Family Ties: A Review of Daredevil #608

written by Charles Soule
drawn and colored by Phil Noto

Matt Murdock aka Daredevil finds himself facing an unusual problem, even for him: having allied himself with Frank McGee in his quest to take down Wilson Fisk, who, he has learned, apparently cheated during the elections that made him Mayor of New York City, he now finds himself chasing down a realized version of a one-time figment of his imagination, Mike Murdock, a fake "twin brother" identity he had created years ago, who has been given life by the powers of one of McGee's associates, an Inhuman named Reader who can actually create things simply by reading them. That same erstwhile figment holds Matt's very real one-time law partner Foggy Nelson hostage, and leaves Matt with the uncomfortable decision of how to deal with a man who truly believes himself to be "real." It is within Reader's power to erase was has been created, but can Matt bring himself to wipe this strange creature out of existence? The answer could prove pivotal to Matt's mission.

As I've long suspected, this story arc is leading up to something very big for this character, quite possibly a relaunch to coincide (more or less) with the 20th anniversary of the Marvel Knights line of comic books which revitalized a flagging Marvel Comics back in 1998 and which, quite arguably, helped lay the creative groundwork for what eventually became the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Daredevil was the crown jewel of that line, back in the day, and so it is fitting that after months of just letting Soule do his own thing on this book, for better or worse, Marvel are finally building up the hype train for this latest story, and Soule is definitely delivering the goods here, especially with this chapter that may not be heavy on action, but which promises to have a pretty big impact on things to come.

While Soule brought DD back to his noir setting with Ron Garney, it's really interesting to see him working with a decidedly more colorful artist in Phil Noto, whose work on the last three issues has been consistently good, and who, apparently, is going to see this all the way through. I have to say, I much prefer Noto's renderings nowadays to his work back on the ill-fated Black Widow title he worked on with disgraced writer Nathan Edmonson. I'm glad Soule's brought him on board, because artistic consistency has been one of the recurring problems of this book over Soule's three-year run.

Having Daredevil face off against Kingpin is so old-hat for this character by now that it can be a real challenge to introduce new elements to keep such stories fresh, and to his credit, Soule has done exactly that. He already upped the ante considerably by planting Fisk in City Hall, but now he's added even more spice to the mix, and it should be very, very interesting to see how this all plays out in four issues' time. If this is Soule's swansong on the book, I have to say he's really pulling out all the stops for this one. This final story may be the one to get people to mention him alongside the likes of Frank Miller, Brian Bendis and Mark Waid.


8/10