Daredevil’s Fight To Save New York City Has Given Him A Surprising New Career

In the wake of Daredevil’s recent win in the Supreme Court — where he successfully argued that masked vigilantes should be able to testify without revealing their secret identities — all of New York City’s supervillains have set their sights on the man without fear.

Daredevil as he faces off against Mayor Wilson Fisk.Image: Ron Garney, Matt Milla (Marvel)

With the new law in place, criminals like Wilson Fisk have quickly grasped what a precarious position they’re in, now that the vigilantes who most often catch them in the act of committing crimes can actually work with the police to put them behind bars. Rather than waiting for the inevitable moment where he would have been taken down, Fisk devised a plan to play on the public’s anxieties related to the activities of superheroes and villains.

In promising to criminalise vigilantism, Fisk made it that much easier to gain the allegiances of the city’s other crimelords who’ve since been enjoying a new kind of freedom.

But while Daredevil might not be in the best position to take on Fisk and his associates, Matt Murdock (who’s most recently been working in the District Attorney’s office) still is — something that Fisk is also keenly aware of.

In an effort to keep his enemy close and under his control, Fisk appoints Matt to be his new deputy mayor, something that makes Fisk’s downfall in this week’s Daredevil #600, written by Charles Soule with art from Ron Garney and Matt Milla, such an odd turn of events.

With the Inhuman serial killer (and artist) Muse wreaking havoc across the city, Daredevil and a number of other classic Defenders come out of the woodwork to protect their neighbourhood and hopefully have a chance to put Fisk away for collusion in the process.

When all of Fisk’s criminal associates — like Black Cat and Hammerhead — convene at a designated meeting point, New York’s heroes stand by ready to catch their mayor red-handed. When Fisk doesn’t show — something very out of character for him — the heroes realise that they have been set up and that the crooked politician is hiding somewhere where he could alert the police to their (also illegal) congregation.

It’s Daredevil who’s ultimately able to break away from the fracas in order to track down Fisk. The two fight and Fisk actually manages to best Daredevil, leaving him unconscious for the police to arrest him. As Fisk’s celebrating his political and physical victory over his opponents, though, he’s suddenly stuck with a volley of arrows fired off from a horde of Hand ninjas who descend upon him at a political rally.

As it turns out, the hero Blindspot (one of the few survivors from Muse’s killing spree) has been capable of tapping into the mystical energies of the Beast, the demonic being that gives the Hand its ability to resurrect the dead.

During a rematch with Muse, Blindstop invokes the Beast’s power, again setting off a complicated series of events that culminate in the attempt on Fisk’s life. Every time Muse taps into the Beast, its influence in the physical world becomes more pronounced, as does its desire to interfere with Daredevil’s life.

With Fisk’s life in mortal danger, he’s unable to act as the city’s mayor, meaning that under normal circumstances the public advocate would become his temporary replacement. But, Fisk being the corrupt politician that he is, not only made it possible for himself to serve a third term, he also changed the bylaws to make it so that the deputy mayor is to act in his stead.

So, Matt hasn’t just been captured by the cops with his secret identity in danger of being revealed, he’s also got a brand-spankin’ new job and a whole lot more responsibilities than he has the bandwidth to handle right now.