TITLE: Daredevil vol. 4, Issue #8
YEAR: 2014
COMPANY: Marvel Comics
Storytellers: Mark Waid & Chris Samnee
Colorist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna
Cover: Samnee & Wilson
Editor: Ellie Pyle
Editor-in-Chief: Axel Alonso
Having a thorough collection of the first two volumes of “Daredevil”, I have been told that Mark Waid’s “Daredevil” is worth reading.
I heard that this version of Daredevil is happier and that there are many changes that has happened since I last read “Daredevil”. For one, the world knows that Matt Murdock is Daredevil and that he has moved with to San Francisco to start his new law practice and has a new girlfriend named Kirsten McDuffie.
In this eighth issue, a child is awakened as kids with purple skin have broken into the home. As his mother sees them, she tries to rescue her son and tries to call for help, she is stopped by Zebediah Killgrave a.k.a. “Purple Man” (his first appearance was in “Daredevil” vol. 1 issue #4, 1964). Purple Man puts her in a hypnosis and as he and his young followers leave along with the woman’s child, the mother jumps off the building and kills herself.
Meanwhile, Matt and his girlfriend meet her parents and her step-father immediately offers Matt a proposition, he will give him eight million dollars as an advance on a book titled “The Autobiography of Daredevil, The Man Without Fear”.
As Daredevil meets up with cops of the scene of a woman who jumped off the building, a man has video on his phone of those who approached the room and once Daredevil sees the footage, he realizes that the person in the video is Killgrave, a former spy who experimented on nerve gas which gave him the power of mind control.
But as Killgrave is talking to his purple young followers and is shocked that his mind control is not working and to his surprise, the children have united and use mind control on him, sending him onto the oncoming cable car, killing him.
Needless to say, with the purple kids now in control, what chaos will they create in the city?
Overall, this latest issue is awesome as we get to see Purple Man return in “Daredevil”. Having seen him in “X-Man” and his daughter Persuasion in the pages of “Alpha Flight”, it was cool to see Killgrave make an appearance but even more surprising as his purple minions are able to break out of his mind control and take over his mind.
Needless to say, it sets up an interesting confrontation with Daredevil in issue #9.
For the most part, having read darker Daredevil stories for decades, it was interesting to read a story with a more hipper, happier Matt Murdock.