Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Daredevil (Vol. 2), Issue #3 (Legacy Issue #383) – “Dystopia”! In the previous installment, there’s a whole lot on Matthew Murdock’s plate: he was given a baby, he was told the baby was the antichrist, he now has to decide between keeping the baby safe and ridding the world of this problematic baby!

Natasha “Black Widow” Romanov popped in to assist Murdock with the baby situation. Foggy Nelson is banging a client. Gwyneth was kidnapped by the people who have been after her. Murdock’s ex-girlfriend Karen showed up out of nowhere to tell him that she has AIDS. That part was pretty nuts!

What will Murdock decide to do with the baby? Should he even believe this baby is the antichrist in the first place, just because some guy with a mustache told him it was? Why should he believe him? Something funny is going on!

Remember when Kevin Smith got kicked off a plane for being too fat? And then that plane crashed into the Twin Towers! He should be thankful, but instead he bitched about it for two years on his 45 podcasts. I might have gotten my timeline off by almost nine years.

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Daredevil (Vol. 2), Issue #3 (Legacy Issue #383) [January, 1999]
Written by: Kevin Smith
“Dystopia”

Blind Guy Soliloquy Time! Kevin Smith’s got 56,000 words to cram into these 20 pages and time’s a-wastin’! Blah blah blah, here’s the crib notes: Murdock’s ex-girlfriend Karen showed up out of nowhere to say she is HIV+ (which is not the same as AIDS, by the way, but maybe this is some SUPERHERO TWIST CHEKHOV’S GUN!) on the same day an old man with a mustache popped into his office to say he was gonna be cursed if he didn’t kill a baby! Wow!

The soliloquy continues with some unsolicited law school college boy shit: in law school you’re taught the concept of “judgmental vacuum” wherein you are a lawyer who does lawyer things, and if that means defending a clearly guilty client then so be it! You’re taught in law school how to get past all the self-loathing that may manifest itself in your gut from day after day, week after week of constant moral indecency that comes from it. He got a call this morning, it turns out it’s Foggy, and Foggy looks worse for wear as a couple of cops drag him into the office.

Foggy tries to explain, but he’s a bit FOGGY about the details! But also, he doesn’t even really believe it. Previously, Foggy had been starting an affair with one Ms. Lydia McKenzie. You may remember her kissing his dopey Barney Rubble face and pulling him into a bedroom? Well, shortly after he was pulled into the bedroom, LYDIA MCENZIE TURNED INTO SOME CRAZY, GREEN, RAZOR-SHARP-TOOTHED OLD HAG WHO SCRATCHES UP FOGGY’S FACE AND JUMPED THROUGH A BUTTFUCKING WINDOW! Comic books!

But when Foggy looked out the window he saw a normal, dead Lydia on the ground instead. Well, I guess not normal, because normally Lydia would be alive. But she happened to not be in an abnormal way, you see. Foggy calls the cops about this, which is immensely dumb considering it looks like he threw a woman through a window. Understandably, he’s taken away for murder when the police don’t believe his story that he probably tried to tell the truth about! Nicely done, lawyer guy, for thinking this could have gone any other way.

Murdock uses his heartbeat Spidey-Sense to determine that Foggy isn’t lying. Foggy cries about thinking God’s punishing him for cheating, and I’m rolling my eyes because THERE’S THE GOD GUY AGAIN GETTING MENTIONED AGAIN! Murdock gets started right away on trying to clear ol’ Foggy Murderer’s name, but there’s already a giant media circus surrounding the law offices and before he can really say “boo” he gets called into Foggy’s mom’s office. Yes, that’s right.

Meanwhile, Karen Page is at Murdock’s apartment standing around smoking in Muhammad Ali shorts and looking photos of her failed relationship. She also holds a curious (to me, at least) sticky note that says “Mr. Murdock: As per your request. -Peter Parker” and I’m wondering when the little twerp had time to stop jacking off long enough to write those eight words! She is interrupted by a knock at the door. It’s Old Man Macabes, the mustached bearer of apocalyptic news! But here’s here to see Karen, which is weird.

Foggy’s mom wants to fire Foggy. Murdock thinks she’s cuckoo nutso, but he doesn’t want her big, porky, murdering rapist son tainting the good name of their very respectable law firm! Murdock’s all like “HE’S INNOCENT AND YOU KNOW IT!”, he says this spittily. She’s all like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. “I’ve been a lawyer longer than I’ve been a mother” she tells him, justifying her decision to cut him loose. I really don’t blame her, I thought he looked like bad news since I first laid eyes upon his doughy, droopy-eyed face! Murdock has had just about enough of this BULLSHIT.

“I have to go, Rosalind — have to figure out how to prove my partner’s innocence.” he says as walks on out of there like he has a broom up his butt. She stops him and reminds him that “cutting all ties” means, no, you’re not getting fucking involved. “You’re saying I CAN’T defend him?” he asks, and she, in essence, answers with a “…well, you just won’t have the firm’s resources, hint hint.” He doesn’t take the hint. “THEN I QUIT!” he says, hobbling out of the office like a 140-year-old feeb.

“MINUTES LATER, A FAMILIAR FIGURE LEAPS INTO THE MANHATTAN SKY…” says the narration. Murdock didn’t waste any time! As he’s prancing around town doing backflips he’s thinking about all the stuff he has to try to take care of: Foggy (murder/rapist), Karen (AIDS girlfriend), Baby (antichrist). As he jumps around, he encounters a mugging in broad daylight. He subdues the mugger, but then the muggee shoots him in the back with a tranquilizer. You got trapped, bitch!

Back at Murdock’s fancy Gordon Ramsey Hell’s Kitchen apartment, Macabes is telling Karen that it’s the antichrist’s fault she is HIV+, but she’s not without most of the blame! He basically calls her a junkie slut while happily sipping his tea. She agrees with him. At least they’re on the same page about things! Apparently, Karen’s been worried about being HIV+ for years and just kind of stopped going in for tests after they kept coming back negative over and over again. And now suddenly she gets a positive test the day that Murdock gets BLINDSIDED by a baby thrown into his lap? NOT A COINCIDENCE, DEAR! I guess.

Macabes twists the knife further by telling her that this was no accident. Karen is just a pawn, just like Murdock. Macabes then takes advantage of this shift in the conversation to advocate for his baby-murdering agenda again. Karen says she would never murder a dang baby, which Macabes finds “ignorantly valiant”. He tells her that she should probably, maybe, kinda, kill the baby anyway why not! And then tells her that he probably infected Murdock with HIV too, and I’m not sure why anyone needed Macabes to let them know this.

In some sort of white void, Daredevil awakens from his tranquilizer-induced stupor. He notices that someone deliberately placed him into cool-looking sensory-deprivation abyss of a room to keep him disoriented. But, aha, a room is still a room, and that means a room can be exited! So he starts blindly feeling around like just the type of blind guy who was blinded by radiation as a kid or something. He tries to kick down a door he finds, but then the room becomes filled with the “shrieking of angels” which completely incapacitates him. It works on dogs too. A big, beefy demon, wearing the same black sweater that I think my own mother owns, enters the room. He says, in a Paul Simon voice, “You can call me Baal”. He tells Murdock that the angels are shrieking because they are the fallen, cast out of God’s, you know, nightclub.

“What do you want from me?” Daredevil asks, but it comes out more as “Wha…w…wh…whah….whabh….bhub….blub….blublubl…blub…”. Baal explains that he’s preparing from the second-coming of someone. Jesus, maybe? Or Humphrey Bogart? And Baal says “people like you are getting in my way all the goddamn time, sir”. Meanwhile, Daredevil is trying to pinpoint the source of this hellish–heavinish–shrieking, and he can tell there’s a speaker on the wall somewhere.

Baal keeps on talking, but Daredevil’s not paying attention to this fool anymore. He has discovered patterns in the shrieking-angels.wav file, and has figured out exactly when the recording starts back over again. He has precisely one nanosecond to focus his mind and get something done, whatever that may be. Oh, ok, he needed to focus on where the speaker was so that he could throw one of his Big Daredevil Rod weapons at it and break the fucker. He does just that, and Baal gets worried. Daredevil leaps onto Baal like Baal is a delicious ham and starts trying to beat his face in, but then Daredevil is knocked out of the way by two scrawny guys from Archie Comics! Before they can really do much damage, Daredevil sprints out of there into the rainy Manhattan night completely disoriented and ruggedly hapless! He stumbles comically into traffic instead of, you know, staying still for three seconds?

The issue ends with Daredevil a moment away from getting hit by a truck! Woo!

Final Thoughts

Too much biblical mythology! Angels and demons don’t interest me quite nearly as much as this storyline requires from me! Baal? Suck on my baals, how about that?!

I don’t think I’ve seen Daredevil do anything truly heroic yet. I’ve seen him get assaulted repeatedly. I’ve seen him have no upper hand in any situation yet!

If this were truly a Kevin Smith production, we would be seeing lesbians throw themselves on Daredevil by now! Now I’m picturing Daredevil in a fucking hockey jersey. I wonder if he had to argue with penciller Joe Quesada about drawing Daredevil into a New Jersey Devils jersey with “DAREDEVIL #1” written on the back. Yuck.

I like this series so far! Lots of moral gray areas! I don’t trust Macabes one bit! That guy is too into the idea of systematically murdering babies! It’s like, mellow out man! Ok, I’m done.

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Daredevil (Vol. 2), Issue #2 (Legacy Issue #382) – “The Unexamined Life”! In the previous installment, we meet Matthew Murdock aka the Blind Lawyer aka Mr. Confused Jesus Freak aka The Man Without Fear (But Secretly Fears Everything) aka The Devil Whom Dares. A 16-year-old with a baby is on the run from some guys in a car that were hired to find her for some reason? Daredevil gets involved, which makes some unknown guy that I don’t know yet upset, and this unknown guy needs to rethink his strategy for, uh, chasing down teenage mothers? Eventually, this girl shows up at Murdock’s office, claims she conceived this baby immaculately, unloads him into Murdock’s arms because angels told her to, and then leaves. That part is funny!

There’s a lot of God stuff going on too, and Murdock tries to be a good Christian but there’s no one on Earth who is a good Christian so he should cut himself some slack. He’s also unsuccessfully trying to get over a breakup that happened six months ago, but he’s not good at that.

I think that’s it. Kevin Smith used to be fat but he’s not anymore, but now he looks like a marionette or something.

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Daredevil (Vol. 2), Issue #2 (Legacy Issue #382) [December, 1998]
Written by: Kevin Smith
“The Unexamined Life”

Matt Murdock used to date Natasha Romanov, and seasoned Marvel fans may know her as Black Widow or Scarlett Johanson, mother of COSMO. She’s there with Murdock as he’s feeding a baby. As you recall in the last issue, Murdock almost gave her a call but then was interrupted. She asks him why he did this–now, I don’t remember Black Widow’s super power but it’s possibly hearing phone calls before they’re actually made? He gives her the rundown, catching up Black Widow AND the audience in one convenient motion! She places a foot on the couch he’s sitting at with the baby, giving both Murdock and Kevin Smith a boner.

Natasha taunts him by insisting he’s lying and that it’s his kid. Murdock ignores this and then explains that the teenager knew he was Daredevil, which makes him uneasy. Natasha lets him know that Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin, knew this as well, and insinuates that maybe he’s involved. Murdock is skeptical that Fisk is involved anyway. The only thing I know about Wilson Fisk is that he’s big and fat! I hope this helps, you guys.

Murdock is like “I actually called you for something else”. And Natasha is like “Why, because you were boning your girlfriend and now you’re not boning your girlfriend and it makes you wish you were boning a girlfriend?”. And Murdock is like “Huuuuurrrrrr”. And Natasha is like “How dare you sir I am above this and you are the worst and ok we can bone”. And Murdock is like “Yeah right sister, not what I meant, here look after this baby while I go back to my office because you’re a woman and it comes naturally lol Kevin Smith wrote what I said”.

And he fucks off into the night!

Ha! I keep forgetting this is 1998 and that I guess people couldn’t do their aggressive Internet research at home with their shitty computers? Murdock is in his office using his office computer while being blind as shit, which probably doesn’t work as well as one would hope. Murdock’s secretary buzzes him to let him know that his 11:30pm appointment with Nicholas Macabes is ready, which confuses Murdock because it’s fucking 11:30pm. The secretary is also confused. I’m pretty confused too that his secretary is even working right now.

A rather pleasant-looking, possibly British, older gentleman with a suit and cane enters the office. He lights a pipe and sits down. “I believe you have in your care, a child” Macabes says.

Once Murdock asks him if he’s from social services, and Macabes cryptically responds in the affirmative with “it’s society I serve”, Macabes launches into a giant, wordy monologue you’d expect from, like, one of the Clerks movies, and it doesn’t offer any insight anyway. Like one of the Clerks movies! Long story short, the old man brings up the apocalypse, and Jesus Cunting Christ I already dealt with enough apocalypse shit in Action Comics!

Murdock asks what this apocalypse stuff has to do with him. Macabes tells him that the baby is the key. Murdock is getting annoyed. Macabes says a lot more words to show Kevin Smith’s reading audience that he knows how to crack open a thesaurus, and then tells Murdock that he’s the perfect person to raise such an antichrist, having “devil” in his superhero name and all! This pisses the blind guy off pretty badly. First Gwyneth, and now this blowjob? How does everyone know his secret identity??

Old Man Macabes tells Murdock that he’s a pawn; he’s been singled out as an accomplice in some super secret organization’s super secret apocalypse plans, and Macabes’ own super secret organization is trying to stop the bad super secret organization. The baby is bad news, man. Bad news indeed. If the kid grows up, that’s more bad news. So Murdock needs to do something about it! Snuff out that flame! Murder a baby! Murdock is shocked that this seems to be what Macabes is implying, but Macabes essentially tells him “Don’t worry! We’ll kill the baby for you!”

Murdock is all mad again, furrowing his brow angrily and hootin’ and hollerin’.”What is this organization you keep talking about?!” he spits and blusters. “One whose sole purpose is to see that the human race endures. Sheol.” Macabes calmly answers. *does a quick Google* Sheol is basically Hades, which is basically Hell right? Cool! Macabes warns Murdock that the longer he keeps the baby, the worse things will get for him. “You have 48 hours” he also says, undercutting everything serious about this in my opinion. He leaves Murdock in a complete state of overwhelmed confusion and departs.

Good ol’ Foggy steps in to add some much needed “comic” relief. Ahahahaha! Village People! Foggy, you so-and-so, you. Murdock is completely preoccupied, he doesn’t even laugh at this joke! Ahaha! Village People! I’m not even sure which Village Person he’s referring to exactly, must be the leather cop? It’s a stretch!

Murdock starts wandering the dark city streets. By now he’s convinced that Wilson Fisk the Fat Kingpin is involved somehow. As he hems and haws about this possibility, a thug with a knife steps out of the shadows and puts Murdock in a headlock. Murdock Headlock! Of course, being the superhero Daredevil and all, this doesn’t work out very well for the thug. He gets kicked in the shin and Murdock keeps on moving, but the thug throws out some rude comments about Murdock’s mother, so he breaks his teeth and shit. Once he realizes he’s overreacting and drawing the concerned attention of lookie-loos, he finally moves on.

He spends a boring page attempting to understand the thought process behind Gwyneth’s baby-unloading situation, talking about slipping into routines and some other who-cares armchair psychology. Meanwhile, we see Gwyneth finally getting caught and whisked away by the organization that was chasing her down in Issue #1. Well, that closes that chapter!

Oh wait, there’s still more. Murdock is Daredevil now, perched atop a tall building in the moonlight having a nice heart-to-heart with God, saying things just short of “fuck you”. Black Widow pops in with the baby, admitting that spending the day with the little poop factory was insightful as far as dredging up unknown maternal instincts were concerned. “For the first time in my life I hear my biological clock ticking”, she says, which sounds to me like a thinly-veiled attempt to get in Daredevil’s pants again! He ain’t having it.

Daredevil pulls Godwin’s Law, because of course. “If you knew what Hitler would eventually do, would you have killed him as a child?” Black Widow says HELL NAW! Take that kid somewhere else and raise him differently! Daredevil mutters about this, since he can’t just take the antichrist somewhere else and raise him differently. Bah. Black Widow is like “….so, uh, why the fuck are you asking this question while holding a baby?” He ignores her and just tosses the kid off the building, lmao. Black Widow moves fast, leaps off the building to catch the baby, and grapples back to the edge of the building. She seethes as Daredevil pulls them both back up. She knocks him down and insists on an explanation. He tells her it’s the antichrist. She laughs in his face.

Why is Murdock listening to some old man anyway about this? Just because he knew he was Daredevil? Black Widow challenges him about this, and Daredevil keeps grimacing and wincing like he swallowed a cactus. After getting nowhere, really, she gives up and takes the baby with her. “Go home, you’re acting like an asshole, you can’t save people by throwing babies off of buildings” she says, but I’m paraphrasing. She’s being too nice, honestly. Fuck this guy!

We cut to Lydia McKenzie’s residence. You remember her, right? Barely? She’s the woman Foggy brought into Murdock’s office before he got distracted by teenagers and babies. She was looking to get a divorce? Remember? Yeah, me neither! She and Foggy are walking around talking shop (you know, divorce shop), but she suddenly plants a big ol’ fat kiss on Foggy’s fat lips and pulls him into the bedroom (you know, to fuck). “Don’t worry, Counselor, I’m the soul of discretion” McKenzie says while some trench coat and hat wearing dude is around the corner noticing everything.

Murdock is back in his own humble abode, trying to make sense of all the events and feelings that have been hitting him in the last two days. Events like “I can’t believe I was given a baby!” and feelings like “I can’t believe I felt like killing a baby!”. And, as if things couldn’t get worse, a crying, mascara-smeared Karen Page shows up at his door.

She tells him she has AIDS.

Final Thoughts

I didn’t see that ending coming! Ha! What the unbridled fuck?

I know I’m spending a lot of time mocking Kevin Smith’s wordiness, but I actually enjoy the wordier comics. I’d rather have verbose recounts of semi-intelligent characters struggling with relatable internal conflicts than six pages in a row of vague impossible-to-follow Superman action scenes where he just says things like “NO!” and “YOU CAN’T DO THIS!” and “I WON’T GIVE UP!” and “YOU ARE BAD AND I AM GOOD!”.

I knew going into this that all the DC characters are godlike entities of pure good and all the Marvel characters are deeply flawed human beings, but man do I like this shit way better. I really like that Daredevil almost murdered a baby! Superman would never almost murder a baby!

I like it when my superheroes are toxic assholes or complete mental cases!

Reminds me of me!