Daredevil & Elektra Volumes Two & Three: The Red Fist Saga (2023)
Reprints Daredevil (2023) #6-10 & 11-14
Written by Chip Zdarsky
Art by Rafael De Latorre, Marco Checchetto, Manuel Garcia
Despite this being Chip Zdarsky, there was so much of the final act that felt like a totally different direction and tone. And it didn’t work for me. He has leaned heavily into the religious aspects of Matt Murdock, from his strange, retconned friendship with Goldberg to the constant talk of God’s will and prophecies. I get the sense that Zdarsky wanted to play with all the classic Daredevil toys, and this was him getting the Hand out of the toy box along with a few villains, smashing them together while going “pew pew.” I say that because so much substance is lacking here. It feels like a greatest hits album of Daredevil tropes and characters rather than something that moves the hero forward meaningfully. I don’t necessarily blame Zdarsky for that; rather, it is the corporate comic book tendency to allow characters to stagnate and never allow them to change.
The Fist has been rebuilt, a counter to the threat of The Hand (which is being run by The Punisher now? I’m not reading the Jason Aaron series to figure out all these details, at least for right now). Daredevil & Elektra have broken several supervillains out of prison with the idea they can be rehabilitated. Foggy Nelson and Cole North are along to help out, while Stick keeps issuing warnings that no one seems to listen to. Along the way, we get many ninja fights, and the Avengers pop up to try to stop Daredevil and even a dragon. While reading these two collections, my most common feeling was, “Wow, this feels very rushed yet way too decompressed at the same time.”
There’s a change with contemporary comics I don’t really care for. Narrative decompression became very popular in the 1990s when writers like Grant Morrison might take a story that would have been a one-and-done affair in the past and turn it into a four or six-part arc. Sometimes, it worked well, giving concepts & characters space to breathe and allowing the reader to see multiple angles of an event. What I notice now is this same storytelling but lacking closure but also rushing past a story element when it doesn’t feel even close to being explored. The thing in this story that made me feel this way was the supervillain subplot.
Daredevil and Elektra are given about half a dozen Marvel villains a second chance. These aren’t A-listers or even B-lists. I’d say C or D. As a big fan of obscure characters getting the spotlight, I was entirely on board. Fancy Dan of the Enforcers gets more development than I’ve ever seen from him and some backstory about why he is a Judo expert. I’d never even heard of Bullet but was drawn in by his determination to save his son. Stilt-Man is seen as a joke, but he has a couple of moments here where I wanted more; he becomes a hero. Even Agony, one of numerous Venom-inspired symbiote wearers, actually has the beginnings of a compelling arc. But all of this gets tossed away as Zdarsky has to jump from one act to the next leaving me wondering why even include the supervillains if this plot element isn’t going to be concluded in any way?
Despite her name appearing on the collections, Elektra doesn’t get enough time in the story. Yeah, she’s there; from a plot perspective, she’s essential. But we were getting far better character development with her pre-Devil’s Reign than whatever this weak victory lap is. The retconned character of Aka (a devil to Goldberg’s angel?) is around, but she doesn’t really react enough to Elektra for me to understand why she needed to exist in the first place. If you’re going to add in a character like that who alters continuity, have them serve a purpose.
The conclusion to volume two is also a lot to pack into one issue. We learn a longtime character has been dead and replaced with a demon. Huh? We also learn another longtime ally is a puppet of the Hand. The Avengers drop experimental chemical weapons on the Fist’s island, which feels wildly fucked up. So many things rushed across the page that the only thing that kept me from giving up on the story was the fantastic artwork. That has been the consistent positive about Zdarsky’s run; his pencillers have been phenomenal. It’s a shame they didn’t have a better story to illustrate.
As I entered the third & final volume, I felt a lot of dread about how this would end. To have gone from the sublime wrap-up of Devil’s Reign, where Matt and Wilson Fisk got such wonderfully paralleled and contrasting endings, to this mystical mess is definitely disheartening. I guess the villainous Stromwyn siblings got fucked up by the end, and that was certainly satisfying. The strength of Zdarksy’s start was his street-level story. By the end, it was a bloated, way too fast-paced mess that only served to hit a big Reset button so the next creative team could jump on board and ignore everything that had previously happened if they wanted.
By the end of volume three, Matt Murdock literally travels to Hell to rescue people he loves, and it all feels extremely overwrought. In the same way that Spider-Man has been reduced to his trauma and few villains, the same has happened to Daredevil. Of course, Matt encounters his dad, Jack Murdock, in the afterlife, which reminded me of all the Uncle Ben visitations I feel like Spider-Man has had over the decades. I get wanting to reference characters from a superhero’s past, but do it in a way that adds to the story rather than just happening as a nod. If anything, this reminded me of Spawn, and that is not something any comic book writer should want their work to resemble.
Elektra all but vanishes by this point, which is a shame because he was one of the more interesting elements. Zdarsky really feels like he was just phoning it in at this point. I’m curious if his tenure on the Batman book caused him to focus his energies there while Marvel wanted to squeeze more out of him. That would make sense because Devil’s Reign felt like a conclusive ending to a run. However, this makes me a bit worried about dipping into his Batman run, worrying that it will go off the rails and become a muddled grab bag of half-developed ideas that simply leave me wishing someone had pumped the brakes and let the story breathe.
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