Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Daredevil (Vol. 2), Issue #4 (Legacy Issue #384) – “The Devil’s Distaff”! In the previous installment, Old Man Macabes pays AIDSy Karen Page a visit to tell her, just like he told Murdock, that the antichrist baby is ruining her life and she should work on killing it sometime soon. Right now! Do it!

A really big thing happened with respect to the law firm, too. Foggy’s affair with Lydia McKenzie turned south when she, out of nowhere, turned into some green monster, slashed his face up, leaped through a window, turned back into Lydia McKenzie, and fell to her death! So now Foggy’s been charged with murder, and Rosalind Sharpe, Foggy’s own mother, the first name on the Sharpe, Nelson and Murdock law firm, wants to cut ties with her own son in order to save the firm’s name. Murdock is not happy with this and intends to clear Foggy’s name.

BUT, he can’t, because he was captured as Daredevil by some demon-y thugs and then the issue ended with Daredevil stumbling onto the rainy street into the path of the oncomic truck!

Needless to say, there’s a lot of drama going on right now.

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Daredevil (Vol. 2), Issue #4 (Legacy Issue #384) [February, 1999]
Written by: Kevin Smith
“The Devil’s Distaff”

Good thing we don’t address the drama right away, though! The issue begins with some fond reminiscing from some unknown fourth-wall-breaking entity about Murdock waking up in the hospital after losing his dang eyeballs. The super radioactive eyeball-melting substance gave him other heightened sense, which we already fucking KNO-O-O-O-OWWW, goddamnit. One of those powers is to be able to distinguish between heartbeats, and there are two heartbeats in particular that Daredevil has been preoccupied with: one is good, one is not so good. For him, at least. I don’t care either way.

We cut to a rainy high rise rooftop! It appears that Daredevil not only avoided a truck off-screen, but he’s getting chided about it by Black Widow! “Lucky for you I was swinging by at the time” she says, embodying some lazy-ass writing. He’s not listening, though, which seems to be the running theme with Murdock so far anyway. After he tells her that he was being held in a white room by the devil, I’m left wondering why Black Widow even wants to hang around this attempted-baby-murdering AIDS-girlfriend-having devil-seeing devilish Daredevil of a man in the first place. He seems like a lot of emotional maintenance. Who does he think he is? ME??

Oh wait, yeah, I get it now, she loves him. Blech. He’s concerned about Wilson Fisk, the big fat fatty fat Kingpin, who had already destroyed his life once. Black Widow is concerned that Daredevil is concerned, but then Daredevil bitterly reminds her that the biggest enemy to him right now is the baby she’s got strapped to her back. She bitterly reminds HIM that focusing all his anger at a baby is misguided. He sort of agrees to himself and trails off into his own thoughts again. “Matthew? Are you listening to me?” she asks, but clearly he isn’t! We just went over this!

Daredevil’s bitter now that “all the Murdock men hang their hearts on the wrong women, often with poor results”, so now it’s cool to see some toxic masculinity in our titular character I suppose. Sounds like there’s some sort of hostile brutishness taking over his mind. Black Widow keeps insisting on taking him home since he isn’t well. Daredevil agrees through a menacing grimace. A grimacing menace??

“No — no, I’m not. Haven’t been…not for a few days, now.” Daredevil’s paranoia is starting to override good judgment, he’s even starting to think Black Widow might be against him too. After all, she’s been carting around that cocksuckin’ baby for two days with no obvious bad luck coming her way. In fact, she seems to care more about the baby’s well-being than Matthew “Daredevil” “Nice Guy” Murdock!…

He starts questioning her like the Commie Russian ex-spy that she is! OF COURSE she’s out to get him, too! “What price did they offer for your soul?” he asks her. By now she’s got the creepin’ heebie-jeebies, which is much worse than the regular jeebies! I’m sure Black Widow would love to deal with some familiar regular jeebies right now, but this shit is wack. Daredevil backs her against the corner of the rooftop.

“You’ve already done it, Woman! I’m here to undo it!” he snarls, gripping her by the throat and pushing her body over the edge of the building. I look back on my life and it’s littered with the lies women have told me. Lies that have blackened my soul. He’s thinking this as Black Widow attempts to fight back, but he renders her unconscious in an unclear manner. Maybe he squeezed her neck until she passed out? I dunno! Either way, she’s incapacitated and he takes the baby and jumps off the building with it, falling back-first toward the ground.

Daredevil comes to his senses, so to speak, en route to the ground below. He grapples onto a stone cross that tops a church roof, swings to adjust his landing angle, and braces for impact.

THEY BOTH DIED!

Nope, they’re fine. Daredevil is injured, but the antichrist hell baby is completely ok. He bangs on the door of the church and some old hag nun comes to the door. For the first time in 48 hours he doesn’t feel lost. Yeah, how’s this for lost: *tender jerkoff motion*

BEFORE WE RETURN TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED BROADCAST, WOULD THE OWNER OF A 1970 FORD MAVERICK PLEASE COME TO THE FRONT DESK? YOU LEFT A BABY IN THE CAR SEAT. IT’S THE ANTICHRIST. LOL.

Sorry, I just had my own psychotic episode. We jump ahead two days. The unknown Boss Man that we’ve already seen try to abduct teenagers is very angry that this blind man and this baby keeps eluding him and his team of henchmen! If I didn’t know any better, and I don’t, this nogoodnik just really wants Daredevil to be sad and crying, not necessarily dead, and it will make him feel like a big man again! That’s nice. “The endgame is approaching, Mr. Gabriel. Summon the assassin.” OH NO! Assassins assassinate people! I was wrong!

Murdock wakes up in some shitty bed in some shitty room. The old hag nun tells him he’s been sleeping for two days straight in her personal old hag nun room. She even washed his stinky Daredevil uniform! It turns out that this old hag nun is Murdocks real life old hag mother, whom he hasn’t seen in 30 years. lol, “seen”, ok.

There’s a lot of vague catching up between the two of them. “You’re a lot like your father” she says, like she would fucking know anything about him after 30 years? Murdock says something barely rude about God and she tut-tuts at him like some sort of nun. “Such anger from someone who has been given so much!” she says, not reading the room very well at all. He gets mad at this and strains his sinewy neck out, ranting about how blind he is and, oh yeah, he can’t fucking see, lady!

“Darkness, mother! That’s what I’ve been given — a life of darkness! Seeing darkness, fighting darkness, feeling darkness! You’ll have to excuse me if I can’t find the same faith in the so-called Almighty that you’ve found! But then, I guess it’s easy for you to jump to His defense! After all, He let you off the hook pretty easily, didn’t He!”

Hoo boy. She didn’t like that at all.

He cries and apologizes.

As old hag Mother Nun makes tea, Murdock lies there with wonky-eyed contentment at talking to some lady he hasn’t known for three decades like she should even matter to him anymore. He really wants to ask about his life, but he mostly just talks about the events of the last few days. She keeps telling him to look to God for guidance, since that’s exactly what a nun is supposed to tell people, and he keeps insisting that he’s not sure God’s even real anymore. She asks him, with all he’s been through, how could he possibly question His existence? He asks how she could possibly not, what with helping the very people that the Kingpin has profited off of for years, for example. “It’s a fairy tale, isn’t it? A joke devised a long time ago to keep the downtrodden from revolting — to keep them compliant!”

Homeboy’s gonna get slapped again if he doesn’t watch it!

She doesn’t even get mad at any of this, though. She just smiles as a response, and then starts to tell Murdock a story. HEEEEEERE WE GO, YEEEESH. I’m getting a snack.

Oh dags, she’s still talking? It’s a story about a Knight and a Monk, and-GRRRROOOOAAAN. Another snack.

OK, she’s still talking. The story goes like this: Knight and Monk are walking together. Knight goes “Your life sucks ass and you still believe in God? My life is great, I’m fuckin’ broads and snortin’ coke and shootin’ cops and peein’ the the mall fountain! I don’t believe in God! Isn’t that funny?”. Monk goes “…”. Knight goes “…and, like, I’m wondering, so I think once we’re dead, then that’s it! Dead! In the ground! Nothing! What if you die and learn the same thing after wasting all this time believing? What if you learn there was no God at all?” Monk goes “Yeah, I’ll be sad and shit. But, my good sir, I posit the following consideration to you, and you will not deny the veritable checkmate that will fall in front of your eyes like Tetris pieces shaped like chess pieces fitting snugly into little checkmate rows and columns: What if you die and you find out there IS a God?! WOOP WOOP!”

And then Knight dropped his chalk and the whole room stood up and gave the Monk a standing ovation! Murdock got fucking schooled, son! What a loser! It’s Kirk Cameron and the banana all over again! The Atheist’s Nightmare!

With that, the nun announces that a woman had showed up to the church to see him. “She seems very distressed” the nun tells him, if by “very distressed” she means “chock full of AIDS”. Are AIDS jokes woke in 2021? Probably not! Sorry.

It’s Karen Page, and she wants to know where the baby is. She doesn’t want the little hellspawn being raised in a cold, drafty nunnery! Murdock didn’t want to impose, but Karen insists that “a sweet little baby’d take my mind off my…problems.” Well hot diggity dog! Sounds great! Murdock’s just gonna get his coat and- WAIT A FUCKING SECOND, THERE, HONEY! He never told her about the dang baby! Karen says he did, but Murdock says “NO WAY JOSE, I WOULD REMEMBER, I’VE TALKED ABOUT THIS BABY TO, LIKE, 17 PEOPLE SO FAR AND I REMEMBER EVERY CONVERSATION I’VE HAD IN THE LAST WEEK EVEN THOUGH I’VE BEEN COMPLETELY OUT OF MY MIND, SO THERE!”, and then Karen has no choice but to concede!

She tells him about Old Man Macabes, about the curse, about all the bad luck that has befallen everyone. “But all we have to do is give him the baby, Matt! If we give him the baby, all the evil goes away!” Murdock says, in big red block letters, “NO!!”. You’re being played like a fiddle, Karen! Like a big, blonde fiddle! Like a big, blonde, HIV+ fiddle! And then he really lets her have it:

“You have AIDS because you were a junkie, Karen! A junkie who was with God only knows who and how many people! Your CARELESSNESS destroyed your life, Karen — not some demon-child! And that carelessness may have destroyed MY life too, for all we know! So you want to blame someone?! Then blame YOURSELF!”

Karen takes this in stride. She looks legitimately ashamed and then runs out the church doors. Murdock stays at the edge of the pew, hands in his face, swearing vengeance on either Macabes or whomever sent him.

We end in the office of the mysterious shrouded Boss Man, who is talking to an unknown associate. Boss Man lays out his terms: baby gets brought to him alive, everyone else can die except Daredevil for some reason! He needs to stay alive! The baby and Daredevil: alive. Everyone else: can die. He will pay $5,000,000. The Boss Man leans forward out of the shadow…it’s MACABES!. And who’s he talking to?…

JASON MEWES! LOL!

No, it’s some costumed guy I’m supposed to know. Pfft, the reveal is lost on me. Hang on, I have to look it up…

Bullseye. It’s Bullseye.

(?)

Bullseye is a villain.

Final Thoughts

Macabes really wants that baby, huh? Cool.

I legitimately wonder what’s going on with our favorite runaway teenager Gwyneth. And I don’t care about Foggy one bit, I hope he rots behind bars!

Halfway through and it’s still pretty good! Chalk this one up to a win. Way to go, Smithy, old boy. Way to go.