Dark Side of the Moon
I haven't read Daredevil comics for a while and when I first heard about 'Shadowland' I decided to "restore" what I missed and began reading the comics from issue 82 'The Devil in Cell-Block', where Brubaker took over the series.They were good moment and bads too.My favorite stories where 'Without Fear' , 'Lady Bullseye' , 'Return of the King' and now 'The Left Hand Path'.
Background:
The whole 'Shadowland' story is the outgrowth of what happened to Matt Murdock aka. Daredevil in the last months.First his identity as Daredevil was made public, than he was incarcerated in the Federal Prison Rykers.Escaping with the help of the Punisher, he thought his friend Foggy Nelson was murdered but turned out he was in witness protection program by the F.B.I. and after traveling through Europe facing opponents like Tombstone he realized that the mastermind of this whole thing was non other than Vanessa Fisk herself who wanted to get her husband out from the prison with the help of Matt. To get his life back, Matt agreed and got Wilson aka The Kingpin out from the prison who left the country.Things got real messy after an inmate from Rykers, Gladiator broke free and murdered a dozen of people.Matt defeated him and turned out the Gladiator was under the effect of a fear gas caused by non other than Dr.Fear who is one of Daredevil's arch-enemies.Hardly Daredevil defeated him but at a great cost, his wife Milla entered a vegetative state due the gas and there's nothing to be done to help her. Tormented, Daredevil goes down even deeper on the dark path than ever before.He slept even once with Dakota with this cheating on his wife and feeling even more guilt.After a more 'calm' case a new villain arrived in town known only as Lady Bullseye who was working for the group called Hand as an assassin for hire.The Hand was responsible for killing Matt's sensei too.Defeating the Hand, Matt eventually learned that this was just a test to have him be the Supreme Leader of the Hand.Not much later Kingpin himself returned too who also seek vengeance against the Hand and for a short period of time he teamed up with Daredevil. The long battle between Daredevil-Kingpin-Lady Bullseye and the Owl ended brutal.Owl paralyzed , Kingpin and Lady Bullseye flee from the scene and now work together against Daredevil and Daredevil took over the Hand.After a fight with Bullseye, 107 people died and now feeling more guiltier than ever Daredevil finally "broke" and enter the dark path of redemption...
Story:
Not spoiling anything I can tell that Daredevil isn't the person we knew anymore and he proves it too by making a faithful dark decision.The whole story is well written and the penciller did a great job with the illustration of the story and theme.We can see again Danny Rand,the immortal Iron FIst, Luke Cage, Iron Man, Captain America,Thor, Punisher,Spider-Man and Kingpin and his new sidekick Lady Bullseye.
Overall:
A great start , that's all I can say.Things happened a little fast but gave the story a pretty interesting 'feeling'.
4.5 out of 5 stars for the first epic issue of SHADOWLAND.
