October 31, 2018- DAREDEVIL #610

Just one release this week, but it’s a cool one - the second part of “The Death of Daredevil,” issue #610. Written by me, art & cover by Phil Noto and letters by VC’s Clayton Cowles. Notes after the cover!

As you know by now, if you’ve read the issue, each of the four chapters of Death of Daredevil is named after a different fear. The first was Thanatophobia (fear of death), and while that’s been the driver for the story as a whole, this issue is called “Pistanthrophobia,” which is defined in different ways. I call it “the fear of bad romance.” Or, more particularly, the fear that you’ll never have another good relationship because of how badly your prior relationships have gone.

Who does that describe better than Daredevil? In this issue, I explored that idea through Elektra, the poster child for bad love. Matt and Elektra are not good for each other, and they know that, but they just can’t stop.

The idea with this whole story is to look at fears Daredevil has despite being the Man Without Fear. He might not by afraid of the typical sort of things you and I would (spiders, heights, whatever,) but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing - and each chapter has a new one to explore.

Fun fact with this issue - pages 1-3, which include Matt and Elektra having some, er, fun adult times together, were originally more fun and more adult. Phil Noto did an incredible job with them, I think - but we had to scale the art back a little to fit the rating. It wasn’t massive changes, just tweaks and shading and shadows, but it’s fun to think that there’s a version of those pages out there (I have it!) where Daredevil and Elektra just went to town.

Next installment, in two weeks: the next part of Death of Daredevil, #611, and Darth Vader #23!