By Bruno Savill De Jong — It’s 1998. The Good Friday Agreements are signed, Google is founded and the Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal takes hold. People are listening to “Doo Wop (That Thing),” watching You’ve Got Mail and reading Daredevil.

Written by Joe Kelly (371-375), Johnathan Barron (374), Scott Lobdell (376-379), D.G. Chichester (380)
Illustrated by Ariel Olivetti (371-372, 374-375), Richie Acosta (373), Cary Nord (375), John Paul Leon (375), Tom Lyle (375), Brian Denham (375), Rick Leonardi (375), Cully Hamner (376, 379), Tom Morgan (377-378), Lee Weeks (380)
Inks by Pier Britto (371-372, 374-375), Bud La Rosa (373), Mark Lipka (375), John Paul Leon (375), Robert Jones (375), Chris Carlson (375), Scott Hanna (375, 377-378), Jason Martin (376, 379), Robert Campanella (380)
Colors by Christie ‘Max’ Scheele (371-373, 375-378, 380), Ed Lazarelli (374), Ian Laughlin (375, 380), Melissa Edwards (379), Ramon Bernado (380)
Lettered by Richard Starkings (371-380)

1998 is a year of resurrections. After a year of uncertainty following the disappearance and supposed deaths of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, the Avengers and Fantastic Four have “seemingly risen from the grave,” as a bystander helpfully informs Matt Murdock. The upheavals of “Heroes Reborn” have been rescinded, and these iconic characters have been relaunched into the main Marvel Universe. 1998’s other resurrection is how Marvel was ‘rescued’ from bankruptcy through merging with a subsidiary, ToyBiz, and mysterious businessman Isaac Perlmutter established control over Marvel Entertainment and its assets. 1998 is also the year Daredevil’s first volume came to an end. To resurrect something, it has to die first.

Yes, 1998 encompasses the final stretch of Daredevil vol. 1, climaxing with “Just One Good Story” (Daredevil #380) before being relaunched and renumbered for the Marvel Knight’s imprint the following month. Indeed, this relaunch had been planned well in advance, so that Scott Lobdell’s final “Flying Blind” arc was envisioned as a holding pattern that could be stretched out as long as necessary for vol. 2 to hit the ground running. But the nature of Marvel Knight’s will be explored in the next instalment. For now, we will examine how Daredevil’s continuous series – running every year since 1964 – wrapped itself up.

For instance, Joe Kelly ties up his Mr Fear storyline, pivoting from the fairly standalone supervillain attacks orchestrated last year into a more serialised story involving serial-killer “Charlie.” Charlie stalks and murders young women in New York – Foggy Nelson’s long unseen party-girl sister Candance a potential victim – with a fixation on Karen Page. He is in league with Mr Fear, who used the prison riot from “Cruel & Unusual Punishments” (Daredevil #367) to free Charlie from prison, despite A.D.A. Kathy Malper being unable to find a record of his imprisonment. After Charlie stalks and harasses Karen on her radio-show, Mr Fear (off-panel) kills Charlie and incriminates Karen for it, leading to her suddenly appearing on trial for her life in the double-sized “With A Little Help From My Friends” (Daredevil #375) which closes out Joe Kelly’s run.

This arc is an investigative mystery – who is Charlie? Why is there no record of him? How is Mr Fear involved? – that severely tests Daredevil’s faith in the criminal justice system. After all, Larry Cranston’s (Mr Fear) backstory is being a law student jealous of Matt Murdock – Mr Fear being another Daredevil foe who already knows his secret identity – so he is determined to eradicate his enemies’ trust in the law. This also involves the arc stumbling across the “blue wall of silence.” It turns out Charlie is a cop, which gives him privileged access to (and trust from) victims, and protection from other NYPD officers who assume Daredevil attacking one of their own is an act of unjustified aggression.

Not only that, but Charlie’s father is Judge Chalmers, which is why his imprisonment was off-the-books. As Matt tries to defend Karen during her trial, he is confronted by how systemic corruption protects people like Charlie – who have relatives inside the system and a “hero cop” image – and condemns those like Karen whose history with drugs and prostitution is public knowledge. The foundational conceit of Daredevil is how “justice is bind,” but this arc hammers home how untrue that statement can be.

Another eternal conflict is that between Matt Murdock and Daredevil, each side operating on different sides of the legal system. Matt is at the end of his rope, and he pushes himself as Daredevil to try and compensate, even if it means losing his grip over the fledgling trial. Matt has used Daredevil as a coping device before – when he returned from fighting alongside (and kissing) Black Widow, he quickly escaped into the night to solve a domestic disturbance instead of talking to Karen – and here you can feel his impotence in stopping Mr Fear and this trail driving Matt insane. Karen even bluntly asks Matt whether, if he cannot rescue her legally, Daredevil would let an innocent woman stay in prison. Essentially, whether one side of him will help her if the other cannot.

Daredevil is saved from facing such questions, as he does manage to track down Mr Fear’s lair, whereupon he recovers a diary of Judge Chalmers that completely exonerates Karen. This conclusion is somewhat a deus ex machina, as Matt’s foundational faith in the justice system is restored despite it being a hair’s breadth away from wrongly condemning an innocent woman. Indeed, it's more interesting and murkier that Matt is ultimately ‘saved’ by two of his villains. Karen is defended from vengeful prison guards through a disguised Elektra. Plus, Mr Fear had still hypnotised one of the jurors to ensure Karen was found guilty, but the Kingpin stepped in to prevent this, making Matt owe him a debt.

Matt’s triumphant victory is more due to luck instead of inherent virtue, making this storyline more successful in showing the struggles of the justice system than its resolution. Still, through its central conflicts, this arc provides a holistic account of Matt’s balance of his love-life and the law. Although the tease of an unidentified man and woman digging up an alive Charlie from his grave is one resurrection from 1998 which hasn’t paid off.

Scott Lobdell’s final story-arc for Daredevil vol. 1, “Flying Blind,” does not feature anything of Joe Kelly’s, or even Matt Murdock himself. Instead, a dark-haired Frenchman called ‘Laurent LeVasseur’ awakens in Paris with amnesia and super-powered senses, nearly overwhelmed by the abilities and instincts he doesn’t remember having. Lobdell is quick to calm our concerns that this is Matt Murdock, operating deep undercover for S.H.I.E.L.D. by having his memories re-wired and appearances augmented, including the restoration of his sight. Although his sole S.H.I.E.L.D. handler is accidentally killed in a car crash, potentially condemning Matt Murdock to obscurity.

In some ways this makes perfect sense as a time-killer arc before vol. 2’s relaunch. Laurent’s confusion over his real identity could have been extended for however long was necessary until Marvel Knight’s was ready to go, as Lobdell later revealed. It also allowed Lobdell to examine Daredevil’s persona from an outside perspective, giving Laurent flashes of his buried self that includes detailed descriptions of his hyper-senses, all the more powerful because he is unfamiliar with them.

On the other hand, Laurent/Matt having amnesia makes this an odd choice for the closing story-arc of Daredevil vol. 1, as it cannot build upon the history of the character. The dilemma over losing his sight to regain his identity loses some weight since Laurent has no knowledge of being Matt, or any agency in his transformation back into him. Instead, it occurs due to Synapse, an underling of the Kingpin who happened to be in Europe toying with the business model of mentally rewiring people. “Flying Blind” is a short-lived story, deliberately constructed like a disjoined standalone arc, but Lobdell demonstrates a good grip on the characters, even if he only has them for a short time and leaves Daredevil right back where he started.

The very final issue of Daredevil vol. 1 is the aforementioned Daredevil #380, with the surprising return of D.G. Chichester and Lee Weeks, especially since the former did not depart from Daredevil on the best of terms either commercially, editorially or critically. Frankly, in many ways “Just One Good Story” exhibits many of Chichester’s flaws, with confusing time-jumps around a large explosion as well as Kingpin trying to frame an innocent middle-eastern man for poisoning the water supply. This story is confusingly dense, with these two separate attacks present simultaneously to the reader, and overly ponderous, although Chichester does show great foresight with, before 9/11, having a Muslim man be blamed to galvanise national fears for the specific benefit of the oil and war industries.

Daredevil #380 centres around a big bang, but as a conclusive statement to Daredevil’s first volume, it cannot help but feel like a whimper. It lacks the simplicity and thoroughness of Chichester’s earlier “34 Hours” (Daredevil #304), perhaps the pinnacle of Chichester’s achievements on this book. Although Chichester does attempt an overview of Daredevil’s different iteration through having his pre-explosion confrontation with Kingpin, Bullseye, the Hand and Bushwhacker be replayed with different unreliable narrators; one recounts Daredevil as a jovial swashbuckling saviour, one as a gritty gun-wielding Frank Miller anti-hero, and another as an armoured extreme ‘90s “Deathdevil.” Plus this narrative is interspersed with black-and-white courtroom scenes as Matt defends Parlan Farhoody, striving to make the case that “justice is blind” against all outside prejudices.

1998 does not feel like the final year for Daredevil. Its stories do not aim for grand overarching conclusions the way his anniversary issues have attempted. Rather they seem like additional anecdotes within this long-running series, except a little more cut-up and divided since they knew the end was coming. But at the same time, they knew it wasn’t really the end. Marvel Knights was in development, and Marvel Comics was ready to take a new venture whenever all the pieces properly fell into place. This was a pivotal time for the company, when it transitioned out of its largely disastrous ‘90s into a new decade, a new millennium, with a radically different approach to publishing and making comics. And, as always, Daredevil was right there on the front lines.

Read classic Daredevil Comics!

Check out past installments from The Man Without Fear…By The Year!

Check out Bruno Savill De Jong’s last regular series, Gotham Central Case by Case!

Bruno Savill De Jong is a recent undergraduate of English and freelance writer on films and comics, living in London. His infrequent comics-blog is Panels are Windows and semi-frequent Twitter is BrunoSavillDeJo.