Matt Murdock died and went to hell, but now he's back amongst the living, with a degree of amnesia, and working as a priest in Hells Kitchen. How long will his new blissful lease on life last? About half an issue.
The mystery is pretty quickly solved, however, as we learn that Elektra has been slipping money under the door of the church for a while now, and has been using favours, threats, and bribes to keep the place from being closed down. She's doing this to help Matthew out, to let him live the peaceful life that he's earned for himself. Unfortunately, a demonic entity is also keeping an eye on Matthew, and possesses Elektra's body.
The possessed Elektra breaks into Matt's room at the church, and her presence begins to unlock memories within him. After Elektra leaves, Matt takes off across the city rooftops, dressed all in black and with a rag ties over his face, heading towards her apartment that he now remembers the location of. Here, he battles the demon, and eventually exorcises it. After a chat, Elektra offers to step down as Daredevil, and is willing to help Matt get his old life back. Matt, however, doesn't want to give up on his church, as wants to remain a priest. This looks like it might not be on the cards for Matt, however, as the issue ends with police banging on the church doors, demanding Father Matthew give himself up.
There's one problem I had with the issue though, it felt really dull. Nothing happened here that excited me. There was never a moment that felt truly original, nor new enough that I felt glad to be reading the book. The fact that the book also doesn't seem to want to let anything sit for a while also felt a bit off to me too. Matt has amnesia, wait, no he doesn't. Matt isn't Daredevil anymore, actually, he's in the costume again. Matt wants to keep his new life, oh no, the cops are here and look to be after him. The book gives us this new status-quo, then immediately seems to want to get rid of it. Perhaps I'd have found more in the story to interest me if some of these things were given some time to breathe before things were changed.
One thing that was very well done, however, was the art. Don't worry, despite the cover having John Romita Jr art he doesn't do the interiors, instead that falls to Aaron Kuder and Jesus Aburtov on art and colours respectively. The book looks really neat and bright, and has a very light feel to it. However, the stand out moments are when the demon possesses Elektra. The demon, who's human-like but huge, kind of wears Elektra like a beard. His head takes the place of her own head, with her body hanging beneath, whilst his own body lays around behind her. It creates this really odd, really jarring visual of this huge monster man with a woman's body hanging under his head. These pages are worth checking out just to see how well the team execute the set-up.
Overall, I was somewhat dissapointed with this as the start to a new Daredevil series. Whilst it felt easy and accessible, it also did little to get me excited for the next issue.
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