Daredevil (1964 series) #229

As Matt Murdock lies wounded in an alley, he thinks about the important moments in his life, and realizes that horribly few of them matter. He remembers pushing the man out of the way of the oncoming truck. The radioactive isotope striking his eyes. Being blinded. He remembers how terrifyingly disorienting and agonizing it was waking up in the hospital and not knowing what was going on, why every smell, and feeling, and sound were so strong. He remembers that everything hurt. Despite wanting nothing more than to die, he remembers persisting, shutting out enough so that he could hear when his father came to see him, telling him that he’s going to be okay. Matt then remembers someone else coming to see him, a woman. He remembers telling her about his enhanced senses and this woman, with a cross made of gold, made him promise to keep it a secret and to use this new gift as best he could. She never came back, but he kept his promise, never telling his father. Everything else until now rushes back, meeting Stick, his father being murdered, becoming Daredevil, until the Kingpin took it all away, and effectively killed him.

Meanwhile, uptown, Foggy and Glori do a bit of Christmas shopping when a mugger tries to steal Glori’s purse. She fights back and Foggy is able to scare the guy off, while Glori bemoans the city and the fact that no one else seemed to care. Back in the alley, Matt determines that he’s not dead yet and tries to just keep moving. Elsewhere, Ben Urich stops in at the hospital where Detective Nick Manolis is visiting his son. Urich tries to get Manolis to admit he lied to frame Matt, and asks how his son is. Manolis admits that he’s going into surgery soon and may not survive. As Matt tries to just keep moving, Karen has a similar plight in Mexico. Trying to keep ahead of her pursuers, she realizes she needs money to get to America and ends up robbing a blind beggar on the street. The second blind man she’s stolen from, she notes. As Matt trudges on, he wanders right into traffic and ends up getting hit by a car, which doesn’t dampen his determination at all.

While Foggy and Glori continue to get closer, Matt ends up running into Turk and Grotto stealing Santa suits in order to hustle rich folks on the Upper East Side. He tells them to take the suits off, and Turk responds by nonchalantly stabbing Matt, leaving him doubled over bleeding while they get out of there. Sometime later, back at the hospital, Manolis’s son doesn’t survive the surgery. Manolis starts to tell Urich everything he knows as they head out to the parking lot, while the grouchy nurse from earlier follows them. Matt continues moving through the pain of the car and the knife, while in Mexico, Karen finds someone to take her to America. He agrees on the condition that she agree to sleep with him, and he ends up killing two guys that come looking for her! Back in New York, Matt continues walking, until his wandering leads him right into Hell’s Kitchen, and he decides to try and find his dad’s old place, but finds it’s been demolished too.

Meanwhile, back in his apartment, Foggy gives Glori a Christmas present, and the two share a kiss. At the hospital parking lot, Manolis expresses his regrets for his decision, when he and Ben are attacked by the grouchy nurse. She tells Urich that she works for the Kingpin and breaks some of his fingers, warning that the same will happen if he even speaks Matt Murdock’s name again! She then cripples Manolis as Ben watches. In Hell’s Kitchen, Matt reaches the old gym that his father, and later he, trained at. Concluding that every part of him is dead except the fighter, he tries hitting the bag but quickly ends up passing out from blood loss and exhaustion. He’s found by Sister Maggie, the same woman from his memory with the gold cross, as she speaks his name and holds him close! Lastly, Kingpin trains in his own gym, obsessing for hours over the fact that Matt isn’t dead. Fisk concludes that Matt is more than he initially bargained for, and realizes all he’s shown Matt is that a man without hope…is a man without fear! To be continued!