Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Daredevil (Vol. 2), Issue #8 (Legacy Issue #388) – “The Devil’s Deliverance”! This issue ends the Guardian Devil storyline as well as Kevin Smith’s run on Daredevil, Vol. 2. See you in the funny pages, Smith, as the kids say these days. In the previous bottle episode installment, Daredevil’s assailant turns out to be Mysterio (mostly a Spider-Man villain), aka Quentin Beck, the narcissistic film special effects master! I guess! He spends 20 pages talking about himself in many very large speech balloons while Daredevil frowns and barely listens.

Long story short, Daredevil makes him feel so bad about himself by calling him a fraud that he literally shoots himself in the head. And that’s it. Daredevil finds that baby and gets out of dodge.

And now, the thrilling *yawn* conclusion!

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Daredevil (Vol. 2), Issue #8 (Legacy Issue #388) [June, 1999]
Written by: Kevin Smith
“The Devil’s Deliverance”

What is this now? Spider-Man! And he is featured so prominently on the cover, too. Check it out, Daredevil is obscuring his own name. That’s ok, at this point I’d rather read about Spider-Man than poopypants Daredevil anyway! As far as I’m concerned, this story is over.

News reports show the death of Mysterio, and they are correct about the apparent suicide. Even that couldn’t be written with much of a twist. A young man with a tall, rockabilly hairdo is watching the report with absent-minded preoccupation while tying his necktie. The news report continues on to relay J. Jonah Jameson’s opinion about the circumstances: “the vigilante known as Spider-Man was responsible for the carnage”. GET ME SOME PICTURES! A red-haired woman comes down the weird steps within their weird ‘90s industrial loft. “Peter, are you ok?” she asks him, but he barely mumbles a response. The news report continues with Jameson’s angry ranting: “He’s a menace! I’ve been saying it for years, haven’t I?! What’s it going to take to get through to you people?!”

Obviously, the young couple are Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson. Parker ruminates over what he just saw on TV, saying that after all those years of fighting Mysterio, now he’s just…gone. And he feels responsible. MJ says “are you wacked, fuck-face? Don’t pity this crazy piece of shit, yo!” The news report ends with a quick bit on Foggy Nelson’s murder charges getting dropped in light of new evidence emerging from Quentin Beck’s files.

And the “one of its own” that the city is laying rest to would be Karen “Maybe AIDS” Page, whose funeral only has about 20 people in attendance and one of them is a giant suited-up Thing. As in, the Thing. The superhero “the Thing” is there. Murdock’s in the front row, and he had spent the previous night awake for hours trying to write the eulogy. The priest calls him up to the dais, and Murdock feels guilty that he is playing the role of the “helpless blind man” at the funeral of one of the only people in the world who knew the truth about him. Get over it! Too much guilt all the time with this one, let me tell you.

Murdock starts feeling his little braille bumps. “Um…Karen was…” he begins with trepidation. But then gives up when he realizes that there aren’t enough words in the world to say what he would want to say, so he steps down and just tells the casket “I’ll miss you.” Not even I love you! INTERESTING!

Outside in the cemetery, Peter Parker catches up with Murdock and they arrange to meet “at the usual place” tomorrow night at 9pm for a real old-fashioned superhero-style love-in. In the meantime, Murdock heads home to cry more, probably.

Murdock is going through some of Karen Page’s personal legal documents, mentioning that she never opted to use Murdock as her personal lawyer. There was a seven-figure insurance policy out in her name through her radio station. Also in the large envelope is a hand-written letter from Karen directly to Matt that WE THE AUDIENCE get to read, but Blindy McBlinderson over here is going to need someone else to read it to him! Aw, nuts, it’s written in “raised ink”, taking away all my fun.

We are treated to a mini-flashback of Karen writing the letter years ago on the very same desk that Murdock’s now reading it, before she fucked off to the west coast for her new radio gig. Karen explains in the letter that he, as he obviously now knows, is the beneficiary to an “obscene life insurance policy” provided by her employer. In the letter, she asks him to promise that he’ll spend the money on himself. Not on any charities. Not on any friends or family. Don’t pay any bills with it. Spend it on something that will make him happy. Don’t spend it on prostitutes.

Murdock picks Foggy up from prison the next day. Foggy asks if his wife Liz was at the funeral, and she was. Murdock asks if she ever visited him in prison, and Foggy says only once. Foggy says he spent the first day in prison going over the scene repeatedly in his head, wondering if he actually saw what he saw. But, the man’s memory was quite FOGGY it seems! We see him waiting for Liz in the visiting room, and she looks rather pissed off when she gets there. “Hello, Franklin. Is it true?” she asks him through the phone icily. Foggy tries to deflect! “I swear I didn’t kill her!”, but we all know what she’s really asking here, Foggy, come on now. He does confirm THROUGH SILENCE that he did indeed spend the night with the fake divorceé when asked directly, and Liz hangs up the phone and walks out of the room.

Ol’ Foggy is in the doghouse now! The Foghouse.

“It doesn’t matter that they cleared the charges, Matt…because they can’t erase the real crime.” says the Barney Rubble-lookin’ lawyer through his gross, wet tears. Man, who cares about Foggy Nelson? Let’s move on from Foggy Nelson.

Later that night, at roughly 9pm, Daredevil and Spider-Man meet up at their, heh heh heh, usual place: on top of the Brooklyn Bridge. “Care for a little company?” Spider-Man asks Daredevil seductively. Daredevil gives him a polite “fuck you, my ex-girlfriend’s fucking dead, punk”. Spider-Man puts his hand on Daredevil’s shoulder and tells him that he needs to understand the whole weird Mysterio thing. So Daredevil fills him in on the last seven issues of the whole weird Mysterio thing. “There’s nothing worse than losing someone you love to the job.” Spider-Man says sympathetically, imagining some blond woman I don’t know dangling from the bridge with a rope tied to her legs. If I were Daredevil, I’d tell this kid to shove off!

Daredevil tells Spider-Man that, when someone dies after leading a reckless life then, as a superhero, one learns to eventually sleep at night. “Yes, but Karen was an innocent.” Spider-Man reminds the Daring Devil. “Everyone’s guilty. Even us. Especially us.” Daredevil responds, unable to drop the whole Catholic thing at all ever. After explaining himself with many words, Daredevil ends with “No Peter — there are no innocents. Even in the strictest of definitions, people like the loved one you mentioned and Karen are still guilty. They’re guilty of dying, and leaving us alone in the mire of solitude and misery.” That’s pretty harsh, dude! Way to make the dead feel bad about getting dead.

Daredevil continues blah-blah-blahing even though Spider-Man clearly has something that he wants to tell him. “It’s insanity, man! And we’re the crucial cog in the damnation machine, people like us! Because nothing good comes out of anything we do!” Daredevil rants in Kevin Smith’s pothead-philosopher voice.

And the one thing that helps Daredevil’s perspective after demanding from Spider-Man what the point of all this was in the first place, is Spider-Man saying “You saved that baby girl’s life, Matt.”

And then Spider-Man leaves. I don’t think he ever told him what he wanted to tell him? What a waste!

Later, Murdock knocks on Natasha Romanov’s apartment door. When she realizes who it is, she punches him right in his fucking face! BLINDsides him, you might say! “Talk fast before I sever your vocal chords!” she demands while he’s on the floor, shortly after calling him a psychopath. As a reminder, Murdock hasn’t spoken to Natasha at all since the drugged-up rooftop incident. That was before he visited Dr. Strange and discovered that he was under the influence of a hallucinogen. He probably should’ve, you know, told her that at some point before tonight. Murdock’s only word is “Mysterio”. She understands and let’s him into her place.

Natasha doesn’t really believe Murdock’s story that he was under the influence of mysterious, wacky substances! She thinks it’s a red herring, a cover-up, a smokescreen, see? Yeah. She thinks Murdock was already feeling certain feelings BEFORE the drugs fucked him all up. In fact, she blames misogyny! Abandoned by his mother, abandoned by girlfriends, man, she really gets into it here. He gets defensive about it like the man he is, of course, but she merely tells him to do some soul-searching before he jumps into another relationship.

I can tell all this is coming from a place of hurt on Natasha’s side, and obviously Kevin Smith wishes a woman like Natasha could love him this much as well or else he wouldn’t have made Natasha say about nine pages of dialogue right here. Her point is just “get your fucking act together and realize that I’m the one you really want to bone”. They hug and make up. Let’s move on.

Murdock moseys over to an old burned-out building that apparently used to be his home until the Fat Kingpin Wilson “Fat Kingpin” Fisk blew it up. Foggy’s there with him. Foggy’s mommy wants both of them to work back at the law firm again. However, Murdock has other plans…

…use Karen’s life-insurance payout, set up shop in the lot where he grew up, and start their own partnership. Obviously, as you can see, The Fogman is on board.

The next morning, Murdock creepily stares through the window of the hospital maternity ward. He stares as much as a blind man can, I reckon. His nun mother is there, although not garbed in her nun costume so I didn’t know it was even her at first. They discuss the antichrist baby, who I guess isn’t really the antichrist but maybe she really actually IS THE ANTICHRIST and that will be the twist in about 55 issues! EEK!

Matt Murdock considers the baby a savior. He considers the baby his savior. Therefore, against what Sister Maggie thinks, he doesn’t actually resent the baby. Good for him, what character growth.

The baby is getting adopted by a couple from New Jersey. YUCK! She’s better off getting raised in Fake Macabes’ shitty building. The baby doesn’t have a name, and rather than letting the adoptive parents name her something good, Matt names the baby Karen. Double Yuck!

Naming a baby after a comic book character. Such a Kevin Smith move.

Lastly, Murdock heads over to church for a confession, looping us right back to where we started, bringing it all back home Bob Dylan-style. This whole story took place within a month, as it’s been that long since his last confession. And, once again, before he has time to really confess anything, he hears the distressed cries of a person in trouble somewhere within the vicinity of the church! “Sorry father…no rest for the wicked!” he says as he bolts out of there, leaving the priest utterly confounded.

Final Thoughts

What a ride! I’ve learned more about Matt Murdock and Daredevil than I ever wanted to know in my life!

For now I’ll move on to something else, but Kevin Smith’s short run on the 1990’s Daredevil reboot was VERY ENJOYABLE despite all the moaning and groaning I banged out on this blog within the last bunch of weeks. The series continues with some guy named David Mack at the helm, and he picks up some pieces of the Guardian Devil storyline before moving on to something else altogether! Another time, though, another time.