"The End" Week: Daredevil #18!

A couple months back, we looked at Ron Marz's last issue of Silver Surfer, and thought that sometimes when a writer leaves a book, they try to put some of the toys back in the box, a bit of a reset for the next writer. Other writers take the opposite approach, and maybe leave the next guy to fend for himself! From 2015, Daredevil #18, written by Mark Waid, art by Chris Samnee.

If you hadn't been reading Daredevil for a while, this would've been a tough issue to come into cold: Matt Murdock had gone completely public with his secret identity, very much owning the identity of Daredevil, now usually maskless in a red suit. With his girlfriend, lawyer Kirsten McDuffie, and long-time partner Foggy Nelson (who had to fake his own death, and was trying to beat cancer for good measure) Matt had moved to San Francisco and start a new practice. On top of that, this issue is the conclusion of several issues worth of plots, involving the Owl, the Kingpin, the Shroud, and Ikari. With Kirsten, Foggy, and former Spider-Woman Julia Carpenter held hostage by the Kingpin, Matt has to face Ikari, but the ninja is killed by the Shroud, who is more psycho here than I recalled. Gambling, Matt disguises himself as Ikari, and tells the Kingpin Daredevil died crying like a baby...

A fairly bloody fight follows, and the Kingpin is brought down, though he ominously warns Matt "You shouldn't have signed it." I don't know if that's a problem, since Marvel had to roll Daredevil's book back to resembling the Netflix version. When the new series started, Matt was back in New York City, with a secret identity again; it would be a few issues before new writer Charles Soule would reveal how that rabbit was put back in the hat. That doesn't take away from this issue, which is rock solid, and a rare happy ending for Matt. Waid and Samnee would go on do a new Black Widow series, I might have the last issue of that around here too.