"Daredevil: Dead Man's Hand" by D.G. Chichester, Gregory Wright,, Fabian Nicieza, Chuck Dixon, Glenn Herdling, George Caragonne and Ann Nocenti

            This is a review of the Marvel Epic Collection “Daredevil, the Man Without Fear!: Dead Man’s Hand” graphic novel by D.G. Chichester, Gregory Wright, Fabian Nicieza, Chuck Dixon, Glenn Herdling, George Caragonne, and Ann Nocenti.

            As a child, Matt Murdock saved a man from being hit by a truck. The truck was carrying radioactive chemicals. The chemicals splashed into young Matt’s eyes, blinding him. But, in the absence of sight, the chemicals heightened his other senses, enough to give him a 360-degree “radar sight.” He went on to become a lawyer and with his law school roommate Franklin “Foggy” Nelson, started the Nelson and Murdock Law Firm. Matt decided to use his gifts in the service of mankind and to deal out justice that a lawyer can’t. His preferred weapon is a billy club, and he took on the name Daredevil.

            As Daredevil, Matt has come up against Wilson Fisk/New York’s Kingpin of Crime many times, as has tried to take him down as both Matt Murdock and Daredevil. After many years as antagonists, Kingpin has been defeated and discredited, lying low in the subway tunnels as a homeless derelict. But Fisk’s fall from grace has left open a power play to declare just who now controls New York City’s criminal racket. The first one to try to replace Fisk is Leland Owlsley/the Owl, who has been severely disabled after many battles with super heroes and vigilantes operating in Hell’s Kitchen (pardon my language). However, the Owl was not able to fill Fisk’s void.

            Daredevil stays awake for 34 hours straight and does all he can to save people from minor, daily, everyday, and easily avoidable accidents.

            Following the Owl’s defeat, Matt finds himself allied against the Surgeon General, an insane doctor who casts after men who fill her needs and does unpleasant things to them. As Peter Parker, Spider-Man tries to lure out the Surgeon General so he and Daredevil can get the Surgeon General to put down her scalpel.

            After this, young Max Mumm creates a computer program called Ultra-Max, which turns self-propagating and threatens all cyberspace. The cyborg Deathlok enters cyberspace and attempts to destroy Ultra-Max from the inside, while Daredevil must protect Max from the powered killer Bushwhacker.

            Matt has a nightmare of going up against Daredevil’s ten worst enemies.

            The Crippler fights the Wildboys to keep New York’s subways safe.

            Daredevil helps a boy called Eightball from a group of kids calling themselves the Fatboys prove to that his crush Darla’s boyfriend Tommy is a two-timing thug and prove his worth to her.

            Matt and Foggy travel to Las Vegas on a law case. All the worst in the Underworld gather together in Vegas to discuss who will fill in the vacancies in the fallen Fisk’s criminal enterprises. These include organizations such as Hydra, the Hand, the Secret Empire, and also includes other mob figures such as Hammerhead, Tombstone and Silvermane. When Matt hears of the gathering, he teams up with Jack Monroe/Nomad and Frank Castle/Punisher to drive the villains out of Vegas, while protecting the masked baby, Bucky and other associates of the trio. However, Matt, Jack and Frank have very different methods of dealing with their enemies, and their alliance is highly fragile.

            Upon leaving Vegas and returning to New York, a demonic Daredevil doppelganger is stalking New York City, and the mystic huntress Calypso attempts to establish control of Matt’s body and soul as her zombie servant.

            Finally, Daredevil swings through the snowy city in order to deliver a Christmas gift to a deserving child.

            The thought of a team-up can be exciting. This book had two team-ups, both of which I feel compliment Daredevil perfectly. Daredevil and Spidey have teamed-up many times over the years, but I didn’t enjoy the Surgeon General conflict. I don’t feel like there was much use for her. I felt that this whole team-up against someone who has no powers but was just crazy is really a waste. And the Surgeon General’s profiling was pointless since in all honesty she just wanted something unpleasant from them and not in a romantic way, why did they just have to be aesthetically pleasing? Now, the Daredevil/Punisher/Nomad crossover lived up to my expectations. Daredevil fights injustice and Punisher fights injustice, but their different methods to fight injustice that puts them at odds always feels natural to me. They both want the same things, with the difference being the vital status of their opponents. Seeing Matt and Frank going up against the entire super villain mob excited me, and throwing in Nomad, whose policies are a combination of Matt and Frank was just the icing on the cake for me. And a story arc with characters that complement each other that’s a nine-issue crossover always gets me excited, and my prior readers will know how I feel about crossovers. For me, though, the Owl story kind of fell flat. I’ve never really liked the Owl as a villain, and with impaired as he was, the fight didn’t feel even to me. This is not to say disabled people can’t fight (I’m disabled myself), but I just didn’t think it was a fair fight. I have to severely say that I feel the story of Ultra-Max really shouldn’t have been included. I get that they wanted to include the annual since it was released at the time of the other issues, but it was a crossover of annual issues, and I felt so confused by reading a story that was Part 2, but not only did it not have Part 1 with no recap, but it also didn’t continue past Part 2, so I only read an excerpt of a story, and it was like turning a movie on the television half an hour in and then being unable to finish the movie before the end because of someone else’s desire to watch a soap opera superseded my wishes to watch the movie. It just felt so unfair. The Calypso story was a little wonky, with a demon Daredevil and a zombie Matt Murdock, especially since the conception of a zombie in the Marvel Universe in 1992 changed drastically in the following years and does not gel with what we’ve seen in other zombie stories such as “Resident Evil” and even the “Marvel Zombies” installment wasn’t consistent to this story. I did find the 34 Hours issue to be enjoyable. It was a lighthearted issue that stood out from everything else in the book. The three bonus stories in the annual bored me. I didn’t feel the need to iterate some of Matt’s greatest enemies in a nightmare did all that much for the book, the subway story felt completely pointless, and the Fatboys story felt like something that would have been shown in a video I would have been watching in middle school health class. The Christmas story being told from the perspective of a toy lamb… well, I know it was a Holiday Special issue and needed to be light and uplifting, so I won’t say anything against it, but if it were in any other kind of comic, I’d totally put it down. Now, one of the most important points of a comic book is the artwork. The artwork can make all the difference. You can have a great story with poor art or a poor story with great art. That is, after all, why it’s called a “graphic novel.” The issues included in this book ranged from 1992-1993, and this style had a uniqueness of its own.
I always thought early ‘90s art to be high quality. This was when comic books were actually hand-drawn with no computer graphics aid, and I’ve always been a fan of it. The artwork in this book did not disappoint me. In fact, I thought the art in the Calypso story arc was exceptional. In some cases, I liked the artwork way better than the story. The nine-issue “Dead Man’s Hand” crossover story just felt perfect to me. I loved the story, I loved the art, can’t get any better than that. Now, I know kids these days would pick up this book and find the art to be horrible due to today’s standards, and I’ve read comics from the 1940s that I thought that are was kind of tacky, and that’s the way generations work (like “Star Trek”: “The Original Series” versus “The Next Generation”). Now, for me, another key point in any form of writing is the tone. To me, I like a story that’s serious but fun. There’s got to be high stakes (no pun intended), but it still has to have a few light moments. I felt that this book had this tone for most of the stories, with the exceptions being the Annual side stories and the Holiday special story, which violated this very heavily, but the main stories frequently had its appeals to me. I must also include the fact that in this graphic novel, Matt had no home and was living in his law office, which actually really made me sad. I come from a lower class American family, but I’ve always had a roof over my head, so I can’t imagine how hard that must be, but I also have to say seeing Wilson Fisk living in the subway to be both pleasing and sad. Here was this man who had everything, and he messed up so badly he lost everything, and it just seemed so sad to me. Yes he’s evil and this is his comeuppance, but still, it is kind of sad.

            Now, of course, a review wouldn’t be complete without some kind of rating. First, I will say that fans of Daredevil, whether from cartoon appearances, or Fox, or Netflix or No Way Home who have never read a Daredevil comic before and want a place to start, this book could be a good choice. I feel that this book was mostly self-contained but there are a few things alien to this book, like the Ultra-Max story, and Nomad has been an obscure character for more than a decade, but enough about him was explained that I don’t think not knowing him would be detrimental (I started regularly reading in 2001 and had never read a Nomad story before, I’m not even sure I knew of him). If you’re a fan of Daredevil comics, I suppose there is plenty to like. Also, this is a Daredevil book and not a Punisher of Nomad book, so despite nine issues in this book being a crossover, Daredevil stole the story from them. But if you like Punisher or Nomad, this trio team-up isn’t all that bad. I happen to read every current Marvel Comics series and love most of them, so I can’t be too objective, though, so don’t just go by my word, but if this is something you yourself actually want to read based on this review, I do encourage you to find a way to get to read this book. Now that I’ve said who I feel this book is for, I must take everything into account to give a numeric score. My scale ranges from one to ten, one being the worst, ten being the best. Judging by everything I read and everything I just wrote, I score it at a seven. It was decent enough, but could have been quite a bit better.

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