Daredevil: Know Fear

Daredevil by Chip Zdarsky, Vol. 1: Know Fear by Chip Zdarsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Know Fear collects issues 1-5 of Daredevil by Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto, and Sunny Gho. And it's pretty damn spectacular.

Daredevil has been one of my favorite super heroes in recent years. I loved Mark Waid's lighter run on the character and Frank Miller's Born Again is a masterpiece. I passed on Charles Soule's run but decided to give this a shot after enjoying Zdarsky's recent Spider-Man book.

Anyway, this is great stuff. Matt Murdock returns to his role as Daredevil a little too soon, setting off a series of mishaps that leave him in a pretty bad place by the end of the book. Since there are quite a few issues after #5, I'm assuming Zdarsky is going to rebuild Matt from the ground up but this would be a sad swan song for Daredevil if you left things here.

The art by Marco Checchetto and Sunny Gho is gritty but not overpoweringly so. Their Hell's Kitchen feels dirty as hell, no place you'd want to visit. Daredevil's costume has a few extra lines but looks a lot more realistic and practical than his normal iconic red duds.

Daredevil: Know Fear is one hell of a beginning to what looks to be a very promising run. Four out of five stars.

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