Warning! Spoilers ahead for Daredevil #26 from Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto, and Mike Hawthorne
In the latest issue of Marvel’s Comics’ Daredevil, Matt Murdock confirms a very gross fact in the Marvel Universe. Daredevil just revealed what symbiotes smell like, and it’s not pretty. Despite the fact that Murdock is in prison, Knull the Symbiote God’s invasion in Marvel’s King in Black event has a wide and vast reach, and not even Matt’s cell is safe. Likewise, Elektra’s new Daredevil is out in Hell Kitchen, doing all she can to fight back against the symbiote hordes.
Despite the fact that Daredevil #26 from Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto, and Mike Hawthorne is a tie-in issue to King in Black, this is one of the first real looks fans get to see of Matt Murdock in prison, fulfilling his two-year sentence for unintentional manslaughter. While he’s in an orange jumpsuit like all of the other inmates, he was also granted a mask as his friend and lawyer Foggy Nelson did some legal maneuvering so that Daredevil would be doing the time without his secret identity as Matt Murdock needing to be revealed as well.
Regardless, trouble still comes for Murdock all the same during King in Black, as a horde of symbiotes break into the prison, bonding to inmates and guards alike. However, the former Daredevil was able to sense the symbiotes before anyone else knew they were even in the facility, and he could apparently smell them just as much as he could hear and feel them moving through the corridors. While he tried to warn the guards, there wasn’t much they could do in the face of Knull’s power.
While it’s doubtful any Marvel fan expected symbiotes to smell like roses, the combination of gasoline and swamp water is a pretty nasty mix all things considered. Furthermore, because he initially identified the smell as Venom, that implies that the gas/swamp smell is just the consistent odor of all symbiotes, which is pretty foul. One has to feel pretty bad for Spider-Man, who has had to deal with symbiotes more than anyone else in the Marvel Universe. Unfortunately, while Matt put up a decent fight, there wasn’t much he could do unarmed and behind bars. Eventually, he was forcibly bonded to a symbiote like many of Marvel’s heroes thus far in King in Black, joining the dark (and apparently smelly) army of Knull.
Things aren’t going so well for the new Daredevil outside in Hell’s Kitchen either. Dragons are roaming the skies above, all while Elektra has just come face to face with a Knull-ified Typhoid Mary near the issue’s end. Likewise, now that Matt Murdock has become a symbiote, he’ll probably be headed out to do Knull’s dark bidding. Will he trade blows with Elektra as well? Fans will just have to wait and see as Daredevil and King in Black continue from Marvel Comics. In any case, who knew that Knull’s army would literally stink so bad?
