Checchetto's style is perfect for street level characters as he can illustrate action scenes and facial expressions/emotion equally well. One during the Shadowland era and another during Mark Waid's run when he penciled the The Omega Effect crossover with the Avenging Spider-Man and Punisher titles at the time. Checchetto may be familiar to Daredevil fans has he's had two short stints on the title previously. The art team on these issues is top notch, with pencils and inks by Marco Checchetto (long a personal favorite) and colors by Sunny Gho. Later in the arc, Matt comes to some startling realizations about himself and a number of his friends in the superhero community that causes him to question whether or not they are actually doing good. This may sound old hat to any longtime Daredevil readers, but the brilliant thing about it is that Zdarsky presents it with a fresh perspective so it works for both new readers and old. We get some scenes from Matt's childhood that help inform how he became the man he did. There's a lot of great character work done by Zdarsky in these five issues. Now Daredevil finds himself wanted for murder and has big shot, by-the-book, transfer from Chicago, Detective Cole North after him. An altercation with three robbers goes south, culminating in the death of one of the criminals. He pushes on anyway, wanting the people of Hell's Kitchen to see that he has returned in hopes that it will act as a deterrent to the rise in criminal activity in his absence.

While out on patrol, Matt comes to the realization that he has not fully recovered and isn't as sharp as he should be physically or mentally. Matt Murdock is out of the hospital after the events of the Soule run/MacKay mini, and is trying to get back to life as usual as Daredevil. Zdarsky does a great job of introducing his story in a way that stands on its own just fine, making reference to the prior work and bringing the reader up to speed with recent occurrences in the life of Daredevil. It picks up after the events of both Charles Soule's run that preceded it and the Man Without Fear: The Death of Daredevil mini-series by Jed MacKay (obviously Daredevil is not actually dead, but the mini does act as a nice bridge between the Soule and Zdarsky runs). This arc kicks off the latest volume of Daredevil (the sixth overall), and is a great place to jump on the book if you haven't paid attention to the character in recent years. He has certainly achieved that goal in Know Fear, his first arc on everyone's favorite Hell's Kitchen resident. With his run on Daredevil, Chip Zdarsky has said that he wanted to lean into the dark and gritty tendencies of the character as opposed to a more lighthearted tone, which he has come to be known for from his work on titles such as Sex Criminals (which he drew), Howard the Duck, and Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man.

1: Know Fear - Collecting Daredevil (2019) #1-5.

Daredevil by chip zdarsky vol 1