Some very interesting storylines (I particularly liked the Daredevil Conversation Support Group story), and Bendis leaves Matt in an interesting place for the next author to pick up from. ( )

Bendis says in the epilogue to this collection that he told the editors at Marvel that his plan for his run was to expose Daredevil’s secret identity as blind lawyer Matt Murdock at the beginning, and to put in jail at the end. Which is what he did. In the meanwhile, he wrote scenes that read like screenplays for the Marvel series. In the storylines collected here, the best is “Decalogue,” which has our hero, unmasked, attended a support group meeting in a church, said support group being for people whose lives were impacted by Daredevil. Maleev in the earlier collections created iconic portraits of some of Daredevil’s greatest foes, and his work continued strong here.
One thing had me wondering. I have no doubt that any comic writer worth his salt could figure out a way to get Matt Murdock out of jail, but how could anyone rehabilitate the status of superheroes, since a driving premise of this run is that Daredevil’s vigilantism is illegal? ( )

Fun fact: the stories in this collection (particularly Decalogue and The Murdock Papers) are some of the stuff that got me interested in comics For Real, along with Grant Morrison's Batman. Decalogue is a spectacular "but what do the people in Hell's Kitchen actually think" story (with a great, GREAT twist), and The Murdock Papers is a hell of a capper to go out on (with some really great stuff by Maleev, in my opinion). The Ultimate Team-Up story is just kind of ok, and I didn't get the What If story because I bought all of these digitally and couldn't find it, but even that can't tarnish how much I enjoy the core stuff here. ( )

The middle collection, while very good, was perhaps a bit less memorable than the first one, but in this final third one, I find Bendis is back in top form. The first story, "Golden Age", is a solid revenge narrative as Hell's Kitchen's pre-Kingpin crime boss is let out of prison and Bendis and Maleev take us through a decades-spanning glimpse into the Kitchen's little corner of Marvel continuity. It is, however, paling in comparison to the next story, the collection's highlight in my opinion, as "Decalogue" takes to a this-Daredevil-person-touched-my-life support group and we follow each participant's story while a sinister throughline starts appearing. Finally, there is "The Murdock Papers", a roller-coaster of events that brings the main plotline of the Bendis/Maleev run (the premise of Kingpin's long-standing knowledge of Daredevil's secret identity and its many unintended consequences for them both). The latter does end on a bit of a nail-biting cliffhanger setting up the (excellent) Brubaker run to follow, but works well as an ending in its own right, I think.

The collection also includes, likely for completism, two non-Marvel 616 Daredevil stories by Bendis: The "What if..." story "What if Karen Page had lived?", which I unfortunately found to be rather underwhelming, and the Ultimate Marvel Team-Up story introducing Daredevil and Punisher to that continuity (between frequent but minor cameos from Bendis' Ultimate Spider-Man), which I actually enjoyed a great deal in spite of its rather simplistic plot.

All in all, these three volumes of Bendis' Daredevil are highly recommended. They perhaps don't have quite the zest and imagination that his concurrent "Alias" run packed, but within the more limiting scope of taking over a big name book like "Daredevil", the result is still hugely impressive and deservedly standing as one of the most influential runs the character's ever had. ( )

The last volume of the Bendis/Maleev Daredevil starts to show them growing a bit thin on ideas (the repercussions of the reveal of the secret identity, as well as Daredevil's marriage to Milla and their struggles, are not conveyed in a particularly efficient way, and we've already seen his super-person ex-girlfriends show up and be his super-person ex-girlfriends and Bullseye be Bullseye and the other superdudes try to reach out in a macho way, and then they just do it here at more length), and one'd've wished the trial to wrap up here and not two issues after the new creative team came in or whatever, but this still has several good moments and cool skungey art. ( )