Comic Book Review – Daredevil & Elektra: The Woman Without Fear and The Red Fist Saga Volume One

Daredevil: The Woman Without Fear
Reprints Daredevil: The Woman Without Fear #1-3 and Elektra #100
Written by Chip Zdarsky & Ann Nocenti
Art by Rafael De Latorre & Sid Kotian

Daredevil & Elektra by Chip Zdarsky Volume One: The Red Fist Saga
Reprints Daredevil (2022) #1-5
Written by Chip Zdarsky
Art by Marco Checchetto and Rafael De Latorre

Marvel Comics has been doing something for about the last decade or more that really bothers me. It’s become a trend that even DC Comics has started for most books. When a writer ends their run on an ongoing book, the company cancels the title and reboots it a month or two later with a new #1 to signal a new writer. I get the economics of it; issue ones sell better than any other issue, but it partially destroys the sense of history. Thankfully, DC has spared Action and Detective comics from this, so they bear their original numbering, making them over 1,000 issues. Both companies might put a Legacy number under the issue number, denoting how long this character has appeared in a book on their own. 

I grew up in the 1980s/90s and had fun coming in on issue 234 or 345 and trying to get my bearings with a book. I understand wanting to know where things started, and eventually, I figured that out. I enjoy the sense of history these characters have. I won’t be alive to read their final issue. All I get in this is the period I was born into. I don’t care much about narrative continuity over decades as it isn’t that important, but I like knowing this is one entry of hundreds or thousands. It also makes tracking where a book is in the reading order more straightforward if you don’t have the publishing year.

Regarding just Daredevil, the book has now had eight #1s published respectively in 1963, 1998, 2011, 2014, 2016, 2019, 2022, and 2023. I hope you notice how many were published in the last decade. Seems a little much. 

This Daredevil run is even worse because Zdarsky was still writing. Marvel just decided to reboot to #1 after the Devil’s Reign event. When Zdarksy wrapped things up with issue 14, Marvel canceled and rebooted it again. So, in October 2023, the book is canceled, and in November 2023, we get another #1 under a new writer. It feels very unnecessary. It might work if each new run had a subtitle that denoted the story arc. Al Ewing’s Immortal Hulk made sense because that added adjective signaled this was unique from the other Hulk ongoing series. Canceling the book with Ewing’s conclusion lets us know the Immortal era is over. Then they went back to calling it The Incredible Hulk, of which we have had two #1s again over the last couple of years. Okay, old man, rant over.

As for Zdarsky’s third-act finale on Daredevil, it’s okay. I lost momentum when I caught up and had to wait for these fourteen issues to be published. The focus shifts dramatically as Wilson Fisk and his threat to New York City is dealt with in Devil’s Reign. The Woman Without Fear mini-series is an odd duck in that it spins directly out of Devil’s Reign and takes place during that storyline but isn’t labeled as a tie-in. That’s weird, as the mini-series that get labeled that way feel very tangentially connected to the overall arc, unlike this one, which feels essential to understanding what comes next.

The most important thing that comes out of Elektra’s three-issue mini is the introduction of Aka. This is a character retroactively put into Elektra’s past with The Hand. The story makes several changes to Elektra’s history to the point that it cancels out many things Frank Miller has established with the character and her connections to The Hand. I have yet to read those Miller stories, but I have a general knowledge of them and Elektra. As I said above, continuity and Marvel comics don’t feel like something that makes much sense these days, anyway. The multiverse has opened the door to make things very free-flowing. As long as the stories are well-written, it doesn’t really matter. I would say this is not something I was hyped about overall. Very little happens; it feels like nothing but a setup for what happens next.

I just can’t get on board with the acclaim Zdarsky’s run has had. There were many moments early on where this all felt fresh and interesting. By this point, the main arc is resolved. The book was essentially a two-hander cutting between Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk. Now that Fisk is out of the picture, we are thrown into this weird semi-crossover with The Punisher. The skull enthusiast has become the head of The Hand over the pages of a Jason Aaron-penned book. Many things are happening over there that get referenced here, but I couldn’t make the effort to read that one, too. I really shouldn’t have to. 

Another Marvel trend that is grating and significantly influenced by the films is that every creator’s run has to be the biggest, most epic, end-of-the-world storyline, which naturally devolves into complete incoherence. Daredevil & Elektra fighting ninjas is cool, I guess. There’s a lot of heavy-handed exposition about prophecies and magic tomes that reveal the future. I really need to go back to the Miller era before this shit with the Hand got so wildly out of control and see how they were initially used. Now we have the Fist, a counter-ninja clan run by our title heroes.

Matt gets another retcon to his history in the form of Robert Goldman. This is one of the craziest ones I’ve seen so far. So apparently, in Daredevil #168 (1980), there’s an unnamed guy who shouts, “They’re killing the hostages!” This is now Goldman, a fellow law student who studied alongside Matt at Columbia. Goldman was introduced in Zdarksy’s initial series, and we learn in issue 2 (of this one) that he believes he has a connection to God and is a force in Matt’s life. Yeah, it’s a ridiculous narrative mess. Goldman’s abilities make him feel like a carbon copy of The Purple Man and reminds us why this storyline should have wrapped with Devil’s Reign. 

I’ll be back next week to review the final two volumes in this run, which has undoubtedly run out of gas at this point.