Daredevil’s Shadowland Made Matt Murdock the Deadly Devil of Hell’s Kitchen

Shadowland was Matt Murdock’s fall from grace. 2009’s Daredevil #500 ended with the horn-headed hero of Hell’s Kitchen accepting an offer to lead the ninja death cult called The Hand, who would have turned to Wilson Fisk — Kingpin of Crime — had he refused. Murdock hoped to reform the Hand and use their resources to protect the Kitchen during Norman Osborn’s Dark Reign as head of H.A.M.M.E.R., but when Osborn dispatched the assassin Bullseye to kill the Hand’s newly appointed leader, Bullseye blew up a tenement block and killed 107 civilians. A guilt-ridden Daredevil blamed himself, and decided to use the army at his command to take back the streets of Hell’s Kitchen.

“I used to think justice could be found in the courtroom — or if that failed, Daredevil could always find it on the street,” Murdock confessed to his sensei Master Izo, once of the Hand and the Chaste. “But now the streets are patrolled by H.A.M.M.E.R., the courts are controlled by Norman Osborn. Everything’s upside down. We’ve been playing the same old games we always have, but our enemies changed the rules on us. We need to find a new way to play, or we’re dead.”

“The Hand is just a weapon,” Murdock said. “And a weapon can be used for good instead of evil… if the man who wields it is righteous.”

The Man Without Fear would become a man to fear.

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The Devil’s Hand

Lord Daredevil’s league of assassins led Matt Murdock down a dark path. Even as the Hand’s lethal violence clashed with the Catholic Murdock’s morality, he declared Hell’s Kitchen to be Hand territory. Meanwhile, Fisk operated from the shadows, planning to bring Osborn’s H.A.M.M.E.R. down on Murdock’s Hand so he could reclaim control of the underworld.

In Daredevil #504, Hell’s Kitchen had become a war zone as the Devil’s Hand waged war with militarized H.A.M.M.E.R. forces. Murdock had the Hand purchase the bombing site to turn its ashes into Daredevil’s Shadowland fortress, which would tower over Hell’s Kitchen as a symbol of the Devil’s reign.

Matt Murdock Dared Evil

Daredevil’s Hand waged a war on crime and corruption that continued even after the Avengers ushered in a new Heroic Age with Osborn’s defeat and deposition in Siege.

In 2010’s Shadowland #1, after Bullseye escaped custody during transport to the Raft prison, he infiltrated Daredevil’s Shadowland fortress and found Daredevil dressed in a black and red costume.

A wrathful Daredevil brutally beat and then killed Bullseye, impaling him with his sai as he had murdered Murdock’s love Elektra years earlier (in 1981’s classic Daredevil #181). And so it seemed that Matt Murdock’s soul was lost.

Shadowland

Hell’s Kitchen’s Shadowland had became unassailable. After Bullseye’s death, Elektra returned just as Murdock became corrupted by a dark influence in Daredevil #508. In Shadowland #2, after the black-clad Daredevil declared martial law in defiance of New York City Mayor J. Jonah Jameson, Daredevil put word out on the street that the city’s costumed heroes could join Shadowland under the authority of the Hand. “Because if they’re not with us,” he said, “they’re against us.”

Daredevil drew concern from fellow street-level heroes Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Misty Knight, Colleen Wing, Shang-Chi, and Spider-Man, who confronted him at Shadowland. Acting as judge, jury and executioner goes against the law that Matt Murdock vowed to uphold as a lawyer, but Lord Daredevil told his former allies: “Justice is what we make it.”

Meanwhile, Kingpin decided to fight demons with demons by performing a ritual to summon an ancient enemy of the Hand: the Spirit of Vengeance, Ghost Rider. When Ghost Rider stormed the ninja compound during the hero intervention with Daredevil, the Lord of the Hand took it as an act of war.

Dark Devil

Daredevil revoked his no-kill rule and instructed the Hand to kill the heroes. Daredevil’s forces — White Tiger, Black Tarantula, Typhoid Mary, and his endless army of ninja foot soldiers — overwhelmed the heroes, who were freed by the arrival of The Punisher. In the light of day, Danny Rand and Shang-Chi realized that Daredevil should not have been able to defeat the Master of Kung-Fu and the Immortal Iron Fist in hand-to-hand combat, and that whatever dark power Daredevil tapped into had begun to spread throughout Hell’s Kitchen.

As the Devil’s Hand exhumed Bullseye’s corpse to resurrect him the way the Hand had once tried to resurrect Elektra, Master Izo revealed to the heroes that Takashi’s Snakeroot clan — a secret cadre at the heart of the Hand — was behind Murdock’s corruption. The Snakeroot needed a good but flawed man to become a vessel for “the one that waits in darkness, who hungers for the end of humanity itself”: The Beast of the Hand, an ancient demon worshipped by the Hand.

Suspecting that the Hand planned to have Daredevil possessed by the Beast, Master Izo had Elektra infiltrate their ranks and Murdock’s inner circle. Elektra and another enemy of the Hand, Wolverine, joined the heroes to bring down Shadowland and stop Daredevil from resurrecting Bullseye as an agent of the Beast’s Hand. As the Snakeroot’s Black Flower took root in Hell’s Kitchen, turning its citizens against each other, the evil power would spread across the world unless the heroes could stop Daredevil. Izo explained that the man they know as Matt Murdock was subsumed within the Beast, and Elektra told the heroes: “It’s kill or be killed.”

The Punisher shot Daredevil with a stun grenade so that Wolverine could kill the Beast-possessed Daredevil, but he survived being impaled by Wolverine’s adamantium claws. Spider-Man’s webs restrained Daredevil long enough for Cage, Iron Fist, and Punisher to hold him down so that Elektra could reach Murdock and remind him their mentor, Stick, trained them to resist the Beast. But in the penultimate issue of Shadowland, Daredevil had become the Beast.

Beast From Hell’s Kitchen

The five-issue Shadowland series culminated with Matt Murdock as the Beast’s vessel, who then overpowered the army of heroes out to stop him. Shadowland #5 marked more than a fight for the soul of New York: it was a fight to save Daredevil’s soul.

“Such beautiful destruction. The people of this city have begun to feed upon each other, and as they do so, they feed me,” the Devil Beast told Ghost Rider. “As man turns upon man, I grow ever stronger, the darkness spreading ’til this world itself lies an ashen cinder… and only those who bow before the Beast shall be spared.”

The demonic Daredevil resisted Ghost Rider’s hellfire, and it seemed Matt Murdock’s soul had been lost. But his oldest friend, Foggy Nelson, infiltrated Shadowland and managed to briefly stir his best friend from his possession. Iron Fist struck Daredevil with his chi energy, a life force not meant to destroy the Beast — but to heal Matt Murdock. He then begged Elektra to kill him. In the darkness of his subconscious mind, Elektra told him: “Be a man. Without fear.”

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Daredevil then took Elektra’s katana and performed seppuku to free himself from the darkness, and it seemed Daredevil died. Matt Murdock’s body disappeared, leaving only his black mask behind. Fisk revealed that Typhoid Mary was his unknowing double agent inside Shadowland, allowing him to take control of the Hand. Shadowland #5 ended at a church, where Matt Murdock came to confess his sins.

The Shadowland: After the Fall one-shot revealed the aftermath of Matt Murdock and Daredevil’s disappearance. He left a message for his friend and confidante Ben Urich, then left Hell’s Kitchen to another hero: Black Panther.

As Daredevil #512 became Black Panther: Man Without Fear for issues #513-523, Matt Murdock was born again in the four-issue Daredevil: Reborn before Marvel relaunched Daredevil with a new No. 1 in 2011.