written by Charles Soule
drawn by Alec Morgan
colored by Matt Milla
Matt Murdock loses his bid to have the courts declare the testimony of masked vigilantes as admissible evidence, with the New York State Court of Appeals voting against him 4-3. His only recourse is now to elevate the case to the Federal Supreme Court on certiorari. Mortified, the District Attorney's office, for whom Matt works, keeps him on board but cuts off all support for his efforts to pursue this case. Matt needs to find co-counsel for his petition to the Supreme Court, and only one person comes to mind: Foggy Nelson. However, their relationship having been strained lately, it'll be an uphill battle for Matt, especially since Tombstone, still acting on the orders of Wilson Fisk attacks Matt for the second time in as many issues.
The issue opens with a newspaper headline reading that Matt has lost in the Court of Appeals. Soule doesn't waste any time getting to the meat of the story, i.e. Matt will need Foggy's help but for some reason this issue did not quite ring true with me. For one thing, the meeting-in-a-bar-only-to-be-attacked-by-Tombstone shtick virtually replicates what happened last issue, only this time without She-Hulk nearly pounding Tombstone into pulp. It was probably deliberate on Soule's part, but it felt no less redundant, and this time the three or four pages of Matt fighting Tombstone really feel like a "token action sequence" to break the monotony of the talking heads.
The thing is, here, I LIKED the back and forth between Matt and Foggy. Things have been tense between them since this title took its new direction, and when it was explained that this was because after the Purple Man's kids made everyone forget Matt's secret identity, he had revealed himself to Foggy and Foggy alone, I thought that this had a lot of story potential. The action sequence could easily have been swapped out for more dialogue between Matt and Foggy and the story would have had no less impact.
For me the opening dialogue between Matt and his boss about the loss, the dialogue between Kingpin and his victorious lawyer about Matt's next move, and ultimately Matt's dialogue with Foggy are more than enough to drive the issue forward. The fight scene really feels tacked on.
Also, Alec Morgan's art has gone from just about competent to downright bad, especially when compared to the art of the next two books I will review, one of which was also written by Soule.
As an aside, I have to say I'm not happy about the fact this story has Foggy drinking beer and chowing down on hotdogs six nights a week so soon after he recovered from cancer, which was a major plot point near the end of Mark Waid's run, and which was even directly referenced by Soule in his flashback story. As someone who's seen cancer ravage family members I know that it can be a really life-changing experience, and to have a character revert to old habits as if nothing happened just a few years ago seems somehow disrespectful to what was clearly an attempt by Waid to pay some form of homage to cancer survivors.
This does not bode well for the conclusion of this arc, but I remain cautiously optimistic just the same.
6.5/10
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