Man Without Fear #2: Time in a Broken Bottle

***WARNING: This review contains major spoilers!***

Matt has awakened from his coma, returning to the waking world with the ghosts of his pain and fear vividly by his side. In the first series of panels Matt and Kirsten McDuffie are having a moment, and when she leaves, Sam Chung (the 4th Blindspot) enters. It is then that our disembodied narrator begins to speak. As Matt tries to explain that he’s done with Daredevil to an increasingly frustrated Sam, the narrator speaks of having loved Matt, as well as aptly describing the underlying truth behind Sam and Matt’s conversation. Sam can’t accept what Matt is saying, and calls him a coward as he leaves.

Matt is drowning in the pain of his life; his only lifelines being Kirsten’s love and Foggy’s friendship, his only nightly companions are his agony and terror. Matt tells Foggy that he’s afraid, and continues to see if Elektra will visit him in the night. Instead, his avatar of fear haunts the darkness, agonizing Matt with the memory of his failures as Daredevil. He cycles through the deaths he failed to prevent, ending with the one our narrator identifies herself as, Karen Page. Remembering her death jolts Matt from his bed onto the floor. Karen (her ghost from MK20?) laments that she can’t tell him that fear is a liar, a cheat, and a thief. The next morning, Matt sits stoically in a wheelchair, red-lensed glasses obfuscating his soul. Kirsten enters but Matt turns away from her, and thus, away from his own needs and desires.