Issue(s): Daredevil #216, Daredevil #27
Cover Date: Mar-Apr 85
Title: "The second secret"
Credits:
Denny O'Neil - Writer
David Mazzucchelli - Penciler
David Mazzucchelli - Inker
Bob Harras - Assistant Editor
Ralph Macchio - Editor

Review/plot:
Being of Irish decent, i admit to always being interested when Irish characters show up in Marvel comics. On one end of the spectrum you have Shamrock and Sergius O'Hoolihan (the Baxter Building's doorman). On the other end, you've got the rogue IRA assassin known as the Gael. He's not even a super-villain. Just a true psychopath. As part of a prison escape in this issue, he winds up horribly disfigured, putting him kind of in a Jigsaw or Joker category, but he's really not campy or goofy like those guys.

Just straight up scary.

Crossbow makes an appearance as the guy that Daredevil beats information out of while hunting down the Gael.

And we learn that Glorianna O'Breen, the Irish lass that Matt Murdock has been getting close with, has been moonlighting as The Old Woman of Beare, who helps IRA operatives sneak back out of the country after a mission.

Unsure of the degree to which Glorianna was working with the IRA, Daredevil goes to the Black Widow, who is more familiar with "the international espionage scene". In a cool transition, however, the Black Widow is fighting her own super-villain, and we join the scene already in progress.

This joker is called the Cossack, and he's got a device that turns people blind. His goal is to ransom the city, and to make his threat credible he's going to trigger the device at the airport, which will affect all the pilots and air traffic controllers.

The Gael and Glorianna wind up at the airport as well, and it's a good thing that the Cossack does a small test run of the device that blinds people in the airport, because it's all that saves Glorianna from the Gael's knife.

Then Daredevil shows up and punches everyone out.

Miscolored glove:

In my review of Daredevil #215, i complained that we don't see the consequences of Matt Murdock working against the interest of his client. To be fair, it is kind of dealt with here, about as much as you could ask for in an action comic (i demand a law procedural comic!). Foggy considers trying to act as the Gael's defense team, since Foggy & Nelson are desperate for work after Matt "somehow... managed to prove that our client was in the wrong!". Foggy isn't upset at Matt, though, and really takes the blame on himself since it was his lie during the Micah Synn saga that drove away most of their business.

Foggy's wife Debbie has asked him to move back in with her, but he's not sure he trusts her after she went to Micah Synn. Foggy says "I guess she wanted to marry him... or something."

Mazzucchelli's art is mostly very nice as usual, but there's a wonky picture of the Black Widow at the end of issue #217.

The Widow tells DD that Glorianna is "the soul of innocence. She never committed a terrorist act in her life". No, all she did was help terrorists enter and leave the country. If Matt Murdock is ok with that, i think we're going to have to re-evaluate his sense of justice a bit. I guess it depends on your/O'Neil/Murdock's view of the IRA.

Quality Rating: B+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• Foggy lied in Daredevil #212. There's also a brief Kingpin appearance in this issue dealing with the fact that in the same issue Daredevil swore to take down the Kingpin's operation after Synn was dealt with.
  
• The Gael previously appeared in Daredevil #205.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A