I'm rating this by story arcs/creative teams as I'm finished reading them.



The first 6 issues by DeMatteis are entertaining, yet infuriating. Characters flip their personalities with each scene, Karen Page is just a dumb female love interest, the entire plot is overcomplicated, the narration too pretentious, the villain Sir is a bit of a dated character... but the art is great and the intrigue is interesting. It's also weird that #349 is called "Paradiso, Part One", and #350 is "Paradiso". Seems

I'm rating this by story arcs/creative teams as I'm finished reading them.



The first 6 issues by DeMatteis are entertaining, yet infuriating. Characters flip their personalities with each scene, Karen Page is just a dumb female love interest, the entire plot is overcomplicated, the narration too pretentious, the villain Sir is a bit of a dated character... but the art is great and the intrigue is interesting. It's also weird that #349 is called "Paradiso, Part One", and #350 is "Paradiso". Seems like no editors bothered with the book at all. 3 stars for the DeMatteis run.



The next two issues are some of the worst Daredevil issues I've read. Foggy is a stubborn asshole, Matt is a selfish asshole, he is suddenly running around making quips in every panel, the art is ugly to look at - Daredevil looks like a human-gorilla hybrid with a psychopaths smile. It feels like the premise of the Waid's run, but this time Matt Murdock is just happy and making suicide jokes two issues after dealing with heavy depression. Also, Turk is white because the artist probably lacked knowledge about the character and no editor bothered fixing it. 2, borderline 1, stars for these two issues.



When Kesel takes over the run, it becomes slightly better. The start is still badly paced, with random, forgettable villains. However, the Ben Reilly team-up is fun, and makes fun of how absurd the previous issues of DD and Clone Saga have been. One hilarious scene of three people knowing DD's identity and then trying to cover up for Matt without knowing everyone else knows his secret is one of the best in this book. The fight with Pyro was great, and it tied in nicely to the legacy virus story going on in the X-Men books. Cary Nord does some nice art in these issues, but I disliked most of the other artists. Karen still sucks as a character, though. The rest of the Kesel issues are slightly better, but there are still some terrible moments, like everything that has to do with the Enforcers and Eel, which looks like straight out of a 60's cartoon. Misty Knight's small appearance is nice. I feel like DD is too jokey and cringey, feels almost like Spider-Man. It doesn't even feel the same way as Waid's later, more relaxed run. It just feels off. Some really annoying typos, repeated words by accident, speech bubbles that are wrongly assigned to other characters, come up sometimes. Not sure what the editors were doing. I'd say the Kessel run until the Joe Kelly issue jumps between 2 and 4 stars.



Kesel's run is then interrupted by one issue by Joe Kelly. It's an aftermath of Onslaught and just doesn't really feel like a Daredevil comic. The art is poor man's anime-ish for the most part, character's reaction are sooo overexaggerated too. The plot outline is ok, but the execution is terrible. Stuff just happens out of nowhere, and things that could be solved with better dialogue evolve into drama. The "big fights" in the two issues are just so short and random and idiotic, not to mention the cover spoils the "plot twist" (you can barely call it that considering it's revealed one page after the thing is introduced) and it's in the end totally insignificant. The humor is meh (weird considering it's Kelly writing) and it's also (accidentially? Idk) transphobic. Didn't age well. There is stuff in here that's crucial for later issues, which I don't know why was written by Kelly and why in this tie-in issue? This feels more like an Avengers or FF comic that just happens to not feature them due to obvious reasons. The scene with Jarvis and some of the general ideas presented save it from getting 1 star. 2 out of 5 stars.



After that, the remaining issues are again by Kesel and Nord, with one issue featuring guest-art by the legendary Gene Colan. Nord's art starts to feel rushed towards the end, and Colan didn't fit the more modern story that much. Otherwise, the remaining issues were some of the more enjoyable ones, with a few cool moments, plot developments and twists. However, there were still plenty of weird and dumb moments that I didn't connect to that much. I'd give them 3 stars.



Total rating would be around 2.5/5 stars. I will round it up to 3, because I'm still interested in what would happen next, despite all the problems. But I'm really reaching...