Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Last issue Tony Stark gave away Extremis as a smartphone app to the whole of San Francisco, which turned people into perfect versions of themselves. Then when they had become addicted to it, he started charging them for it. Now Daredevil faces a city of people willing to commit any crime to afford it.
He interrupts a teenage boy trying to rob a woman. When DD has subdued him, his intended victim uploads a film of the incident from her phone to the internet.
DD now goes to Stark's new home/base, a towering structure built on Stark Island, which used to be Alcatraz. He confronts Tony, who uses his Extremis-enhanced strength to throw him off the building into the sea.
Matt Murdock plunges deep into the water, but fights his natural fear of drowning to figure out which way is up and struggle to the surface.
Meanwhile Tony goes back to his party and makes an announcement. He's aware that many can't afford his Extremis prices, so he will be giving out free 1-day doses to any smartphones near him on Castro St at midday the next day.
Next day he arrives as Iron Man 150 minutes late - he had a hangover. But as his system automatically downloads the app into the nearby phones, he's interrupted by a man with a gun. This guy has had a lifelong fight with his addictive personality. And now Extremis has addicted his son. So he shoots Stark in the head.
But to no avail. Although the way his helmet is configured makes it look as though his face is exposed, actually Tony has a transparent faceplate.
IM's response is to take the man up into the sky away from the crowd. He doesn't care about the attempted murder. He's only bothered about the possible bad PR for his cash-cow app.
His system identifies the man as David Bray, and his son Simon as the youth DD dealt with earlier whose image is now all over the net. So Tony offers David a deal - he'll expunge Simon from the internet and even from the woman's phone, and he won't drop David from midair or have him prosecuted. In return David is going to take his free Extremis dose, and tell people this was all just a publicity stunt. David caves in.
Down on the ground Matt Murdock's superhearing picked up their conversation. And he decides to take extreme measures. That night Tony is passed out in the remains of another party, when Daredevil chloroforms him and kidnaps him.
When Stark awakes DD blinds him with an intense light, and a small EMP disables his built-in electronics. Matt tells Tony they're in a deep shielded bunker, so his armour won't be able to track him here. Stark tries to attack Murdock, but blind DD is in his element in the dark.
Matt says he's going to keep Tony down here until all the current Extremis doses have run out, and the population of SanFran has had time to go cold turkey. He doesn't believe egotistical Stark would have left the Extremis redelivery system on automatic.
Stark responds by claiming that his armour detected Murdock in Castro St, and he figured that Daredevil would come after him again. More to the point, his Extremis-based armour is biological these days and is continuously in non-electronic contact with his Extremis-based body. So the EMP wasn't any use.
The symbiotic liquid armour bursts in and encases its master. Iron Man repeats that he was expecting Daredevil. He zaps DD with Extremis. And when Matt awakes with IM waiting he finds that he's no longer blind.