DAREDEVIL #22

We, the people of the jury, hereby declare Charles Soule and Goran Sudzuka guilty for crimes committed against the following comic book published by Marvel in July, 2017. For their penance, we've decided to sentence them to sing a very annoying song with Miley Cyrus, and may God have mercy on their souls. Amen.

TO QUOTE A Judge, any Judge, except Judge Reinhold: 'Order in the court'.

THE REVIEW:

Every day, the superhero community leave's it up to the judicial system to charge, defend, and finally decide on what type of punishment their foes have to face, be it incarceration or anything else under their purview. The problem with them doing this, however, is that occasionally some of their foes are able to slip through the proverbial net, mainly because the superheroes who've captured them weren't willing to reveal their true identities in a court of law. That is, until today, or to be more specific about it, issue 22 of Daredevil, part two of Supreme, where the man without fear has taken to the stand in order to give evidence against a known enemy.

Last month, Matt managed to orchestrate a plan in which he observed a group of terrorists attempting to blow up a public building. Daredevil, alongside two of his allies, Echo and Luke Cage, eventually stopped these criminals from causing too much damage, and this resulted in one of them, namely, The Slug, aka Mr Simon Slugansky, being caught and charged for his crimes. Today, Daredevil is willing to testify against him in a court of law, even if he has to take off his mask to do so.

But fear not; Matt has another plan up his sleeve, a plan which is more to do with bureaucracy and legislation than punching a bunch of criminals in their collective faces. You see, behind-the-scenes, Matt has devised a legalized document which can negate him from revealing his true identity while testifying. But, for him to do this, his alter-ego has to be there, physically, in the courtroom and giving evidence, so that his formalized legislation can be used as a precedent, a legal example, which will then hopefully allow other superheroes to do a similar thing in the future.

Yet will he be able to pull this off? Will Matt's master plan be able to persuade the judge as well as defend itself against any sort of cross-examination? This issue has the answer, and trust me, the way in which it goes about showing this answer is so compelling to read, I literally yelled at the page every time Daredevil or his legal team came under attack by those who opposed them.

Well, as Matt is Daredevil, he can't be on the stand and act as his lawyer at the same time. So what he's decided to do is to recruit two of his colleagues, Ms Porter & Mr Perez, to represent him during the court case, while also excusing 'Matt's absence' because of his supposed friendship with his red-suited counterpart.

From my point of view this is a very suspenseful and compelling story, simply because Charles Soule was able to elevate it to being more than just another run-of-the-mill courtroom drama. I particularly liked how the overall plot slowly evolved in stages, starting off with its initial set up before rolling on to testimony, deliberation, counter-attack, and finally, full-on attack.

No. Don't worry. I won't say any more than that as I don't want to spoil the surprise. Yet what I will say is that Charles's story was greatly aided by Goran's artwork. Not only was he able to convey emotion and feeling through each of the characters he drew, but on top of that, he composed each panel to enhance those feelings, which basically elevated the final story to personable proportions.

So yeah, all in all this issue of Daredevil was a really great read. The art was good, the story was compelling, and I can't wait to see what happens next month.

THE MUSIC:

Now there are two very specific reasons why I'm going to musically match up this issue to the theme tune heard at the start of Law and Order. The first reason can be seen in the following section, where as the second reason is because most of this story is set in a courtroom. Yeah. Simple as that really. Case dismissed. Dong-Dong!

THE COMPARISON:

This story is mainly focused on Matt Murdock trying to pass a new legal directive through a court of law. And to me, whenever I hear the word 'law', I always think of, yes, you guessed it, that great TV show, Law and Order.

THE CONCLUSION:

At the very end of this book we see one of Daredevil's old enemies pointing at a newspaper headline and acting very-very cross. So, for the sake of his blood-pressure, let's see if you can guess what the headline says out of the following eight options? Could it be…