"There's a New Man Without Fear in Town," in Daredevil #360, by Karl Kesel (writer), Cary Nord (penciler), Matt Ryan (inker), Christie Scheele (colorist), Jim Novak (letterer)
After somehow sorting the whole mess with being presumed dead, and running around in a gritty, armored costume for awhile, Karl Kesel's brief run on the book attempted to move Hornhead back more towards what he was originally. More swashbuckling, smart-mouthed, bantering with his enemies. After so much personal disaster, it feels like it should come off as forced, Matt's own more upbeat version of the "inhuman creature" bit Jack Ryder used to pull as the Creeper. But, maybe because Kesel commits to it, has Matt keep cracking jokes and quips, and doesn't provide a lot of internal monologue about how it's an act, it doesn't feel out of place.
The costume is a lighter, if not more brilliant, shade of red. Less of a grimy feel to things. He's out in the daylight a lot more during this stretch, and the days seem brighter than they were during Nocenti's run. New York doesn't seem quite as grimy or run down as it did in Nocenti's run, although maybe that's just because Murdock has moved back up in the world, economically.
Matt's back to being a lawyer with Foggy, although they get hired onto the firm of a notorious lawyer named Rosalind Sharpe, who has a connection with Foggy. Foggy is finally in on Matt's secret, and more than a little pissed about being in the dark all those years, so Matt keeps trying to make it up to him. By working for Sharpe for one thing, since she makes Foggy's employment reliant on Matt also working there. He's managed to mostly patch things up with Karen Page (they were just starting to try during Last Rites).
This is post-Onslaught, so it's perhaps understandable Daredevil moves more outside his wheelhouse, what with most of the other heroes "dead". He's facing down the Absorbing Man, Grey Gargoyle, Mr. Hyde shows up again, Pyro appears for I think, either his last appearance, or close to it. I think he crops up one more time in X-Men post-Zero Tolerance before the Legacy Virus kills him.
Actually, this run in general provides kind of an interesting snapshot of Marvel at the moment. Daredevil teams up with Spider-Man, except it's Ben Reilly in his version of the Spider-Man costume (the one Spider-Girl would appropriate). Reilly's strangely willing to discuss the fact he thought he was a clone with Daredevil, but I guess he has memories of their earliest team-ups. Foggy starts a tentative romance with Liz Osborn/Allan, who is running Oscorp with Harry dead and Norman not yet revealed to be alive. Black Widow pops up, closer to her more professional and ruthless characterization of the last couple decades, but she's acting out of grief and guilt, thinking she's going down as the last leader of the Avengers, who let her entire team get killed.
Gene Colan comes on as artist for the last few issues, which involve Dr. Fear trying to do. . . something involving the radio station Karen is working at as a late night host. I don't remember what the plot was, probably something about driving people nuts with sub-harmonics in the broadcast frequency. Colan makes New York a murky, shadowy place, but still cleaner than it had been for the past 100+ issues. Just atmospheric.
Kesel's run ends at #364, with Joe Kelly and later Scot Lobdell stepping in as writer for the last 15 over so issues before the title was canceled, then started over for the Kevin Smith/Joe Quesada run. Which led to Bendis, then to Brubaker, and a whole lot of miserable crap. All of which I ignored, so next Sunday we'll skip over all that to the next restart.
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