#but i read something where it said brubaker deliberately went out of his way to make up for this comment^ when he got cap in his hands

[abuckygirl]

[pluckyredhead]

Daredevil 101: The Devil in Cell Block D, Part 2

That sweet sweet Matt-in-jail-and-suffering goodness continues! Reminder: this is DDv2 82-87, by Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark.

Last time, Foggy was stabbed and killed while visiting Matt in prison, and the supporting cast is determined to figure out who ordered the hit - Matt from inside Riker’s, Ben and Dakota from outside.

But in this story, EVERYONE GOES TO JAIL, and we haven’t stuffed enough people inside Riker’s yet. Enter the Punisher!

That couple in the last panel are a pimp and a prostitute. Frank looks at his newspaper, goes outside, and kills the dude. (I will spare you the panel of Frank murdering a black man with his bare hands.)

Okay, but why on earth would Frank get himself arrested just because Matt is in jail? Was he lonely or something?

UM YEAH, APPARENTLY HE WAS. This is just endlessly hilarious to me. THEY AREN’T EVEN FRIENDS, but Frank was so worried about Matt’s delicate psyche that he DELIBERATELY WENT TO PRISON to give him Mufasa’s “remember who you are” speech from The Lion King. BRING BACK THE NETFLIX SHOWS JUST FOR THIS. PLEASE.

Alternately, maybe he heard about Foggy’s death and thought there was an opening for a new best friend. Quick, Frank, put on a bowtie!

In more serious news, the prisoner who stabbed Foggy is found hanging in his cell (notably, before Matt can get to him). It’s staged to look like a suicide, but it’s clearly murder, and rumor around the prison is that Fisk was behind it. This was obviously always Matt’s first guess, so he confronts Fisk about it:

To be fair, Matt, it’s been firmly established that Fisk isn’t 100% sure who Foggy is. (“Is he the reporter? The blond girl? That twin brother of yours?”)

Anyway, Fisk didn’t have Foggy killed and doesn’t know who did, and aside from the anguish it’s created in Matt, he doesn’t really care. What he does care about is getting out of Riker’s alive:

Fisk tells Matt that there is a riot planned soon. The ringleaders plan to take the warden hostage and demand an escape helicopter. Oh, and in the chaos they also plan to kill both Fisk and Matt - Fisk as competition, Matt for putting so many of them behind bars. But, Fisk proposes, if he and Matt team up, they have a chance of making it out alive.

Matt doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t see another alternative, so he tentatively agrees.

When recess is over (okay I don’t know what they call it in prison), he discovers that he has a visitor: his wife. And she’s worried:

“REMEMBER WHO YOU ARRRRRE.” This storyline loves Mufasa.

Anyway this is probably why Foggy’s will has a line that says “I leave everything to Matt if he’s not dead already. Matt, please don’t go feral if I die first.” (Matt will go feral.)

Milla leaves just in time, because the riot is popping off. And Matt, just like Simba does, decides to thwart it by rescuing the warden:

Matt’s going to get the eff out of here, even if that means teaming up with Fisk. Meanwhile, another volatile element is about to be added to the fire:

Hey, Turk is here! I told you everyone was in jail in this story! Anyway maybe don’t let Bullseye out?

(He’s gonna let Bullseye out.)

EVERYONE IS IN JAIL. I literally don’t even know why Melvin is there. He hasn’t done any crimes in a really long time! Maybe he got himself arrested to hang out with Matt too.

Matt fights his way through to where Fisk is taking on all comers:

Part of what makes this story so good is how viscerally satisfying and downright thrilling it is to see Matt and Fisk fighting a sheer wave of opponents side by side. It’s never happened before or since, and there’s something about how very surprising and badass it is that is absolutely Diana in No Man’s Land, Nightcrawler in the White House, Avengers vs. Chitauri levels of cool. It just makes me want to yell (in a good way!).

AND THEN THEY UP THE ANTE! Because Bullseye comes to join them, gleefully firing rifles into the crowd - and that’s when Matt hits his line. Even for his freedom, even to avenge Foggy, he can’t team up with Bullseye. He can’t be party to this. That’s not the man Milla and Foggy love.

Lol whoops. Matt knocks Bullseye out, and just like that, his two greatest foes are incapacitated.

But Matt’s got one more trick up his sleeve:

Frank, hilariously, has just been calmly sitting in his open cell, shooting anyone who attacks him and reading in between. Presumably said reading material is a script for a porno set in a prison, because “You plannin’ to use that thing?” while Matt waves a rifle around at crotch height is just. *chef kiss*

See, the rioters have already gotten the prison to call that escape helicopter. So for the benefit of the security cameras, Matt and Frank make it look like Frank has taken poor innocent blind Matt hostage in order to commandeer said helicopter. This means that theoretically, once this is all over, Matt still has enough plausible deniability to return to his old life - something he hadn’t cared about between Foggy’s death and now.

Thus Matt and Frank escape:

Still so fucking funny to me.

Matt’s next order of business? Figure out who the hell the Fake Daredevil is (remember him?). So Matt confronts him and it’s...pretty clear right away:

It’s Danny!!! Did you guess it?

Danny’s confused that Matt’s confused, because he thought he was working for Matt. Or, more specifically, he was hired to be Fake Daredevil by a lawyer named Alton Lennox, and assumed Lennox had been brought in by Foggy, to cast doubt on Matt’s identity while keeping Foggy’s hands clean. Alton Lennox, remember, is also the man who hired the man who killed Foggy:

Matt and Danny try to track down Lennox and run into Dakota and Ben, who are doing the same thing. It turns out that Lennox has fled the country and gone to Monaco, so Matt decides to pursue him. Ben thinks this is Matt being an idiot and throwing away what’s left of his life:

“It’s already cost more than I could bear.” ABLUBLUBLU ;_______;

So Matt heads off to Monaco, hot on the trail of the one man who can tell him who ordered the death of his best friend in the world, Franklin “Foggy” Nelson. And meanwhile...

GASP!!! Foggy’s alive!!! And he’s in the witness protection program somewhere in the suburbs (Matt’s worst nightmare, obvs).

Now, obviously you and I, 15 years or so in the future, knew he wasn’t really dead, but the readers at the time did not. This final page of the storyline is the first indication. I cannot imagine how livid I would have been while reading this comic, and how relieved at the end.

Next time: Why is Foggy in witness protection? Why hasn’t he contacted Matt? Why did he grow that luxuriant mustache? All will be revealed in...Matt Murdock’s Monaco Madness! (Sadly not the actual name of the storyline.)