Daredevil: End of Days #8 (of 8)
Written by Brian Michael Bendis and David Mack
Pencils by Klaus Janson
Finished Art by Bill Sienkiewicz
Painted Art by David Mack
Colors by Matt Hollingsworth
Review by Joey Braccino
All is revealed as Brian Michael Bendis and David Mack’s era-defining version of the Daredevil narrative reaches its conclusion in Daredevil: End of Days. Bendis and Mack took over Daredevil way back in the early 2000s and sent Murdock and a downward spiral of nervous breakdowns and bloody, bloody grit and grime. That rendering of the Daredevil mythos carried the character through several creative teams including writers like Bendis, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, and Andy Diggle and artists like Alex Maleev, Michael Lark, Stefano Guadiano, Roberto De La Torre, and Billy Tan. It was only the recent Mark Waid relaunch that saw Murdock rise of the shadows as it were, but for most of the modern era, Daredevil has been all street all day every day.
While Waid weaves his nuanced character profile over in Daredevil, Bendis and Mack have been revisited the seedy underbelly of their Daredevil run with the “final Daredevil story” as it were with Daredevil: End of Days. Way back in issue #1, Matt Murdock himself was (not really a spoiler) murdered by Bullseye. The last eight issues have dealt with the mystery of Murdock’s final words, the fallout from the fall of the superheroes, and Ben Urich’s quest for truth. In many ways, this wasn’t so much the last Matt Murdock story as it was the last Ben-Urich-Searching-For-The-Meaning-Behind-The-Myth-Of-Daredevil story. Given the cliffhanger of issue #7, the events of this final issue carry an intense feeling of finality for all characters involved. I can’t go into much, but I’ll let you know what is resolved:
1) What (or who) is “Mapone?” CHECK
2) Who is that Daredevil running around the rooftops? And what is his/her connection to Murdock and Urich? CHECK (Hint: Mack’s painted artwork throws back to Daredevil #16 from like 2000)
3) Were any of those red-headed children running around over the last 7 issues Matt Murdock’s kid? CHECK
4) Was Nick Fury just kidding when he said he didn’t know what Mapone was? CHECK (And of course he was!)
5) Can comics legends Klaus Janson and Bill Sienkiewicz deliver some stellar, grit-tastic artwork for an eigth issue in a row? CHECK AND YES!!!
Verdict
Buy! The series as a whole is definitely worth a look. Again, it’s difficult for these “The Last Story” minis to really achieve a sense of finality without gratuitous death. Seeing as how Bendis and Mack killed the main character off in the very first sequence of the first issue eight months ago, Daredevil: End of Days was always going to be about something else. On more levels than just plot, Daredevil: End of Days is much more about legacy than it is death, and that’s what makes it one of the best Daredevil and comics stories in recent memory.
