This was back when "creative financing" was a bribe, not just your bank's business as usual.

Grabbing a Daredevil issue out of the pile: "Well, as long as it's not a Christmas issue, those are too depressing..." Ah, I may have spoken too soon. From 1983, Daredevil #192, "Promises" Written by Alan Brennert, art by Klaus Janson.

Ben Urich is given a tip, about a former city editor that may have taken payoffs from the mob to spike certain stories. A shooter then tries to scare him off the story, but is stopped by Daredevil. (An amateur shooter: trying to snipe him from the Daily Bugle sign might seem cool, but what's your escape route?) Ben is also having problems at home: living in a terrible apartment is wearing on his wife, so they go looking for a house. It seems out of their price range ("$125,000 and 20% down" in 1983, so that house probably costs eighty-seven million now.) The seller says he'd been stuck on the property taxes and needed to sell, and maybe the bank could do some "creative financing."

Searching for clues (super illegally) DD finds proof the editor had been dirty, but he's happy to hear Ben might be getting a house...for about two seconds, before he realizes something he hopes isn't true. Ben confronts the editor, to give him a chance to make a statement, and the editor knows he's caught. He had spiked a story, to keep the mob off his son-in-law, and that's how it began. But, is Ben mad at him, because he himself had folded when the Kingpin sent Elektra to warn him off? Meanwhile, Daredevil works leads as DD and Matt: Ben's seller had been the brother of an old villain, the Masked Marauder, and probably just as dirty. Then, a chat with the Kingpin, who had arranged Ben's bank loan as future leverage against him. DD is furious the Kingpin would stoop so low, but Kingpin points out DD had recently used his wife Vanessa against him the same way, so...? All's fair, right?

DD gives Ben the news, but as the Kingpin surmised, does he have a choice? Can he let his wife down again? Ben wanders Coney Island afterwards, agonizing over it, when his wife Doris finds him: when DD came looking for Ben, she made him tell her what was up. She won't let him sell his soul, telling him he's kept every promise he ever made to her--"...every one that mattered."

Rough. But, on a lighter note, this issue does feature one of my favorite Bullpen Bulletins, with guest writer David Michelinie grousing about artists getting all the glory. How hard could it be?