Welcome, dear readers, to another week of comics and commentary at Comics! The Blog! We kick things off, as always, by handing out awards for the Best of the Week – beginning with two Award postings, followed closely by the past week’s Best.

Endings certainly throw a pall over the proceedings, don’t they? I call it the pudding cup syndrome, where you have this pudding cup, filled to the brim with delicious pudding. You start to eat the pudding with relish, tasting rather than savouring, allowing endorphins are whatever the hell to take you off to a place of bliss. And then you see it. The milky see-through white of the bottom. You know that soon enough, your pudding will be gone - and while you can always go off and get more, the end of your current experience is drawing near. Whether or not you’ve experienced the highs and lows of “eating pudding”, a basic truth remains: endings, no matter how perfect, are always a little bit sad, especially when you don’t want things to end.

Despite the fact that Mark Waid and Chris Samnee will be returning to the title a month after this volume’s final bow, there’s a sense of lingering sadness lingering in the pages of Daredevil #35. There’s a sense of immediacy to the events that occur in the comic, one that might not be there had the team just continued over to Daredevil #37. As with most Marvel relaunches of this ilk, this isn’t so much the end of a run, but the end of a particular idea or state of being, and that carries consequences, the most dire of which happens to be the life of Foggy Nelson. Foggy isn’t in good shape. His cancer appears to be winning, and the moustache twirling crowd seem to have no problem with using the situation to their advantage. While no one out-and-out places their cards on the table, the bad guys let Matt Murdock know that his identity, and Foggy’s care rest upon him accepting a deal that would compromise everything he stands for. Matt finds himself in an unenviable grey area wherein the doing the wrong thing will garner positive results, and doing the right thing would destroy his best friend’s life, literally. (It would also destroy Matt’s life, but it’s important to note here that Matt is not having trouble considering this for his sake - his life has been torn down around him so many times, he doesn’t really care anymore. What’s important to him is the fact that Foggy will be dragged down into the hole with him, and that, he can’t abide.)

Attempting to deal with a bit of grey, he calls upon Elektra to help him work things through. It’s here where the answers arrive.

Words by Mark Waid, art by Chris Samnee and Javier Rodriguez

This realization provides the engine for what comes next - and boy, is it a doozy. It’s an ending that you don’t see coming, the phrase applying to this team’s approach to this title in general, in addition to the end of this issue. Needless to say, this shocking moment will play a huge role in the conclusion of this volume, and the start of the next. The end is almost upon us, and while sadness lingers, it’s tempered with the impending arrival of the new. More than ever, I can’t wait to see what comes next, which is why I’m giving this book our Mariska Hargitay Memorial Award for Scenes of Law and Order Award.