they’re thinking of buying Gateshead?
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It’s mad, someone told me or commented somewhere that they’re data mining, though I am not sure what that’s all about. They must be datamining the whole world.
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It’s something to do with training our new AI overlords I think.
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