I was not thrilled to see the return to Snakeroot being advertised for this comic as I did not enjoy Daredevil's first encounter with them. But, to this Annual's credit, it brings about their return at the start of this story with a bang and some gorgeous artwork depicting a resurrection ritual carried out by this evil group.

I can't say I really cared when Snakeroot did all this though to revive some Z-Lister villain named Ghostmaker, even if that's just an excuse to bring Shang-Chi in for a fun team-up. And it is pretty fun, even with all the 90s cheese Renkewitz and the art team do a great job bringing this story to life. I do wish the action had a bit more thought put into it though as I kind of tuned those parts out a bit.

Elektra's return and the armoured Daredevil era kind of remains underwhelming as always for the background status quo, though. Her and Matt kind of feel miserable here and the only reason this comic has a sense of joy is thanks to Shang-Chi along with the excellent use of colouring and character design. And that ending did nothing for me.

I liked the back-up story way more, all about Black Widow and her meeting with Nick Fury. They talk about Matt Murdock's apparent death and I wish we got more follow-up on said death like this because it was really good. It's got some decent spy stuff too.

This comic is a good showcase of what doesn't really work from this era as much as it shows off what did work. more