In Daredevil & Echo, The Man Without Fear Teams Up With An Old Friend to Fight an Ancient Evil from the Murdock Family’s Past

Daredevil & Echo is a 4-limited series that steps away from the events of the just-ended run, The Red Fist Saga, in the main DD title. That series, captained by Chip Zdarsky and Checchetto, features Matt’s ongoing fight to remain “The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen,” even when the title is literal.  While diverging from that storyline, Daredevil & Echo is a thriller that provides no respite from the trend toward the supernatural in DD’s stories.

Taboo, member of Black-Eyed Peas and renowned comic book afficionado, teams up with his frequent writing partner, B. Earl, to present a story with parallel threads spanning 200 years but only a few miles of Hell’s Kitchen. They are teamed with the incomparable Phil Noto and VC’s Clayton Cowles, guaranteeing that the look of the book is in good hands. Noto is a favorite of mine. His work is hard to characterize; a simple color palette, but rich and multihued. Minimalist, but realistic. Structured, but never boring. It reassures me that the story is going to be unobstructed by the art, but that the art will also be compelling. He has yet to let me down, and this book is no different.

Issue 1 sets the stage by introducing our cast of characters from 1835, highlighted by a recently-saved Irish immigrant, Tommy Murdock. A man seeking redemption from a life of violence by his own hands, he remains fiercely protective of his adopted home and its people, even as he pledges to leave his old ways behind. The archetype is well-known to fans of Tommy’s descendant.

In today’s world, Daredevil and Elektra investigate a series of grisly murders with a ritualistic bent. A clue leads DD to the door of his old “accomplice,” Echo. Only after Echo’s introduction do we meet 1835’s Soena’han’e, a native American female warrior known to New Yorkers of her time as “Creeping Death.”  She has attained mythic status among her enemies, owing in no small part to a prominent white handprint on her face. Both sets of protagonists are lured to the same church, almost 200 years apart, in search of a rumored existential and eternal threat.

I was lucky enough to procure David Mack’s variant cover of issue 2, which is worth the extra cost and trouble to track down. With Peach Momoko and Jeffrey Veregge and a small coterie of others, Mack is the variant cover artist I seek out most frequently. For a title steeped in Native American legend like this one, his evocative and symmetrical style is a good fit.

The stories continue to intertwine, with a new threat added to the challenges our modern heroes face. It’s in exploring the history of St. Matthew’s church that DD begins to realize the scope and depth of the forces they are facing, and a strange subplot involving powered children begins to connect to the grander scheme.

The main cover of issue 3 features the subject of issue 2’s reveal, as DD and Echo are joined by Ghost Rider. (I’m not a fan of spoilers, but he was on the cover!) He’s shown up to return our heroes’ foil to Hell, because, well, that’s what Ghost Rider does. The twin tales of sacrifice required to avert the dawning of a horrific new age at the hand of an eternal beast is less his gig, but his services are nonetheless welcome. (Readers interested in variant covers will take note of Purepecha artist and Marvel freelancer Maria Wolf’s offering.)

For those hoping that the story would get weirder, along comes issue 4. DD, meeting his forefather in the afterlife, makes a choice that forces the issue with the series’ villain and triggers a final battle that requires a unique combination of forces.

Daredevil & Echo is an ambitious entry into DD’s catalog of stories that propel him from street-level hero to force for supernatural good. It’s a bit too ambitious for 4 issues. For all their success crafting a time-bending narrative spanning centuries, the writers do not give readers time to process the events or to build the characters. We need more of Tommy Murdock, who teeters dangerously on the line of caricature without more development. Soena’han’e could probably use her own miniseries. The antagonist seems to literally come out of nowhere and will remind experienced sci-fi and horror readers of any number of nameless “creatures from beyond.” It would help to have more backstory from the Blind One’s perspective to deepen the conflict. Without these additional story arcs, the plot relies on too many shortcuts from well-established horror and suspense story tropes.

The reader is also left wondering what the point of the story was, thematically. The central premise is that the depth of Matt Murdock’s faith allows him to sacrifice himself for those he loves, even in the general sense of “loving thy neighbor.” It’s a deepening of readers’ appreciation for Matt’s faith, sure, but it isn’t exactly new ground. Daredevil’s legend as The Man Without Fear is certainly burnished by this series, and hardcore DD fans will want to add it to their collection. For the casual fan, however, Daredevil & Echo is ultimately enterprising and well-executed, but flawed by what it didn’t allow itself to accomplish.