DAREDEVIL #111Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Clay Mann
What the hell am I supposed to think of Daredevil now? This is not how a hero should act. That's not even how any decent human being should act! What am I talking about exactly? Well, our "hero", Matt Murdock, cheats on his wife. While that's not so crazy an act these days, let's add a little context, shall we?
Matt's wife is currently in a mental institute. It's basically Matt's fault she's in there after she was caught in the crossfire with Mr Fear from a few issues ago. Matt loves her so much, he was pretty brutal towards any and every villain he came in contact with along the way to finally confronting Mr Fear and his life was pretty much in the crapper with how broken up over his wife's current state he was. Everything that was said in dialogue or narration pointed towards Matt loving his wife more than anything on Earth and feeling nothing but guilt over the fact he had caused her so much pain.
Cut to a few issues later and he's shacking up with Dakota and wondering why he doesn't even feel guilty about cheating on his wife! I can see cheating on people or the whole "falling out of love" angle for getting a hero out of a marriage, but you can't go from the love of my life to 'let's have sex with my investigative reporter friend' in the span of four issues with no build up or even remorse over what he's done.
It's so ridiculous that I honestly dislike the character of Matt Murdock and don't even know if I want to keep reading about this person after having read this issue.
All of this overshadows the introduction of the new Lady Bullseye character, who's only relation to Bullseye is that she saw him kill her slave trading captors when she was a teenager. I gathered she was so enthralled with the 'art of killing' that Bullseye displayed that she took his name. It's not explained where she was trained or how she learned any of her techniques, but she has ties to The Hand and they are making a power play against many of their old enemies, including Iron Fist, Stick (I think that's the "old man" they referred to), Black Tarantula and Wolverine. Daredevil was left off the list for some reason, though.
Despite being off the list and told not to antagonize Daredevil, Lady Bullseye still went out of her way, out of some loyalty to Bullseye, I believe, to cause some trouble for Daredevil by "persuading" the surviving thug of a group she killed to report to the news and police that Daredevil killed his friends, resulting in the headlines all reading Daredevil is a killer at the end of the issue.
However, even a rather solid premise and introduction of this new character, whom I had doubts about, and a guest appearance by Iron Fist could not make up for the extreme disappointment in the Matt Murdock character I have after reading this ludicrous bit of womanizing on his part and I just can't imagine what possessed Brubaker to have him act like this in regards to his wife and the throwing away of his marriage. If they didn't like her, just kill her or divorce them and move on. Don't drag her through the mud, lock her in an institute and then have Matt forget about her and start screwing the first woman he comes in contact with without an ounce of regret, even saying it feels so right being with Dakota.
Verdict - Avoid It. On principle, I can't recommend an otherwise decent comic book. This, to me, is the equivilent of the formerly happily married Spider-Man simply waking up one day and going off to have sex with Black Cat and not caring about MJ anymore.
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