DAREDEVIL #21

Cover shows strong gloss and sharp corners with no visible creases, tears, or color breaks. Spine appears tight with no stress lines visible through the protective sleeve. Slight glare from the bag obscures fine surface detail, and the book is in a plastic sleeve which limits full assessment; interior and back cover were not evaluated.

Published under the Marvel Knights imprint with a cover date of August 2001 and carrying legacy number 401, Daredevil (vol. 2) #21 is the second chapter of "Playing to the Camera," the six-part courtroom arc written by screenwriter Bob Gale with pencils by Phil Winslade, inks by James Hodgkins and colors by Chris Chuckry. David Mack, fresh from his own run on the title, supplied the cover. The story leans on the legal side of Matt Murdock's life as Nelson and Murdock is retained to sue the masked vigilante Daredevil, an ethical trap that plays out across the arc; Spider-Man carries over from the preceding issue. The run sits between Brian Michael Bendis's "Wake Up" and the Bendis-Maleev "Underboss" relaunch that begins with issue 26, which is where collector attention on this volume concentrates.

Market behavior matches that position. This is a readily available print-run book from a period of healthy Marvel distribution, and raw copies circulate as ordinary back-issue inventory, frequently sold in short lots alongside neighboring issues rather than individually. Certified activity is minimal: the census population for the issue is small, and the few high-grade slabs that trade do so at a level dictated by submission economics rather than by scarcity or demand. The recognizable Mack cover and the Spider-Man appearance give the issue slightly more pull than a purely anonymous mid-run number, and the Gale connection is a modest talking point, but neither creates a distinct pricing tier.

Buyers are predominantly run collectors completing the 1998-2011 volume, readers working through the Marvel Knights era, and Mack cover completists. Across grades the spread is compressed, as it is for most Modern Age commons: low-grade and mid-grade raw copies differ by little, so condition-sensitive buyers simply hold out for near-mint raw stock, which is plentiful. For dealers the practical value is in volume and in bundling with the surrounding arc; a slabbed high-grade copy makes sense only where the census remains thin enough to reward a top-of-population registry placement.