Daredevil #4: The Big Transition

The current Daredevil run is a series in transition. Moving away from long running settings and character traits is a tricky thing, and without just the right amount of setup and explanation it will come across as forced. Zdarsky has been very careful so far, establishing Matt’s new purpose and life a piece at a time in the series’ first three issues.

Daredevil #4 takes the biggest steps yet in this period of transition. Daredevil said goodbye to Kirsten and tried to recruit Cole North (who joined him) and Luke Cage (who did not), Now, with Cole and Foggy Nelson in tow, he’s left for the new Fist base that Elektra chose..

Daredevil #4 features the almost obligatory “timeless ritual to prove yourself as a leader” plot. Daredevil and Elektra have to defeat the souls of the Hand’s dead to take over the Fist. While this is going on, Cole–in something that doesn’t really qualify as a subplot–gets into a fight with one of the Fist’s new recruits who thinks Cole is normal, weak, and a liability.

The issue is narrated by both Daredevil and Cole, each one handling their own scenes. Getting inside Cole’s head is a necessity–very little groundwork has been laid for the character in this run of the series. For Daredevil it may not be a necessity but it would certainly be helpful in smoothing over the ongoing transition of his character.

In the case of Cole there is unfortunately very little to be found once we’re inside his head. The first three panels of the issue see Cole consider, in a very brief and vague way, how out of his depth he is. But that’s replaced immediately in the subsequent three panels by his assertion that the system he used to serve as a cop is broken and that’s what led him to join Daredevil. We don’t get anything else from Cole until two thirds of the way through the issue when the aforementioned Fist recruit confronts him. As Cole fights the recruit, he reflects on the fear he feels from being so far from home leading to him not feeling in control. Naturally he realizes he has to fight that fear to get back in control. This is all so basic and borderline cliche that I would have preferred holding off getting that look in Cole’s head until there was something more interesting inside it.

Daredevil’s thoughts are centered almost entirely on his competing love for Kirsten and Elektra. This is interesting enough but it doesn’t go anywhere. Daredevil’s thoughts don’t make him sound conflicted, don’t give off a sense of sacrifice, and never get particularly emotional. A lack of emotion, if intentional, would be an interesting angle to take because Daredevil was very emotional when it came to saying goodbye to Kirsten (to say nothing of her seeming death). In any case, moments of Daredevil expressing the fact–if not the feeling–of his love for these women accomplishes nothing in the issue and at best might serve as a basis for future development.

The lack of complexity within the two narration threads also means they don’t accomplish anything in juxtaposition. At best there might be a control versus emotion idea at the heart of what Cole is thinking/doing and what Daredevil is thinking/doing, but that is generous.

Artistically Daredevil #4 does what its story could not and improves in the one area I found it lacking in the previous issue. De Latorre once again handles the physicality of the fight sequences very well. And this issue even provides a contrast in styles between how Cole fights and how Daredevil and Elektra fight. The former looks like any standard hand-to-hand fight between two ordinary, non powered people without special and extensive training. The latter, on the other hand, have almost a dance-like quality–both separately and together–in how De Latorre depicts them.

The improvement from De Latorre is most evident in Cole. None of the characters in Daredevil #3 were particularly emotive. De Latorre simply didn’t vary their expressions much. But in Daredevil #4 that weakness is gone–certainly in the case of Cole. It holds true for Foggy as well, but in Cole we see a variety of expressions throughout the issue. In fact De Latorre’s art at times does a better job expressing what’s in Cole’s head than Zdarsky’s narration.