Talk About A Paranoid Town
Daredevil kicks off his road to redemption with a story that is not poorly written or illustrated but does suffer from mostly being cliche. It is the standard "stranger comes to town" story, starring Matt Murdock.
That is the single thing that hurts the issue the most. It is hard not to see how the story plays out from the first few pages because we have all seen this scenario played out countless times. Plus, Andy Diggle really does not seem to have a unique twist on it. Matt sits down at the diner and does very little to stir up suspicion beyond just existing. Yet, the whole town proceeds to trip over itself in a frenzy of unwarranted paranoia over him. The behavior of the townspeople really does come off as ridiculous and is contrived just to beat Matt and us over the head with the idea that shady dealings are going on there. You would think someone as intuitive like Matt could come to this conclusion in a less over-the-top fashion.
This is not to say Matt is poorly written in this issue. He isn't at all. Diggle writes Matt pretty well. There is a very nice scene between Matt and a blind boy in the town that serves as the high point of the issue, and the character rings true in the rest of the scenes as well.
Matt loses his mystery man status rather quickly and almost awkwardly as his new enemies have no problem learning his name and even that he is probably Daredevil. Yet, then some of the thugs who come after him act like it should be no problem taking care of a blind man, as if they wouldn't have been told he was probably a superhero in the same sentence they were told he was blind.
In a way, this series is very similar to Superman's Grounded story arc going on right now. Matt has abandoned his responsibilities at home to make his way across the country, whining to himself and being plagued with self-doubt for reasons that are hard for readers to really relate to. That is the one thing that will probably hurt the rest of this series. It makes perfect sense for Matt's character to beat himself up with his own guilt. He always has. But those of us who read Shadowland know that Matt was really just possessed by the Beast. He stopped behaving anything like Matt very early into that story. There was really not subtlety about it in Shadowland at all. So it is a little hard for readers to get on board with Matt's own need for redemption.
Daredevil Reborn doesn't get off to a strong start, but it is not a bad issue. It mostly just suffers from kicking off with one big cliche, which is something that shouldn't drag down future issues of the series. Matt beating himself up over Shadowland is at least understandable for the character though a little tiresome. Depending on how Diggle handles that, this series could easily get better as he goes on.