BIOGRAPHY -- Page 27
In the weeks that followed, Matt Murdock persevered to rebuild his life. Matt and Foggy officially restarted their practice together. Their new office space at Worldwide Plaza went a long way towards helping to rebuild their client base because of its prestige. Matt continued to slowly reconnect with Karen, moving at her pace as the possibility of restarting their relationship grew stronger. As Daredevil, Matt reasserted himself as a public hero for New York City. He fought old 
threats like the Owl, who had mutated further away from his humanity, and teamed up with Spider-Man against the vicious organ-harvester called the Surgeon General and her cronies. Things hadn’t been this stable for Matt Murdock since before Heather’s tragic end, and the future looked bright. [Daredevil (1st series) #301-306]
That isn’t to say there weren’t complications. Nelson & Murdock were courted by Las Vegas businessmen to fly out to Nevada and consult on a legal matter. It wasn’t until they arrived that Matt and Foggy learned their clients were local crime bosses who thought Foggy was a “mob lawyer” because of his brief tenure under Wilson Fisk. With the fall of the Kingpin, his territory was up for grabs and a summit was being held in Las Vegas to divvy up his kingdom among various high rollers like the Maggia, Hydra, the Hand, Fenris, the Yakuza, the Secret Empire, Justin 
Hammer, Lotus Newwark, Mr. Tolliver, and more. The locals felt insulted that their city was used for neutral territory while they were being denied a seat at the table themselves. Once he was in the midst, Matt had to get involved as Daredevil, as the negotiations inevitably fell into violence. He was joined by the Punisher, Nomad and Terror, Inc. in his efforts to juggle the various villains and mobsters grabbing for a piece of the pie. [Dead Man’s Hand crossover]
The cosmic threat known as the Magus thought to divert the heroes of Earth from his schemes by creating malevolent doppelgangers of them from the Dimension of Manifestations. The Daredevil 
doppelganger was intercepted by Calypso, a voodoo priestess who newly claimed possession of the Nameless One’s spirit. Matt’s new client, Yves Chapoteau, was a Haitian refugee seeking legal asylum, and Calypso had her own reasons for wanting to return him to Haiti. Through her rituals with the doppelganger, she gained purchase on Murdock’s soul before they even met. Daredevil helped the Nameless One free himself from Calypso’s control but, with his death, Calypso claimed Murdock’s spirit and made him the new Nameless One. She briefly used him as a pawn before Daredevil reasserted his will and expelled Calypso’s claim over his spirit. [Daredevil (1st series) #310-311]
A summit for the heroes of Earth was held at Four Freedoms Plaza to address the doppelganger crisis. Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four explained how the doppelgangers could potentially assimilate their templates and then impersonate them perfectly. Wolverine of the X-Men arrived late and claimed his doppelganger tried to do this and failed, but Logan’s sense of smell could distinguish the originals from the fakes. He accused Mr. Fantastic and Iron Man of being imposters. Counter-accusations were thrown and sides started being drawn. Daredevil privately wondered if Wolverine’s sense of smell really was more effective than his at identifying imposters. 
He honed all his senses on Reed Richards, but the conclusive evidence came from the podium Mr. Fantastic was standing in front of. Reed was indeed a fake, and a concealed gamma bomb was primed to go off at his touch once all the Magus’s enemies were in one place. Daredevil struck first, starting a fight among the heroes to prevent them all from dying to “Richards” and his bomb. [Infinity War #1-3]
Daredevil continued to pursue his ideal of justice in both his identities. He fought Shock, the newest incarnation of Mister Fear, who was actually the daughter of the last super-villain by that name. She derived a serum from fear gas-infused tissue cut from her father to actually possess super-powers of fear instead of a chemical agent. Daredevil intervened on a treasure hunt for $500,000 in grease, a farce that involved parties like Taskmaster, Stilt-Man, the Wild Boys, 
respectable gangster Pete London and the homeless super-villain Tatterdemalion vying for the prize. Matt Murdock also took cases to seek justice in court for his clients, but only those he felt strongly about. Despite Foggy’s warnings, Matt continued to try pro bono cases and other matters where the client was unable to pay for his time. The public practice of law was only a small side project in Matthew’s pursuit of justice, and he showed little regard for the financial needs of his partner and partnership. [Daredevil (1st series) #312-318]
A turning point in Matt Murdock’s life came when he learned of a homeless man named Eddie 
Passim who seemed to be projecting madness into the minds of others with whom he interacted. Eddie was actually a former spook from the Department of Defense who worked on the concoction of the About Face virus decades previously. About Face was conceived by Eddie’s superior, General Harry “TNT” Kenkoy, as a weapon of limitless potential. A telepathically-sensitive & gene-rewriting virus, it could completely recode the DNA of an individual, either according to their thoughts or the remote-projected programming of a telepath. Kenkoy sacrificed Eddie’s girlfriend, Theresa Bellweather, to weave her telepathic DNA into the virus’ material, leading Eddie to sabotage the project. When Eddie was meant to deploy the virus in the subway tunnels of New York as a field test, he dropped the virus’ vial out the train instead of breaking it, then disappeared into the underground.
Now, decades later, Kenkoy made a deal with the inner circle of the Hand known as the Snakeroot to find the About Face virus and use it in service of the Beast. The hunt for Eddie Passim consumed Daredevil’s life for days as numerous figures got involved. Kenkoy hired Silver Sable and the Wild Pack to find Passim for him, while S.H.I.E.L.D. sent out their cyborg agent Siege on a similar mission for Nick Fury. The Snakeroot resurrected the dark essence of Elektra in a separate assassin body called Erynys, promising to make her a whole being with About Face. Stone of the Chaste came down from their remote mountain abode to prevent this. Through 
voodoo, Daredevil’s doppelganger from the Infinity War survived the Magus’ defeat as a pawn who could be summoned by ritual. Now known as Hellspawn, the doppelganger could make himself supernaturally invisible to even Daredevil’s radar sense and sought the virus to grant him true life and freedom from being summoned by houngans. Other parties like Morbius and Venom also learned of the About Face virus by various means and sought it out for their own selfish purposes.
While all this was going on, Matt was even more neglectful of his law practice than ever, prompting Foggy to call him out on his priorities. Foggy went so far as to hint he knew full well what Matt’s “other business” was, but he still needed to attend to their clients instead of dropping it all on Foggy. Heedlessly, Matt remained consumed by the About Face business. He acquired exotic materials from various companies to assemble a new, flexible armor for his costume to better withstand the punishment he was facing. Meanwhile, across town, a lock-out at the Daily Bugle led to an intern named Sara Harrington trying to hack into Ben Urich’s computer to retrieve his stories from his work PC. She came across his notes regarding Matt’s dual identity, and later 
broke into Urich’s apartment to steal more of his related files. Looking to be famous at any cost, Harrington sold “her” story to a less reputable paper, cobbling together Urich’s notes to publish “Matt Murdock is Daredevil?” as a headline for the Big Apple Advocate.
Daredevil belatedly learned of the news article, but his attention remained on the race for About Face. Stone’s failure against Erynys led the real Elektra to emerge from hiding with the Chaste to deal with her own darkness given form. Matt learned for the first time that he had successfully resurrected Elektra years ago in the fight with the Hand, purging her of her inherent darkness and the taint of the Beast. Now a pure soul, Elektra still felt responsible for the part of her which was Erynys, and she joined Daredevil for the final fight over About Face. The vial of virus was recovered at the last stand, bringing about several endings. Passim got revenge for Theresa’s death when he killed Kenkoy (although he died himself in the process). Elektra was forced to reabsorb the darkness in Erynys, tainting her own soul once more. In order to destroy the virus, Daredevil fed it to Hellspawn. The doppelganger became “true life” long enough to be killed, fulfilling its wishes and eliminating both Hellspawn and the virus at the same time.
As he died, Hellspawn’s macabre nature made him become a lifeless corpse that looked exactly like Matt Murdock. Daredevil chose to seize the opportunity and left “Murdock’s” body to be discovered by the police. Matt and Urich had made some small efforts to seed doubt and put the genie back in the bottle, but mere doubts on the connection between Murdock and Daredevil wouldn’t be enough to protect Matt and those close to him. Daredevil decided to cut ties from Matt 
Murdock and his life entirely, letting the world think he was dead and Daredevil was an entirely new man taking up the mantle, much like the passing of Mike Murdock years earlier. Karen, Foggy, Ben and his other friends were left in the dark about his plan. Daredevil only told Sister Maggie he was alive in a brief visit. Once again, they danced around the idea that she was his mother, but he asked Maggie to give him a new name for his new life. Maggie said she always liked “Jack.” [Daredevil (1st series) #319-325]