3 out of 5

Hey, we’re back, and it’s like we never left volume 3… which includes both the pluses and the minuses.  The biggest plus, of course, is our established team of Waid and Samnee, with Javier Rodriguez’s awesome pastel-tinged colors that somehow manage just right balance of shadow and light in every panel.  The minus, though, is the lack of anchor that made some latter volume 3 storylines feel a little loose on the rails; Waid established an awesome hook of having Murdock ‘advise’ clients instead of defend them directly, as his notoriety for probably being Daredevil was too distracting in court.  This led to some great courtroom scenes that were smoothly leveraged into DD street investigations to dig up the truth, and then this further evolved into some inventive bits that roped in Doctor Doom and the Sons of the Serpent.  While that volume ended with the promising removal of having Matt needing to even pretend to hide his secret identity and Waid tries to kick off issue #1 with the same exciting chase framework he used for his previous #1 issue, it’s really, at this point, just a regular hero book.  Which Waid writes incredibly well, especially with winky persona he’d written in for Murdock post years of Brubaker and Bendis gloominess.  But I’ve read those Waid books before, countless times.  They’re easy to get into, but also easy to forget.  It may seem silly that the lawyer grounding added so much to nudge the book into something special, since it all boils down to tights and one-liners at some point, but I do think the framework forced Waid to shuffle his writing cards around a bit, resulting in what felt like a fresh take that combined a Golden Age charm with a modern awareness.

But we can afford to give this book some time to re-warm up.  It’s obvious the first arc is just establishing some primaries – the Owl as a foe, the Shroud as a puzzle, Deputy Mayor Charlotte Hastert, Kirsten and Foggy as friends – as well as getting some San Fran vs. New York explanations out of the way, and it still manages to carry the general Waid quality.  And it is rewarding that some of these bits and pieces carry over from volume 3, establishing a little Waid universe and perhaps allowing him to start shaking things up more effectively in the next couple arcs.