To get up every day, to try to live--just feels masochistic

Daredevil #254 (1988)

Chosen by me from my shelf as part of my Daredevil theme week

Ann Nocenti's run is perhaps overshadowed by some of the more famous ones I've already covered but it's good stuff and worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as the others.

It'd been a while since I read any of it though and I had forgotten how bleak in tone it was.

Nobody is happy in this issue.

Matt Murdoch is single minded, obsessive and forgets that he is not blind in the same way everyone else is. A young kid eloquently points this out to him. Which is a sometimes needed wake up call for a book that often only pays lip service to blindness. The kid doesn't need to 'see' like daredevil does, he needs to get on being himself.

The issue also sees the introduction of Typhoid Mary a potentially problematic riff on multiple personalities but so far removed from reality (she has telekinetic and pyrokinetic powers) that it seems less a commentary on mental health and more a mixing up of some horror and super-hero tropes.

She's such a weird, strong presence that she threatens to unbalance the issue as you kind of just want the whole thing to be about her.

This was also Romita Jnr at the height of his powers. Kingpin and Mary couldnt be more different but both present raw strength in compelling ways (I could also almost want to spend the issue just watching Fisk play squash) that contrast yet again with Daredevil's more lithe athletic movements.