The volume starts with an anti-drug two-issue story co-starring a new character called The Punisher.
Miller does a fantastic job with this story, which was the last he would illustrate with Klaus Janson. Beginning with Daredevil # 185, Miller handled script and layout duties while Janson took care of pencils, inks and colors. While not Miller’s style exactly, having a single artist, and one as accomplished as Janson, on the complete visual package made the transition from Miller’s art less traumatic to a reader.
Daredevil #185 is a great Foggy Nelson story, heavily inspired by Will Eisner’s The Spirit and the writing of Elmore Leonard. It’s a crime story with Foggy as protagonist and narrator, Daredevil playing the role of “guardian devil”, making sure Foggy gets out of his scraps with Old Man Slaughter, Turk and The Kingpin in one piece.
The remaining stories conclude the Hand, that evil Ninja organizations subplot, as well as ending, in a rather ham-fisted way, the relationship between Matt Murdock and Heather Glenn. There is a final appearance by Elektra, one with a prologue and epilogue that hints of her resurrection, which would come years later in a beautiful graphic album by Miller and Lynn Varley.
That is the Resolution of the story.
Next - the Dénouement.
Daredevil #191 is a standalone story called “Roulette”. This is inked by Terry Austin, and it’s obvious from the layout and difference in Miller’s art that he has been experimenting while away from Daredevil. That experiment would become Ronin from DC, and the influence of Moebius and Lone Wolf and Cub Manga is evident from the first four panels.
As a story, “Roulette” ends Miller’s run at its core: Daredevil facing off with Bullseye, discussing the relationship between fathers and sons, a theme at the soul of the Daredevil mythos. Bullseye is paralyzed, lying helplessly in a hospital bed, recovering from the wounds inflicted on him by Daredevil after killing Elektra. Daredevil sits at his bedside and proceeds to play Russian roulette with the villain, pointing the gun first at his own head, then at Bullseye’s. He tells a story about a young boy who worships Daredevil, ultimately witnessing Daredevil taking his father down in a blackmail scheme. This pushes the boy over the edge and he shoots a child, wounding him and being committed to an asylum.
Daredevil then tells a second story about his father, who forced him to excel at his schooling, striking him one night in a drunken rage. Young Matt Murdock spent that night on the Brooklyn Bridge, deciding in that moment to become a lawyer.
Miller ends his run on Daredevil with a soliloquy on the meaning of heroism, on the influence parents have over their children, and with Daredevil, down to the last shot, the chamber sure to hold the lone bullet, aimed at Bullseye’s head. He pulls the trigger . . .
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Frank Miller made me want to create comic books, and his Daredevil run in the early 1980’s showed me how a continuing narrative like an ongoing series doesn’t have to rely on past continuity and boring tropes.
It can create new experiences, new paradigms, new structures and new characters.
It can create new creators.
Next Week – Born Again
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