Noteworthy Issues: Daredevil #20 (June, 2020)

Last issue, Matt Murdock finally put on a Daredevil mask as a number of hired gun supervillains were trashing Hell’s Kitchen.

He’s got some help to deal with them.

Issue:  Daredevil #20, June 2020

Writer:  Chip Zdarsky

Artist:  Marco Checchetto

The Plot:  Five supervillains, plus the Owl, are trashing Hell’s Kitchen.  Daredevil is there.  Pity the bad guys.

Commentary:  Perhaps more than any other superhero, Daredevil has been attached to a particular neighborhood, and Chip Zdarsky’s run has focused on a couple facets that I have largely enjoyed related to that.  In the case of this two-parter, the focus kicks in as to how much Daredevil actually inspires the neighborhood.  He’d been missing for a while, and a lot of ordinary residents took to wearing his mask and trying to fight crime.  So, when a quintet of bad guys–Bullet, Rhino, Stilt-man, Crossbones, and especially Bullseye–attack on behalf of both the Owl and the Stormwyns, it isn’t just Matt Murdock who shows up to stop them:  it’s pretty much the entire neighborhood.  And while Matt is the one who takes out most if not all of the bad guys on his own–Bullet might have been taken down by the crowd, but he was written as reluctant to be there, and besides, he was the one guy there I’d never heard of before–it is very much a neighborhood effort.

But seriously, this was the whole neighborhood showing up to help.  Ordinary residents and cops try to distract the mercenaries, Wilson Fisk shows up to throw a punch or two while patently refusing to actually work with Daredevil, a nun from the local church turns out to be Typhoid Mary, and Foggy runs in to give Matt his billy club.  Heck, the Owl finds some trouble with his own goons.  And even as Matt makes taking down the bad guys actually look easy–even Rhino, the one I thought would give him the most trouble–it’s just a great, big, issue-long brawl, expertly paced and well-drawn.

I really don’t have a whole lot to say about this issue aside from it was a heck of a lot of fun, and the final pages show Matt doing something that would work towards the redemption he probably feels he needs after the first issue of this run had him accidentally killing a man.

This series has just been awesome.

Grade:  A