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!

---

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.

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Daredevil (Vol. 2), Issue #7 (Legacy Issue #387) – “The Devil’s Demon”! In the previous installment, Murdock is grieving over the loss of Karen Page, but continues his commitment to Daredevilling after an old memory resurfaces of her telling him never to stop, not even if they have a baby together.

After some sleuthing, Daredevil makes his way to Old Man Macabes’ building, which is armed to the teeth with guard ninjas and spooky special effects. Thwarting all of it, including his fake guardian angel Baals-to-the-Wall, he finds himself at Macabes’ command center! Macabes is revealed to be some villain in a costume! Surprise! I’ll find out his name in this issue. Maybe. But he’s a trickster! I don’t know what to believe anymore!

---

Daredevil (Vol. 2), Issue #7 (Legacy Issue #387) [May, 1999]
Written by: Kevin Smith
“The Devil’s Demon”

“This is the denouement, dear listener”, our mysterious (to me, perhaps) villain begins, letting us all know that the climax to the story has already happened, there’s going to be no more action, and the rest of this storyline is going to a nice cool down. Or is it? I don’t think so! Some shit’s still going to go down, but since another 20,000 comics have been made since 1999 featuring Daredevil…I’m thinking he’s going to be all right in the end here.

Daredevil says “FUCK NO MORE ACTION, I DON’T WANT TO HEAR THIS JABRONI TALK!” and he slugs the villain right in the dome. Literally. He just has a big white dome head. Daredevil’s punch makes a POOMP sound! He hits him again with a DOOP! He’s on his hands and knees now, reminding Daredevil about the baby. “Oh, yeah, shit,” Daredevil thinks. Daredevil demands the baby’s whereabouts, but, of course, the villain ain’t talkin’. Not yet.

After the villain (I’m just gonna call him Fake Macabes until I know his real name) knocks Daredevil to the floor and gets up, he lets him know that the baby is safe and secure in a soundproof chamber somewhere in the building, contained in such a way to make it impossible for Daredevil to detect with his super-hearing. Maybe if the baby poops he’ll detect THAT with super-sniffing? Let’s hope so! Let’s hope the baby poops!

Fake Macabes drones on. Apparently, the baby is contained in a vacuum, which means there’s no oxygen in the chamber. So, uh, the baby is going to be dead soon anyway. “Waste any more of my time, and you sign the infant’s death warrant.” says Fake Macabes coldly. Daredevil backs down, unlike Tom Petty, who tends to stand his ground and not back down. But he’s dead now, so why are we talking about Tom Petty? Stop talking about Tom Petty.

Fake Macabes tells our impish little Daredevil that the baby will live if he keeps his goddamn cool from here on out. Daredevil frowns. He frowns a lot. Faux Macabes opens a chamber door and asks his companion to accompany him to tie up some loose plot threads. I like the cut of this guy’s jib! Very nice jib cut with this one.

Daredevil is seething about his lack of control in this situation. He can’t sense the baby whatsoever, and concedes to the reality that he has to go along with whatever False Macabes wants to do until he can regain control. Grumbling and mumbling, he tags along.

Fake Macabes assumes that Daredevil doesn’t know who he is, which at least lets ME off the hook here as well. Whew! Phony Macabes starts going on a tangent about filmmakers and asks the deviled one if he’s heard of Quentin Beck. The frowny, sulky silence means no. Then Mock Macabes starts verbally sucking Quentin Beck off, lauding his prowess on “creating incredible and intimidating three-dimensional illusions” while talking shit about the terrible special effects of Jaws, Star Wars, and Terminator from their, uh, respective filmmakers. So, I see Kevin Smith is shoehorning in his film work knowledge here, good for him. Not at all subtle.

Imposter Macabes is talking about Quentin Beck so much, in fact, that I’m guessing that this fucker is none other than Beck himself. He should’ve just named him Kevin Smith! Ok, ok, I already poked fun at the lack of subtlety. Quentin Beck might not even be Smith’s invention, I’ll let it go.

Ok, he admits it. He’s Quentin Beck. That too bad, I had about 100 more synonyms for “fake” I could use. So Beck discusses his personal backstory: his own innovative techniques were the prototypes for Spielberg, Lucas, Cameron, and others, in their own special effects techniques for their multi-million-dollar blockbusters. And no one has ever thought to credit Quentin Beck with any of it, ever.

I’m starting to wonder what any of this has to do with an antichrist and the apocalypse…

So it’s revealed that Beck has no interest in using special effects in movies. He practices his craft in the real world. Beck insists that his motives are positive and altruistic, intended to show the world his version of beauty, but time and time again he gets attacked and defeated by that pesky, runty little superhero Spider-Man! And not only that, but somehow he keeps getting lumped in with the Sinister Six by accident! What a way to live! That’s not fair!

So yeah, nevermind, I probably should know who this is! Sorry.

BUT, digressions, digressions! This isn’t about Spider-Man, oho, not at all. “I’m sure you’re far more interested in why I became your bad egg.” he tells Daredevil, who is probably actually legitimately interested, finally, yes. “It all starts with a visit to the Ravencroft Physician…” ohhh maaaaan, BOOOOOOORRRING!! Boring! NO! That’s not at ALL part of it and you know it, you windbag from Heck!

OK, it all starts with a visit to the Ravencroft Physician. Quentin Beck is possibly sick with cancer. The prognosis looks no bueno. Quentin Beck is like Walter White, and all those chemicals he’s been around for years, experimenting with synthetics, have taken its toll on his body. Inoperable brain tumor, inoperable lung cancer! With a year to live, the hospital declared him sane, no longer a menace to society, and discharged Beck. Back at home, Beck destroys his years of work. Masks, costumes, props. AHA! MYSTERIO! He’s Mysterio!

*the collective “duh” uttered by the rest of the world is deafening*

During his grieving, he decides he’s not going to let some stupid fucking cancer end his life! He’s going to fight Spider-Man to the death! SOMEONE’S death, at least. But, as it turns out, according to the Daily Bugle, Spider-Man’s bad now? It’s not clear, perhaps something is going on in the Spider-Man books at this point and time? No matter, Beck is downtrodden about this news. Why bother fighting a guy who’s also bad? Fuck that shit!

Beck was ready to give up, but then he remembered another superhero he could try to fight instead.

Beck liked that Daredevil wasn’t really known much outside of Hell’s Kitchen, let alone Manhattan, let alone New York City! Kinda like a second-rate superhero. Just like Mysterio was a second-rate villain! Perfect!

And then it turns out that Murdock was right about Wilson Fisk the Fatty Fat Kingpin all this time. He WAS involved! Mysterio was able to meet up with this bald, fat piece of shit and strike a deal. Mysterio gets all the info that Fisk knows about Daredevil, and Fisk gets a cool $1,000,000 which is probably just a drop in his fat bucket (but I guess he had “lost his empire” recently).. “He’ll beat you within an inch of your bubble-headed life.” Fisk tells him matter-of-factly. And once Mysterio tells him that he doesn’t want to actually fight him, he wants to drive him insane, Fisk was intrigued. And he agreed. And he told him everything he knew. EVERYTHING. A full page spread of loved ones, friends, weaknesses, strengths, all sorts of images of possible callbacks to previous Daredevil stories, his creepy sexual fetishes, etc. etc. etc.

So Quentin Beck starts studying his bible! Plans on using religion against Daredevil, the scampy old altar-boy! He used teenage Gwyneth as a pawn, kidnapped her, drugged her, artificially inseminated her, had her believe it was immaculate conception. And then he had her parents killed before they could, like, take her and her new baby to a hospital for tests.

Then there was Lydia McKenzie, the divorcée. Why, she was merely some junkie that Beck hired to fool Foggy Nelson! And then he drugged Foggy in such a way that he perceived her as some sort of demon before she jumped out the window! Not sure how his face got scratched up though, that wasn’t explained. What the fuck, Smith?

Oh yeah, and he stole horror movie guy Jonathan Curtain’s identity. We knew that already.

He dressed up as a fake doctor and tricked Karen Page into thinking she had AIDS. She was too dumb to even go to a real doctor about it and get any actual tests done. I guess her history of sucking and fucking made contracting the disease plausible enough!

And the massacre at the childrens’ ward at most of the hospitals around town? Not him. HMMM!…maybe Bullseye was just HAVING A LITTLE FUN??

Mysterio approaches Mr. Gabriel, who was just abandoned on the floor for a bit after Daredevil thwarted his Baaler efforts! After asking how he’s feeling, and the answer is, obviously, not the greatest, Mysterio assures him that help is on the way.

Then Mysterio picks up a fucking gun and blasts him in the face!

Daredevil finally speaks up. “While you’ve been rambling about how clever you are, I’ve been listening for the hum.” Mysterio is confused, then Daredevil pinpoints the location of the hum and launches his Devil Stick at Mysterio’s wrist. “The hum of the battery that powers your suit’s circuitry.” The stick breaks Mysterio’s wrist contraption, then Daredevil kicks the ever-loving fuck out Mysterio’s fishbowl head, cracking it to smithereens. SMITHEREENS I tells ya!

And, yeah, Quentin Beck is just some cancer-ridden feeb with an oxygen mask. “Tell me where the baby is now…or so help me God, I’ll kill you!” Daredevil spits as he hoists this sad sack in the air by the front of his…uh, purple scarf thing. And this is exactly what Beck wants: to be put out of his misery by Daredevil after he spent so much time destroying everything that Daredevil cared about.

Daredevil thinks about it, then drops him on the floor. “I’m not going to give you the satisfaction.” he sneers, and once more demands the baby. He calls Beck a fraud, which hits a nerve with him. He practically starts crying! “A-BLOO-BLOO-BLOO BUT I DROVE YOU CRAAAAZZZYY!!”.

And then Daredevil calls his methods cliché, which is the possibly the word that would fuck Beck up the most. It’s a word that I’m sure Kevin Smith has heard plenty of times himself! Ha!

Daredevil keeps hitting with a few choice words to really break Cancer Guy’s spirit, and it works. It’s so simple, too, it’s a total Kevin Smith mad-on-an-internet-forum wish fulfillment scenario. DECIMATING YOUR OPPONENT VERBALLY. What a bunch of fuck! Crying in his gloves, Beck hits a button on his wrist and opens the chamber containing the alleged antichrist child. The baby is perfectly fine, and as Daredevil extracts her from the weird glass incubation chamber thing, Beck aims a gun in Daredevil’s direction while sporting a crazed, manic smile.

And I guess he turns the gun on himself, possibly out of complete utter shame. KABLAM! Neither Daredevil, nor the baby, flinch. Daredevil walks away, leaving Beck’s corpse to rot.

Final Thoughts

This comic book about sorcery and blind-guy-ultra-heightened-senses is not realistic! Wah! I want my money back!

Nah, just kidding, it’s still ok. This was a really, really, REALLY long-winded issue, though. Probably doesn’t justify the nine trillion words I just wrote about it! See you next time for the conclusion of the Guardian Devil storyline, as well as the conclusion of Kevin Smith’s run on Daredevil Vol. 2.