Daredevil No. 169

This volume is issue No. 169 of Daredevil's first series (1964–1998), titled "Devils," with a March 1981 cover date and a December 2, 1980 release. It was written and penciled by Frank Miller, with Klaus Janson on inks; it is an important issue in which Miller, after taking over the series, established its dark, realistic style. The story begins with a television interview program: the blind lawyer Matt Murdock is being interviewed by host Tom Snyder when breaking news interrupts—Bullseye, in custody and awaiting surgery, has violently escaped from the hospital. Bullseye has a tumor in his brain, and when it flares, he sees every ordinary person before him as the red-clad Daredevil and kills wildly under that delusion. Murdock leaves at once and, as Daredevil, tracks Bullseye. Bullseye first causes chaos in Times Square, then goes to a tailor shop to reclaim his costume, and afterward breaks into a movie theater and attacks the audience as "devils." Daredevil arrives at the theater and confronts Bullseye head-on but is wounded in the shoulder by a thrown blade; Bullseye takes a hostage and flees into an apartment building and the subway. Daredevil uses his extraordinary hearing to pick the hostage's cough out of thousands of noises and fix the location; in the subway tunnel his radar sense nearly fails, and he can only seize Bullseye in hand-to-hand combat. The ending is the issue's most praised passage: Daredevil at one point considers letting the train run over Bullseye to end his killing, but at the last moment saves him and sends him to surgery to remove the tumor. Facing Lieutenant Manolis's challenge, Daredevil insists he will not become a killer. This issue is also regarded as one of the strongest statements of Daredevil's "no-kill" principle.