KINGPIN

Six years after Born Again let Wilson Fisk methodically erase Matt Murdock's life, the sequel nobody advertises reversed the procedure. In Daredevil Vol. 1 #297-300 (1991-1992), the four-part story called Last Rites, a restored Daredevil set out to dismantle the Kingpin's empire piece by piece, using lawyers and regulators where punches had never sufficed.

Fisk was simultaneously overextended building a legitimate media empire and bleeding from a war with Hydra, whose operatives torched his New York holdings and emptied his accounts through a computer worm smuggled in with an electronic transfer. Daredevil fed federal prosecutor Kathy Malper the evidence tying Fisk's media group to racketeering and FCC violations, and the machinery of the state did the demolition for him.

The collapse reached its humiliating floor at a storage facility, where a cashless Fisk could not pay to reclaim a stored parcel and smashed through the clerk's window to seize it by force in front of witnesses. Daredevil watched the composure crack, beat him calmly in the open, and let the arrest happen. Fisk skipped bail within days and disappeared into the streets he used to own, his empire destroyed, while Murdock's own disbarment was quietly reversed.