Destined to be Undone: A Review of Daredevil #11

 written by Chip Zdarsky

drawn by Rafael de la Torre

colored by Matt Wilson

As an on-again, off-again reader of Daredevil since the 1990s, one unfortunate trend I've noticed about the character's status quo is how prone it tends to be to resetting. I know that's arguably the case for a lot of Marvel characters, but Daredevil in particular seems especially prone to reinvention.  The guy's been killed, possessed by the Hand, outed to the public, had his secret identity "reconcealed," been happy, been sad, and been subjected to the kind of editorial torment that probably only Spider-Man or Wolverine could rival.

I write this not really to complain but to kind of sigh in resignation at the thought that, yet again, we are probably headed for another hard reset of the character as Chip Zdarsky's run comes to an end in a couple of issues.

With Matt's war against the Hand having basically taken everything from him, he makes one last gambit against the Stromwyn siblings, his current foes and the folks behind the Hand, to get back everything that he cares about and believes in.  After that, he declares that he's basically done...with living.

It's a competently put-together issue, with Marco Checchetto taking yet another break, presumably because he'll be drawing the climactic battle with Elektra next issue, but I really can't help but feel how inconsequential it is because there are very few more obvious ways to declare that a status quo is destined for a reset than to declare the intent to kill the main character, which is what Zdarsky and Marvel have been doing for a while now.  

So basically, none of this really matters, which is kind of a shame because Zdarsky had something really interesting going with his commentary on how the penal system doesn't really reform criminals.  It was the kind of advocacy that could have helped energize the book more than some hackneyed, ultimate-good-vs-evil battle storyline.  

Marvel is still keeping a lid on who's replacing Zdarsky or what the inevitable new status quo will look like which doesn't really inspire confidence because usually we know months in advance who's taking over a book once a creative team ends its run. Given that Marvel has a pretty high profile Disney+ show in the pipeline for the character I hope they have a pretty good team lined up for him.

6.5/10