written by Charles Soule
illustrated by Ron Garney
colored by Matt Milla
After two somewhat lackluster story arcs, one featuring Elektra and the other Spider-Man (the latter of which I could not even find the time to review), I was starting to lose hope for this particular writer, who had a promising, if not particularly remarkable opening arc, but with the story arc "Dark Art" I feel that Charles Soule has found his stride.
Matt is back to work at night court, while his sidekick/protege, Sam Chung a.k.a. Blindspot, who had his arm broken a while back by Elektra has just healed and is itching to hop around town. During one of his sorties, Blindspot actually finds an invitation to go to a Manhattan storehouse, where he finds a grisly sight; a dead man slumped against a large mural, which appears to have been painted in blood. Matt investigates, even if it mean shirking his duties yet again, which makes him even more unpopular with the night court lawyers, who already hate his guts because of how regularly he defeated them in his past life as a defense attorney. The painting consists of the blood of over 100 people.
In the second issue, things get heated up as the owner of the warehouse in which the blood mural was found decides to open up an exhibit for profit, much to the irritation of a highly influential politician, who has a personal interest in the matter as the blood of her missing niece is among those that went into the painting. Matt's boss, the district attorney, leans on him to find grounds to enjoin the grisly exhibit, sort of as punishment for Matt skipping out on his work to be Daredevil, and while it grates on Matt, he obliges. However, all that is rendered moot when the mysterious, still unknown artist of the mural posts a newer, even more gruesome oeuvre in another building. The chase for the artist is on, and Daredevil is on the case.
When I was a high school student many, many years ago, I read an article about how a particular filmmaker make a movie about murder taking place in an art gallery, which he chose as the milieu because the tranquility of an art gallery seemed like such an unlikely place to find death. Though I never saw the movie, I rather liked the concept, and I think Soule plays it out quite well here. This is a story that plays to his strengths, and makes good use of the slow-burn treatment he's using here.
I'm still not a fan of Ron Garney's scratchy, sketchy art, and I honestly find myself wondering why he needed four issues off from the title to prepare these issues, considering he isn't exactly a Jim Lee or Steve McNiven. I suppose he had some other problems unrelated to his work. It is nicely kinetic, though, and the style is a nice fit for the story, I'll give it that, but I still yearn for the days of Chris Samnee.
For the first time in months, I find myself on bated breath to see what happens next!
8.5/10 for both issues
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