Matt faces the beast within while Elektra takes care of the the ones outside! It’s Daredevil #27 written by Chip Zdarsky, art by Marco Chechetto and Mike Hawthorne, inked by Marco Chechetto and Adriano Di Benedetto, colored by Marcio Menyz, and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Vishal Gullapalli: Justin! We’ve almost gotten through “King in Black”! Well, I have, since you’ve got like 2 more months of it, but at least this is the last goopy issue of Daredevil you’ll have to read… I think.
Justin Partridge: Well, you have to take it where you can get it, I suppose. But honestly?! This has been pretty solid stuff! I mean, I am fully glad that it is over now and we can get back to the actual Daredeviling for sure. But as far as tie-ins go, I didn’t hate this!
Not exactly the ringing endorsement you want, but that’s the ceiling you are working with when it comes to the Goop Event. Let’s crack on!
Crisis of Faith
VG: So, we first see Matt in some sort of dreamscape where he’s trying to fight Knull’s influence over him. And I’ll be honest – this entire sequence felt a little too hamfisted. Chip writes some good prose, and his dialogue for Knull works a lot better than Cates’ in my opinion. But after a lot of Matt’s self-flagellation, like in his trial, I’ve gotten a little tired of it. It’s a lot more refreshing when Matt decides to tell Knull to screw off, but even this feels rote and by-the-numbers rather than a big triumphant moment. How’d you feel about this portion, Justin?
JP: You absolutely nailed it. “By-the-Numbers”.
But again, that is kind of part and parcel of needless tie-in issues for a series that has no business having any real contact with an event. You also nailed that this is also something we have been dealing with before; Matt’s pious introspection about his heroics and his masked persona.
We get a BIT of novelty out of Matt being one of the more strenuously resistive hoo-mons that Knull has tried to Goop. This is placed squarely on his faith and Matt’s genuine belief in the divine and how that further influences his actions. There is a wonderful bit of dialogue from Chip here wherein Knull chides him for his grief when loved ones die, “not really” believing in the grace of Heaven and how that highlights his hypocrisy. But Matt fires back that he doesn’t believe just for the sake of believing. He believes because he thinks, deep down, that he’s unworthy of God’s love but that won’t ever stop him from striving for it anyway.
That’s Classic Catholic right there, True Believers.
But you are absolutely right, even though we do get some good stuff from Chip, the overall plot itself really doesn’t hold much water and just further displays the odd sudden turn into goopy event nonsense that has suddenly overtaken the title. I am trying to think of a genuinely GOOD tie-in, if only just to give a control comparison. I think the Elektra portion (which we will get into in a bit) is more emblematic of the kind of good, genuinely substantial tie-in storytelling that’s afforded with these, but this stuff with Matt is absolutely just a goopy reskin of the same kind of plot shoe leather we’ve been chewing on for a bit now.
VG: I think if I were to try and come up with a good tie-in to “King in Black”, discounting those spinoff one-shots that totally bypass the invasiveness of this event and exist solely to tie their books in without interrupting anything, the only ones I can think of are Ewing’s Guardians of the Galaxy and S.W.O.R.D. (both of which also have regular columns that are incredible!) And the common thread, beyond Al Ewing, who is unfairly good at writing tie-ins, is that both of these books move the plot forward aggressively and use the goo dragons as a faceless enemy so that less exposition is required. I’m also cheating by bringing up S.W.O.R.D. because as of now it’s got more issues tying into “King in Black” than not. BUT! What I’m getting at is that it feels like Chip was spinning his wheels here a bit, especially with the Matt portions of these tie-in issues. It’s not that it’s not good, it’s just that it’s not really doing anything new. I actually wish we got more of the prisoners, because they hit Matt with the real moral complexity and crises of faith. Knull’s just a big bad guy wearing black.
JP: ABSOLUTELY AGREE THAT S.W.O.R.D. (and our coverage here of said title) IS VERY GOOD and I don’t understand how and why Ewing is so good at tie-in issues. I should have considered that since like every single one of his books (EVEN Hulk!) have either started with a tie-in arc or spun OUT of an event. INsane, truly. I WILL SAY FURTHER, I do enjoy the bit at the end we get of the prisoners helping Matt free himself from Knull’s influence and how they have started to move closer to a sort of connection (supported by Matt beforehand making the choice to not use his new Goopified form to escape and kill the guards inside). THAT sort of stuff I responded to as it’s some nice internal development for Matt’s new normal as well as some nice in-character movements for Matt, but it’s still not much to elevate it. But WHAT do I know? I’m just a lowly Not Critic.
Out in the Streets
VG: While Matt’s doing his goop thing, we also get to see Elektra (as Daredevil) fight off a Knullified Typhoid Mary. And more than anything else, I really want to stress that Marco Checchetto is doing an incredible job on this book and I am constantly enamored by his work. The actual fight between Elektra and Mary is another kind of rote conflict that doesn’t really land for me, though. There’s a small bit where it’s implied that Knullified Mary can’t tell the difference between Matt and Elektra, which would be interesting if it went anywhere. But other than that, it’s really just a fight scene. A gorgeous one, but not much more.
JP: GOD IT’S SO GOOD, RIGHT?!
And another tremendous staging of the redesigns of Elektra as Daredevil and the Gooped Typhoid Mary. I WILL AGREE that there is a bit there toward the end where they just sort of look like blurs in concert with one another, but I think overall the sequence is pretty strong.
And I think beyond the visuals, it’s a really neat “making good” on the promise of seeing how Elektra would and could operate longer term as Daredevil! We talked last issue about how funny and cool it was that Elektra was suddenly thrown into some superhero bullshit and having to balance her deadly pragmatism with the calls to action and altruism that is required from being a masked hero. But now, here in this issue, we see her realizing that she can’t keep tackling problems “like Matt” because that’s only gonna get her and her charge killed.
Instead, she tackles it like SHE would, fighting the singularly focused Mary to a stalemate and tricking her into thinking she is “dead” by slowing her heart rate to a crawl. Thus releasing her from Mary’s relentless tracking, having finally “killed Daredevil” (FOR WILSON, interestingly enough, in a bit of throwaway dialogue), pivoting to the ongoing legions of Knull who ravage the world.
It’s a canny turn from Chip and Elektra, but one that I feel is really in character. MORE THAN THAT, it’s not just a cosmetic change; Elektra’s turn as Daredevil. You get this kinda stuff when heroes switch personas and costumes, usually it’s just the togs and they operate pretty much like they do anyway, just in someone else’s costume. BUT HERE, we actually get Elektra and Chip trying to take it beyond cosmetics and allowing her to come into her own version of the Guardian Devil both emotionally and operationally, which I do really respond to. I really hope this is a thread we get to pull on the later issues.
VG: I really have to say, I think the final page of Elektra understanding, just a little bit, why Matt does what he does is really really good. It basically made this entire story worth reading, at least for me. If I were to compare this to anything it’d be Damian’s realization that he failed Scarlet in Batman and Robin, the moment someone who was superheroing for all the wrong reasons finally understood why they were doing what they’re doing.
Now, I’m not one of those “Superheroes are aspirational” people because that’s just not how I vibe, but what I do find aspirational is bad people, people who would be villains or even just plain nobodies, understanding what it means to be good. Not the whole sacrificing yourself for others or “great responsibility” shtick, but that moment where you help someone, truly help someone, for the first time and you get it. I’m not nearly self-absorbed enough to say that me volunteering or whatever is in any way comparable to saving lives, but it’s a similar principle – the moment you realize you do this not for gratitude, not for reward, not even to feel good about yourself, but because you know someone has to. And if you don’t do it, it might never get done.
I don’t exactly subscribe to Garth Ennis’s morality, but there’s a line in Preacher that’s always stuck out to me and I feel like it connects here – when Custer’s dad tells him “You gotta be one of the good guys, because there’s way too many of the bad.” That’s what Elektra’s realized – Matt’s in jail, but someone needed to save that girl from the symbiotes. Someone needed to comfort her after she lost her mom. And without any expectation, without any selfish motive, Elektra understood that she was the one who had to do it, because that was the only way to ensure that it could be done. I love that. I really hope we see more of that.
JP: OH DIP YOU ARE RIGHT! It’s SO Damian! But you nailed it. I too am a big, big fan of “anti-hero makes good” or a longer term heel character making a face turn at the behest of another “higher profile” hero, so I am really into the emotional implications for a lot of this.
How to Tie a Tie-In
JP: But I think the real stumbling block for these issues particularly is they are still JUST tie-in issues, right?
I mean, that might sound a bit mean as I type it out, but you get what I’m saying here, right? That even though it comes to the table with a few neat visuals and a few better-than-normal emotional beats (which could then further branch out into other, stronger roots of character for the title), this is still the two issues that we had to waste on the freaking VENOM event.
I feel like Captain Kate right now, wishing Spider-Man had a better handle on his guys so it didn’t have to piddle around with slime when we had other bigger and better things to be dealing with. IS this too mean? Is this not mean enough? Am I even making my point? DOES ANYTHING EVEN MATTER ANYMORE?! (Don’t answer that last one, please.)
VG: I totally get what you’re saying and I pretty much agree. Honestly, I feel like if these last two issues were just one issue, and you got rid of most of the Matt/Knull stuff and maybe added one more scene of Matt getting berated by prisoners like he deserves, you would have a really satisfying Elektra one-shot. I think the timing with the event forced this to go longer than it needed to, and that really hurt it.
Up until this point Chip has made a habit of delivering in an issue what he promised in the last issue PLUS a little extra. But in this issue, he delivered exactly what he promised in #26… and that’s it. And for most writers, and for most books, that’d be great! I’d have no right to complain. But for a book that’s consistently been putting out 5-star quality issues, a 4-star issue just… doesn’t land right. I feel bad criticizing what would be a significant improvement for a LOT of books currently being published, but what’s a Not Critic for if not to pick apart things we want to love but instead simply like?
I’m really excited to get back into the thick of things next issue and get away from the goop, but I also really hope that Matt isn’t just on the run as a weird Venom Daredevil now. Please, just let him be in prison for a bit. We can all do with some stagnant Matt Murdock suffering, especially if it comes with a course of this new Elektra Daredevil stuff.
JP: Absolutely could have been just the one issue.
But you once again hammered it home, if this was any other book and it delivered these, it would be cause to take notice. But having to take this odd detour into someone else’s sandbox, as well-constructed and surprisingly emotional as it might have been, is just pulling focus away from what has been working about the book overall.
But hey! Hot Goopy Typhoid Mary, I guess?! God, I am so glad this is done and we can just get back to the actual book now. This was fun enough for a little while, but I am really needing that pure ginger angst we’ve come to depend on here back.
Marvelous Musings
- We didn’t mention it much, but we get another check-in with Fisk and Wesley too this month, still tucked away in their end-of-reality panic room until Wilson ventures out to find Mary. The end of the world is scary, but a loose Wilson Fisk might be scarier.
- Also interesting here is that the rest of the inmates don’t take the opportunity to unmask Matt while he is unconscious. I wonder if that was just a happy accident or just a thread that Chip doesn’t want to mess with just now.
- This is gonna read like absolute hell once this gets collected huh?
- Honestly, I’m curious how these issues will read in the inevitable KING IN BLACK OMNIBUS, will they be super disorienting for people who haven’t been reading this run?
- God, it’s GOTTA be, right? These issues expect a level of investment in the title as well as at least a passing knowledge of why Elektra is DD now and why Matt’s in jail (again). So I can’t imagine reading all this Venom nonsense to only then run smack into like a domestic drama would be anything less than real weird.
Vishal Gullapalli is highly opinionated and reads way too much.
