Daredevil: Cold Day in Hell #3

History

The series was announced at New York Comic Con in October 2024 and launched April 2, 2025, with Charles Soule revealing he had been developing the story since the spring of 2018 — before his original Daredevil (2015) ongoing run had even concluded. The project reunited Soule with artist Steve McNiven, with whom he had previously collaborated on Death of Wolverine (2014) and Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters (2021), and marked McNiven's first major Marvel assignment in nearly a decade. Rather than Soule providing a traditional full script, the two worked from shared plot documents and ongoing conversations throughout production — a process McNiven described as 'jazz' — resulting in a story and dialogue credit for both creators. Issue #3 shipped August 6, 2025, and the complete miniseries was subsequently collected in a trade paperback with bonus material including plot excerpts, thumbnails, layouts, pencils, inks, and McNiven commentary; the collection was later recognized with the 2025 Dragon Award for Best Comic/Graphic Novel.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Written by Charles Soule and Steve McNiven (co-plot); dialogue by Charles Soule; art, inks, and colors by Steve McNiven; color art by Dean White; letters by VC's Clayton Cowles; edited by Nick Lowe.
• Released August 6, 2025 (cover-dated September 2025); 40 pages, rated T+; published by Marvel Comics.
• Final issue of a three-part prestige limited series set in the alternate future reality Earth-25696, a timeline explicitly introduced in Daredevil: Cold Day in Hell #1 (April 2, 2025).
• Depicts the in-story deaths of both this timeline's Matt Murdock/Daredevil and Bullseye/Lester, representing one of the most definitive conclusions to their decades-long rivalry in any Marvel continuity.
• Frank Castle/Punisher, shown in earlier issues as having been limbless and imprisoned by Bullseye for years, uses a salvaged Iron Man-style exoskeleton to escape, rescue Tyra, and confront Bullseye — described by CBR as his 'grimmest story' in the character's history.
• Bullseye's plan is to detonate a bomb containing the same radioactive isotope that originally gave Daredevil his powers, intending to forcibly create a new generation of superhumans; the scheme is thwarted when a mortally wounded Daredevil convinces Tyra to use her own light-based powers to neutralize the gas cloud.
• The issue includes deliberate callbacks to classic Daredevil lore, most notably Bullseye staging a live televised fight that critics identified as an homage to Daredevil #146 (1977); McNiven also cited Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns grid-panel storytelling as a direct visual influence on the series.
• Variant covers for the issue were provided by Daniel Warren Johnson (with colors by Michael Spicer), Giuseppe Camuncoli, Steve McNiven with Richard Isanove, and Peach Momoko (Marvel Rivals variant); a 1:100 Daniel Warren Johnson virgin variant was also produced.

Cast · 4 characters

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Variants (5)