So This is How Daredevil Dies: A Review of Daredevil #612

written by Charles Soule
drawn by Phil Noto

This is the issue that's been hyped considerably for the last several months. Daredevil kicks his war against the Kingpin, the mayor of New York, into high gear, and into the court, where Matt is king.

At the end of the day, though, the entire story arc is called "the Death of Daredevil" and in that respect, this issue delivers, though I dare not go into how.

Suffice it to say, though, that ordinarily, I would utterly despise the story device that Soule employs in this issue and yet, for some reason, thanks to the wild ride that he and Phil Noto have taken me on for the last several issues, it proves surprisingly easy to forgive him his self-indulgence. One of the reasons it goes down surprisingly easily is the fact that looking back, there were several clues in the storytelling that suggested that this was what was going on; sort of like how a moviegoer looks back at scenes from The Sixth Sense, and realizes that the twist in the end was hinted at several times throughout the movie.

Yeah, Soule's stunt feels a little cheap (and no, I still won't spoil what happens) but in honesty, I kind of found it fun, and that a different conclusion would have been a bit too, well, obvious. As much as I enjoyed Mark Waid's run, the manner in which he concluded it felt a little too neat for me, just as Bendis' run ended on a note that was way too dark for me to really appreciate. Soule, in ending his three-year run, leans a little more towards Bendis than he does towards Waid, but there's such a sense of mischief in what he does that, even though there's a part of me that's sincerely annoyed, another part of me genuinely had fun with this little twist. And Noto's picturesque art really makes everything easier to look at.

I'll end this review before I spoil things, but suffice it to say that, while this could have ended better, I was honestly expecting something a lot worse based on the marketing of this issue, and so I actually managed to enjoy myself, all things considered.


7.5/10