WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Daredevil #31 by Chip Zdarsky, Mike Hawthorne, Adriano Di Benedetto & Marcio Menyz, on sale now.
The New York of the Marvel Universe is always a tumultuous place, but things have gotten even more violent and complex thanks to recent events in Daredevil. With Matt Murdock off the streets and chaos brewing between multiple criminal power players, the last thing the city needed was a dangerous murderer stalking the streets. And now, thanks to the intervention of Wilson Fisk, that's exactly what has happened.
Bullseye has not only just escaped from Ravencroft, but he's returned to New York City -- and he's just embarked on a killing spree that he believes is divinely inspired.
Hell's Kitchen has been in turmoil lately, with a number of radical changes to the status quo of the street-level heroes of the Marvel Universe. Matt Murdock -- after turning himself over to the authorities for accidentally committing manslaughter while fighting crime -- has been stuck in prison doing his best to survive. Elektra has taken his place as Daredevil, and thrown herself into protecting Matt's old stomping grounds. Wilson Fisk -- with Typhoid Mary at his side -- has been trying to maintain control of New York as a whole and Hell's Kitchen in particular, despite the machinations of the ultra-wealthy Stromwyn siblings. Other criminal players (including Mike Murdock and Butch, the illegitimate son of Fisk) are moving to strike at new Kingpin Izzy Libris -- who has also accepted a deal with the Hand in the hopes of having her dead son revived.
But all of those simmering conflicts just got introduced to a very deadly and unhinged wild card: Bullseye. One of Daredevil's most iconic enemies and one of the Marvel Universe's most ruthless killers, Kingpin had Bullseye sent to Ravencroft Asylum in hopes of finding a way to better control the lethal assassin following a recent attack on Hell's Kitchen at the order of the Stromwyns. However, it wasn't long before Bullseye broke free, slaughtered his way through Fisk's staff at Ravencroft, and escaped into the streets. The New York City Police Department -- at the express orders of Fisk -- worked to try and find him before he could resume his killing ways. But in reality, it's already too late: having snuck into the home of the Westmiller Guns fortune heirs, Bullseye casually murdered them.
From their apartment, Bullseye briefly talks to a vision of an angel he can see in front of him and turns the residence into a sniper's nest, using a rifle to fire down on an unsuspecting crowd of civilians. Within moments, Bullseye has already earned seven kills and promises to keep going until he's killed as many of the remaining 1.6 million people in Manhattan as he can. With Murdock behind bars and Kingpin on the hunt for them both, it'll likely fall to Elektra to try and contain the threat of Bullseye once more. And considering her own history with the villain -- including her death at his hands -- it might be an intense enough battle to be worth preparing for instead of just charging in.
But the longer she and the rest of New York waits, the more people will likely die at the hand of Bullseye. If there's one threat that could unite the forces of Hell's Kitchen, it could be the threat of the masked assassin's deadly attack on the city. It might even be grisly enough for Murdock himself to get involved, forcing him to leave his moral high ground of accepting jail time in favor of saving lives.