Nicely Tying Up Loose Ends: A Review of Devil's Reign

 written by Chip Zdarsky

drawn by Marco Checchetto

colored by Marcio Menyz

Anyone who has read this blog for the last four years or so knows how little love I have for Chip Zdarsky's run on Daredevil, which kicked off in 2018 with Marco Checchetto on art duties, in which he has had Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil, do some pretty crazy things like commit manslaughter, get into a fistfight with a police officer, sleep with a mobster's wife, all things that, if I'm perfectly frank, I feel Matt Murdock would never do, no matter how screwed up he is. A lot of these "shockers" bothered me because it felt a lot like Zdarsky was basically writing a lot of these things for their shock value rather than any real narrative benefit. 

Now, the "Devil's Reign" miniseries, written by Zdarsky and drawn by Checchetto, actually goes a pretty long way towards making amends for his mischaracterization of Matt during his run on the book. In it, the long-running saga of Wilson Fisk serving as Mayor of New York City, which was first introduced by Zdarsky's writing predecessor Charles Soule, finally comes to a head. Heroes clash with villains, and Fisk attempts to weaponize the mind-control powers of Zebediah Killgrave, aka the Purple Man, in a way that has never been done before.  Long-running story threads, like the fate of Mike Murdock, a magical "clone" conjured up by the Asgardian Norn stones (also during Soule's tenure) and his relationship with Butch, Fisk's illegitimate son, are also tied up in pretty definitive fashion.  There's a nice mix of old and new in the proceedings, and of course, having a whole bunch of superheroes punching a whole bunch of supervillians never hurt things any.

I've enjoyed Marco Checchetto's art on this book, and while I still preferred his older work on Daredevil with Mark Waid, which I felt had cleaner linework, he definitely does this "event" justice, maintaining a consistent standard of quality all throughout, and notably finishing the entire story both more or less time and without any other artist alternating with him, a rarity in comics nowadays.

The story threatens to bring about another Superhero Registration Act, also known as the legislation which brought about "Civil War," and its notably grim ending but without spoiling anything (at least not specifically) I can say I was really pleasantly surprised by the direction this story took. It's solidly-structured, clean storytelling, the kind I haven't seen too often in this era of multi-part epics and sprawling crossover events.  I know "Devil's Reign" has its own crossover elements that are mentioned every now and again in the main story, but it stands pretty well on its own as a piece of standalone narrative.

I also genuinely appreciate the fact that, even as Zdarsky opened a new chapter in Matt Murdock's life, he took the opportunity presented by this event to put a period on a lot of ongoing plot threads that, to be frank, had somewhat overstayed their welcome.  Even though he's still at the helm of the book for the series relaunch in a couple of months (along with Checchetto), I dare say I'm looking foward to his work this time.

9/10