Daredevil: Black Armor #1 Review

Daredevil: Black Armor #1 Review

He’s Back In Battlin’ Black

“When Matt Murdock was a kid, he lost his sight in an accident involving radioactive chemicals. Though he could no longer see, the chemicals heightened Murdock’s other senses and imbued him with an amazing 360-degree radar sense.

Now Matt uses his abilities to fight for his city. He is a man without fear. He is Daredevil. After Matt’s red suit was destroyed in battle, Matt donned an armored costume to better protect him in his quest to protect Hell’s Kitchen.”

D.G. Chichester has struck a chord that resonated with me so deeply that I had to share it with all of you. Listen to this gut-punching dialogue in the caption, “What the courts can’t fix, fists can. But what violence can solve—the law should,” end quote, and that’s just paraphrasing the lesser of a larger sum of what makes Daredevil so gritty and grim.

As Matt Murdock ditches his past life with the destruction of his fabled red suit, he buzzes with the help of an old friend, Melvin Potter, to patch up an old suit. Matt now goes by Jack Batlin, a memorial to his late father’s ring name, Battlin’ Jack. Black armor, Electra in white, and Sabertooth’s, oh my! Hell’s Kitchen just got a lot stranger, or cooler. Depending on who talks to the pendulum, it could swing either way.

Let’s take a minute and give some love to this awesome 50th anniversary, Howard. The Duck in Red cameo cover by Gustavo Durate. It’s funny and memorable, and I feel like it provokes a cool little What if? story, if you look closely enough.

D.G. Chichester isn’t a first-timer to the Daredevil franchise; in fact, his Hell’s Kitchen visa is just being brushed off for this mini-series, allowing him to finish what he started. He previously wrote the Fall From Grace and Fall of Kingpin stories, which made some big waves among fans.

Speculative rumors are whispering that these two stories helped influence the direction of how Echo might plug into Kingpin’s demise in the upcoming Echo series set to release on Disney Plus. What I loved in this issue was the brilliant union and synchronicity of Daredevil’s sensory abilities.

I’ve always found this to be a unique and difficult ability to capture on the page for both a writer and an artist. Sound is invisible to the naked eye, yet the pages within Black Armor #1 capture its essence. In this first issue, Chichester picks up where he left off, with Matt now playing the con artist Jack Batlin, but why?

Jack’s already made a scene on his block getting to know the local street talents, especially keen interest in a blonde psychic who comes very close to drawing all but Jack’s identity from her Tarot deck. Jack never really stops being Matt but does more of what Matt wished he could before he faked his death—back when it was just Murdock and Nelson.

As Jack, he’s a helper to those who need help, a savior to those who need a miracle, and a mentor to those who seek to pave their road to justice. I salute Chichester’s direction for not only showing us around Hell’s Kitchen but also capturing the essence of why Daredevil is so needed. By doing this, he not only recaptures what motivates Daredevil but also educates new readers about the franchise, honoring Stan Lee’s time-honored motto of “treat every comic like a reader’s first comic.”

A few patrols in, Jack in Black comes face-to-face with Wilson Fisk because people are missing all over the city, and he has to find out who is behind it. Wilson eludes to a location at the tracks where whispering tongues of the criminal underworld have been warned to stay away from, but Daredevil puts Wilson on notice by crushing his car.

If you’d like to know what Daredevil found at the tracks, then I suggest you rush your page-turning fingers to your nearest comic shop and grab one of the four awesome covers. While you’re at it, pre-order Daredevil Black Armor #2, set to release on December 20th, just in time for the holidays.

With Sabertooth and Hoblin teaming up against Hell’s Kitchen’s guardian on the cover, one can only assume what D.G. Chichester has in store for us. As always, stay geeky, share the network, and don’t forget to catch me on the latest episode of Comics’N’Poptarts.