Daredevil: Born Again

"DAREDEVIL. Okay? I said it. I said the name.

And he's got ANOTHER name. And it's written down right here. You want it or not?"

What's a name worth? Apparently, a bag of heroin. That's what Daredevil's ex-girlfriend, Karen Page, traded it for, and it was there that Matt Murdock's life went to hell. Today we review one of the greatest Daredevil stories ever written and drawn. Today we review

Daredevil: Born Again
collects Daredevil #'s 227-231
by Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli

A string of unfortunate events take place to ruin Matt's life -- it starts slowly, at first, and then escalates. The bank loses all evidence of his payments. The IRS freezes his money. He loses power in his apartment, and he loses his law license. The Kingpin has a noose around Matt's neck, and he's slowly tightening the knot. At the end of the first chapter, he even destroys Matt's apartment, which leads to a revelation:

Matt's condition deteriorates, and he truly goes mad -- beating a couple of thieves and then a cop, believing that they're all sent by the Kingpin to get him. Then, he has a conversation on the phone, with Foggy:

If there was ever any doubt, now you know, as the reader. Matt's gone off the deep end, and we have no idea how he's going to get out. Matt's in no shape to take on the Kingpin, having just been run over and stabbed by Santa -- yes, Santa CLAUS. But still he does it anyways. The Kingpin's secretary even personally escorts him to the office!

Predictably, the Kingpin destroys Matt. It's a brutal few pages and one of the few times where there's nearly no narration. Each blow speaks for itself, and the Kingpin stages a suicide for Matt in a taxi cab off the pier. But weeks later, they don't find a corpse.

There is no corpse. What is it ABOUT Murdock? He was a MINOR concern -- a promising talent to be observed and cataloged and even occasionally FLATTERED--and perhaps, one day, to be turned to the Kingpin's way --

--but he is MORE than this. Now he is much more than this. He always was. And I--I have SHOWN him...

...that a man without hope...is a man without FEAR.

Amazing monologue. Matt's missing corpse consumes the Kingpin. This story is really made in two halves -- the deconstruction of Matt Murdock, followed by, what else, the reconstruction of Matt Murdock. Only when you destroy a person, strip away all the unnecessary parts of a character, can you see who that person really is. That's what Frank Miller does here with Matt Murdock, and he conveys that so well. Like Matt tells us himself, he has to let go of everything, except for what his dad told him: "Never give up. NEVER."

Matt winds up in a care facility run by nurses, in a church. The woman -- Maggie's her name -- refuses to give up on him, and when he wakes up, her gold necklace is familiar to him. It's memorable to him, one of the first things he touched after the accident that blinded him. It's heavily implied that Maggie is Matt's mom. That maybe she wasn't ready for a child and became a nun after having him, but still she loves him all the same.

In the truest sense, Matt is "born again" in this church, brought back to life in the hands of his mother. It's a figurative Baptism. Under the roof of God, and the care of his mother, Matt regains his strength and gathers his mind again. The "Born Again" issue is the crux of the story, since it's around there that their roles reverse -- while Matt gets stronger, the Kingpin stews in disbelief. He goes so far as to hire the insane soldier, "Nuke," to take a stab at Daredevil.

I won't spoil the rest for you. It's an all-out brawl that turns Hell's Kitchen into a war zone, drawing out the Daredevil and a couple of his super-powered pals. The tense, meticulous plotting of the Kingpin gives way to superhero action! It's catharsis for everything that we've been through in the past issues, and the payoff to what we've been reading.

Born Again is a seminal Daredevil story, and it's easy to see why. Frank Miller put the 'devil through Hell, and we got to read Matt come back from it. Any Daredevil fan would get a kick out of this gritty, thoughtfully written, meticulous story. Highly recommended.

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