Everyone but Bullseye’s locked down in Daredevil #32. Written by Chip Zdarsky, drawn by Mike Hawthorne, inked by Adriano Di Benedetto, colored by Marcio Menyz, and lettered by Clayton Cowles, Daredevil #32, part 2 of “Lockdown,” sees NYC forced inside by Bullseye’s killing spree, while Matt forces himself out of solitary – and into more trouble.
Anna Peppard: With the notable exception of the last page (which I will discuss in due course), I thought this issue had lots to love – there’s explosions, and introspection, and Spider-Man, and a brief check-in with Matt’s maskless face! (Oh, how I’ve missed seeing everything that exists above his chin.) What’s your mood this month, Justin?
Justin Partridge: I think I am into it! Like you said, a VERY introspective issue this month. One very focused on the mental states and shifting action plans of our leads. Also one that sort of reorients the cast of the book slightly! Or at the very least, one that provides us with a sizable check-ins with our Non-Daredevil cast members to get their plots simmering again. Very much a lot to love (and pick through) this month.
Forcing a Path
Anna: The issue opens eight days after the start of Bullseye’s indiscriminate killing spree, during which he’s taken the lives of 39 people. A television news reporter tells us the city is on total lockdown (hence the arc’s title), citizens advised to stay home with their curtains drawn; apparently, everyone knows Bullseye’s responsible, but no one, cop or superhero alike, has had any success locating him. Is every city-under-lockdown story from now until forever going to feel like a reference to the pandemic? Probably. This one definitely does.
Elektra spends the lockdown travelling through the deserted city to the site of Bullseye’s most recent kill – a food delivery guy working for a company that’s not quite DoorDash – then having a rooftop tet-a-tet with Spider-Man, before heading back to her condo for an important conversation with her young ward Alice, who’s returned after storming out in the previous issue. Alice’s phone alerts Elektra to a new Bullseye murder, which propels the current Daredevil into the evitable showdown with her old adversary. I have thoughts about what happens with Elektra and Bullseye here, but I’m going to save those for the end of the column.
For now: the scene with Alice and Elektra was a bit heavy-handed, but it worked for me, accomplishing a lot with a little. I like that Alice showed agency by declaring she doesn’t want to “hit people with sticks,” even though she still supports Elektra’s mission of justice. Alice being the only person in all of New York who noticed there wasn’t enough time for Bullyeye to travel on foot from the location of one killing to the next is convenient, at best; surely, this is something lowly human cops could figure out, let alone any of NYC’s many super-geniuses? But I’ll allow it, for the sake of the story, and because it connects to my favorite line of the issue, which is Elektra saying, “I’m coming to realize that trying to force a path… may not be the right way.” It’s not a groundbreaking line, but it’s solid, and distills a lot of the journey Elektra’s been on since she took up the mantle of Daredevil. As I’ve discussed in previous columns – Elektra is tentatively exploring possibilities of community this version of Matt Murdock has steadfastly refused.
In contrast, Spidey’s convo with Elektra didn’t really work for me. In the real world, I do not support capital punishment. But here, in this world, the deeply appalling nature of Bullysye’s murders, plus the fact he’s already died and been resurrected at least once, and seems to possess some type of extra-dangerous magic-y powers these days, makes this a pretty clear instance where not too many people would blame Elektra for taking him down permanently. I’m assuming Spidey’s line about “is what you’re going to do to Bullseye the same thing Daredevil would do” is meant to be double-edged, referencing either/both DD’s typical renunciation of lethal force or the fact he’s currently in prison for murder. But it landed strangely, since Matt’s often crossed the line where Bullseye is concerned. Way back in Daredevil #169 (1981), he drops Bullseye from a power line and paralyzes him, and in Shadowland #1 (2010), a demonically possessed DD dislocates both of Lester’s shoulders before stabbing him through the heart. Basically: killing or brutally injuring Bullyeye is what Daredevil would do. So… I’m not sure where the conflict is? While Spidey may not know about the paralysis thing, he definitely knows about the Shadowland thing. But I digress.
How did you feel about Elektra’s journey in this issue, Justin?
Justin: I very much agree with you on how each of them works in kind. I will also agree that the Spidey conversation is less successful than the one with Alice, but I do so appreciate that both of them are very much geared toward the consequences and fallout that comes with a Daredevil/Bullseye confrontation.
Starting with Alice though, I do enjoy, like you do, that we are getting some more personal autonomy and pushback against being a sidekick from Alice. Better still that Elektra knows now that she was trying to force her into something for her own sake. It’s a small moment in the grand scheme of this issue, but it was one I was happy to see Chip and company working through.
The Spidey scene is…less effective, but again, I am REALLY enjoying seeing how Elektra’s Daredevil is interacting with the larger superhero community. The “Lockdown” aspects of this section do make it ring a little tinny though. Also like you, I think just seeing the word “lockdown” or seeing a city mostly empty is going to cause me to bristle a bit forever. But I think the time jump and the smallish bits of plot we get from the newscasters DO do a lot to sell the threat of Bullseye and the building tension that is surely pumping through the streets now.
But I think this conversation with Spidey kind of calls into question just HOW MUCH Chip has been thinking about how Elektra would tackle being Daredevil, just in the day-to-day. We have gotten a lot of touches of it since she took up the mask, but putting Bullseye back into the mix just seems to make her revert back to “her old self.” Which the issue even makes explicit later on in the…”explosive” final page. I was hoping to maybe get a new angle on Bullseye, which the previous issues and this final page do hint at slightly.
I dunno, it just feels like a step backward to me. Especially amid all the steps FORWARD we get with Fisk, Mary, Mike, and Fisk Jr. this month.
Anna: Yeah, that’s fair. Superhero comics always read so differently as once-a-month installments versus trade-sized chunks. I wonder if some of the in-between-ness of the past couple of issues will read better or worse in retrospect; impossible to know until we have a better sense of the pay-off.
Matt’s Feeling Lucky (for a while)
Anna: Meanwhile, Matt’s still in prison, but now he’s in solitary confinement, a consequence of taking it straight to the warden in the last issue. But of course, this is just what Matt wants – an excuse to do it all himself. Which he does. When four guards arrive to kill him, he takes them out with aplomb, so in his bag he’s got time for style points, pulling an “are you feeling lucky, punk?” on one of the guards, albeit with a less pithy catchphrase. (I quite like the b-movie bluntness of Matt telling the guard, “I destroy super villains. You’re all just regular villains.” But I wouldn’t call it iconic.) After calmly walking out of solitary with a gun in one hand and a billy club in the other, Matt makes his way to a basement lab, where he dispatches more guards, then confronts some science-types who frantically try to “dump the stuff.” Matt tries to stop them, but something or other gets overloaded, and everything goes kaboom (technically, “SKRKOOM”). Did anyone (or anything) survive the explosion? That’s a next issue problem!
First of all, I would like to formally congratulate the return of Matt’s hair, which I don’t think we’ve seen for a while? Thankfully, his luscious locks look none the worse for being trapped under a gross mask for who-knows-how-long. And Matt has a beard now! I don’t go in much for beards personally, but I’m sure there will be people out there who are excited about this important piece of character development.
I have zero idea what’s going on with the experiments in the prison basement. I am, however, confident we won’t get to enjoy Matt’s badassery for long. He hasn’t gone full Rorschach; he’s still subduing people instead of killing them. But his direct approach will, undoubtedly, backfire. (Or maybe it already did, depending on the aftermath of that explosion.)
What do you make of DD’s new styles, Justin?
Justin: I think I am generally hotter on Mike Hawthorne’s pencils than most of our peers, BUT YEAH! This whole sequence is total candy to me.
For a bit now we have gotten teases of the nefarious dealings of the warden and how it was chewing up the general prison population. And for all the “grand scheming” and character moments we have gotten on the outside, it was nice to see the title just doing straight up, bone crunching action this round. With a liberal side of Hot Matt Murdock on the side.
I will admit that Daredevil’s turn into being about “hallway fights” nowadays does somewhat annoy me. As we have discussed at length now, Daredevil can be about a ton of stuff. The action is a nice sizzle to the plot steak, but since the Netflix show, a lot of comic takes on Matt have been largely over-focused on how much ass Matt can kick in a confined space.
NOW, this one is actually a good example of how a creative team can balance character moments with burly action. Chip and his art teams so far have really been good about that and this is another well-staged example. There’s a problem and Matt needs to fix it and the only way he can do that is by barreling through hell with whatever he can get his hands on.
I think I may be sounding too grumpy this month. It was a good sequence! This whole issue just reads a little regressive to me for some reason. Like instead of trying to do it’s own thing like it has been, it’s just trying to tick some “classic Daredevil” boxes that I’m not sure it needs to be concerning itself with much anymore.
Anna: I do, in general, prefer Matt as more of an acrobatic character than a guy who punches and kicks people in hallways. But I chose to read this as more of a reference to Ed Brubacker and Michael’s Lark’s take on DD in prison, beginning in Daredevil vol. 2 #82 (2006). I think part of the reason I enjoyed that storyline so much when it came out was because it was so unlike anything we’d seen before with Matt, specifically because it forced him into a confined space and made him reckon with real-ish consequences, with the added complication that, in that instance, he was also ostensibly trying to preserve his secret identity. The situation was very ripe for character-building drama, and I ate up every page of it.
Then again – how much I love that older prison storyline is part of the reason I haven’t enjoyed the current one as much as I’d like to. So I guess, ultimately – I’m agreeing about the retread, even though this particular retread is well done.
New Beginnings, and Sour Endings
Anna: As usual, the book’s supporting cast is also busy supporting the plot and each other. In between the Elektra and Matt sections, we touch base with Fisk and Mary, then Butch, Hammerhead, and Mike. The Fisk and Mary scene is mostly about the development of their more-than-professional relationship. Mary tries to go after Bullseye. Fisk tries to make her stay. But Mary makes him ask her to stay, saying, “we aren’t doing this again. Trying to possess each other.” I still dislike this relationship, which continues to do more for Fisk than for Mary. But I’ll reserve further judgement for now.
The scene with Butch, Hammerhead, and Mike strikes me as more immediately important. Hammerhead is planning to betray Butch to Izzy Libris, yet this betrayal is actually orchestrated by Butch and Mike, who have been conspiring to seize power by turning the crimebosses against each other. Butch effortlessly, brutally, and gleefully takes down Hammerhead, apparently gouging out one of his eyes with his thumb as punishment. The interesting part is Mike’s reaction – he’s visibly appalled by Butch’s power and violence, perhaps forecasting an eventual turn against the usurper he wished into being?
What did you make of this month’s sub-plotting, Justin?
Justin: NOW THIS STUFF, I am WAY, WAY into.
Like you so smartly said above, a lot of the heavy lifting in this title has been borne by the supporting cast. This issue in particular is a pretty bold example of it too. While in the early arcs Detective Cole North and the Libris family were handily supporting the narrative back end, now we have Mike and Butch moving confidently into that position.
AND IT’S SO GOOD! We complained slightly in the last column that we hadn’t gotten much headway in terms of Mike, but man alive, did this one deliver. And I also love the implication that Mike may be now realizing that he’s biting off far more than he can chew here. That he was unaware of the breadth of Butch’s savagery and didn’t quite know how far he was willing to go to carry out their plans. Now he does and I don’t think he knows quite what to do with that information. I really hope we get some more of that in the next issue.
I also hope we get some more of the budding sweetness between Mary and Fisk. I truly loved her, basically forcing him backward into having a human moment with her. THAT, I think, is the stuff this arc should be focusing on. We already have a pretty well-stocked cast, we need to be exploring more how they are living with one another in these new status quos.
Anna: Finally, we should talk about the conclusion – specifically, the final page splash, in which Bullseye appears to become multiple Bullseyes, one of whom stabs a shocked, helpless Elektra through the back with a sword. So, first I just gotta sighhhhhhhh…..
Okay, I’m back. I don’t know what’s going on with the multiple Bullseyes; I’m assuming we’ll learn more next issue, though whatever it is likely explains how he’s seemingly been able to be in multiple places at once. My sigh wasn’t for that – it was for Elektra getting stabbed. This is, of course, a reference to an iconic scene from Daredevil #181 (1981), written and drawn by Frank Miller, in which Elektra and Bullseye engage in an epic duel that ends with Bullseye phallically impaling Elektra with her own sai. This scene has been referenced many, many times over the years, with both Elektra and other characters in Matt Murdock’s life, most often other women he’s been romantically involved with; his longtime paramour Karen Page was similarly impaled by Bullseye in Kevin Smith and Joe Quesada’s Daredevil Vol. 2 #5 (1999). Based on how often it’s referenced, Elektra getting impaled by Bullseye is probably her most famous comic book moment. If that depresses you, it should, because it sucks.
In fairness to the original Frank Miller comic – it made sense with the story being told there, which was about Elektra’s obsession with conquering her gendered trauma by making herself impenetrable. Don’t get me wrong – it was still deeply problematic, built on gross gender tropes. But there was, at least, a logic to the way Miller chose to have Elektra die.
The constant references to the scene bother me more than the original. Pro tip: when you reference a historically gross scene, and you do so uncritically, for no other reason than to point at it and elicit nods of recognition, it doesn’t make the scene less gross. If anything, it makes it grosser. In this case, it feels a lot like replicating 40-year-old sexism while demonstrating either apathy or ignorance about why the scene was gross the first time. Plus, Elektra isn’t the person she was in 1981; she’s come a long way from “Daredevil’s femme fatale ninja girlfriend with daddy issues and a chip on her shoulder.” Uncritically referencing the Miller scene regresses her back to that time, and she obviously deserves better.
I’m sure there will be some degree of subversion in the next issue; I’m pretty confident Elektra isn’t dead, and will turn the tables on Bullseye. (Maybe it’s some type of psychic illusion?) Which is why I’m less offended by this page than I am giving it a big ol’ sigh. At the very least – I expect more thoughtfulness from a book whose characterization of Elektra I’ve generally praised. Elektra’s done so many more things in the past four decades besides getting impaled by Bullseye. Move on already, and build new iconic moments. It’s a disappointingly sour ending for an otherwise enjoyable issue.
Justin: Oh, absolutely, and I think this really feeds heavily into how regressive this issue feels overall.
We have now seen this panel, or at least some riff on this panel, so many freaking times now. I am over it. Even as a Daredevil person, I am over it.
I think the “multiple Bullseyes” thing is something I am more interested in exploring. Again, I keep thinking sometime we are going to get some kinda new angle on Bullseye and maybe this is the start of that.
I just don’t understand why we first have to see him stabbing Elektra AGAIN in order to get there. A DISAPPOINTMENT, for sure, but not one that is going to make me throw up my hands with the title just yet. I like talking to Doctor Anna far too much for that. I just…wanna change the record at this point on these open Miller riffs. We, as a society, have evolved beyond Frank Miller now. We can leave that stuff in the past where it belongs, I think, and we would get better books.
Anna: Amen to that.
Marvelous Musings
- I’m not against playing up the sexual component of Lester’s obsession with Daredevil, but his excitement about killing Elektra while she’s dressed as Daredevil because it will be “like role-play murder!” wasn’t as interesting as it might have been. Bullseye’s desire to be/have Daredevil has been handled better elsewhere.
- Hawthorne remains a worthy enough fill-in for Checchetto, but the latter’s absence is keenly felt during any scenes featuring Elektra as Daredevil; Elektra’s DD costume looks a bit too weightly and busy when anyone but Checchetto draws it.
- I (Anna) *may* have already mentioned this but – boy, was I happy to see Matt’s face. The perpetual orange jumpsuit and mask are obviously narratively necessary but have been a bit of a visual slog for me.
- Daredevil carrying a gun is always important, and always jarring. This is true of most superheroes, but in DD’s hands, given his powers, guns are especially scary, because we’re not entirely sure whether he’d be super-accurate or less-than-accurate.
- Related to DD with a gun: the roulette/Dirty Harry reference calls back, once again, to Miller’s Daredevil run, including the iconic cover of #184 (1982), in which DD points a gun at the reader, but especially #191 (1983), in which DD plays Russian roulette with Bullseye after paralyzing him. Again – kinda seems like Elektra is way *less* brutal with Bullseye than DD’s historically been?
- Love love love that Elektra has somehow combined both the sai and billy clubs into a sort of billy sai. That’s the kind of fun homebrew D&D weapon stuff we like to see around here.
Anna Peppard
Anna is a PhD-haver who writes and talks a lot about representations of gender and sexuality in pop culture, for academic books and journals and places like Shelfdust, The Middle Spaces, and The Walrus. She’s the editor of the award-winning anthology Supersex: Sexuality, Fantasy, and the Superhero and co-hosts the podcasts Three Panel Contrast and Oh Gosh, Oh Golly, Oh Wow!
