"Remember Mike Murdock? Now, that was a good one."

Commentary

Reading Guides and Recommendations

Daredevil History and Continuity

Hypersenses

Happy Matt of the Month

The Modern Mike Murdock Saga

Milla Appreciation Day

Daredevil vol. 8 #20 by Saladin Ahmed, José Luis Soares, Oren Junior, Jesus Aburtov, and Clayton Cowles

I'm going to refer you here for answers to both of these; that scene with Foggy in the hospital is probably the most nauseous we've ever seen Matt, though I'm also going to put forward this moment, based purely on his facial expression:

Happy to help!

The answer is: Yes, sometimes. (I'm not a lawyer, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think a law firm could survive if it were pro bono all the time.) In the comics, Nelson & Murdock started off with a loan from Foggy's rich parents, but it wasn't long before the duo started finding steady clients, and Matt in particular achieved rapid acclaim as a brilliant legal mind. As a result, Nelson & Murdock have a history of inconsistent but substantial financial success (I go into this a bit in this post; I'll never pass up an opportunity to show off Matt's swanky Sutton Place brownstone).

But Matt and Foggy are about helping people, first and foremost, not about making the big bucks. There are a few key examples of this. One is from the '70s, when--having gathered a good deal of success and the necessary funds--Matt and Heather (with Foggy joining soon afterward) started up what they called "the Storefront" on the Lower East Side--a reinvented Nelson & Murdock designed to be a walk-in law office offering, yes, pro bono services:

Daredevil vol. 1 #130 by Marv Wolfman, Bob Brown, Klaus Janson, Michele Wolfman, and John Costanza

(Foggy's just worried because he's about to lose his re-election campaign. Cheer up, Foggy, it's for the best.)

Another great example is from the '80s, following the Kingpin's destruction of Matt's life and Karen Page's return to the city. Matt and Karen moved into a small apartment in Hell's Kitchen, where Matt had lived as a child, and Karen--who was recovering from a drug addiction--created a community center and addiction hotline to help out people experiencing the same hardships she had been through. After some cajoling, she managed to bring Matt onboard as an under-the-table legal resource (he had been disbarred, so he wasn't technically allowed to practice law at the time), offering free consultations to anyone who needed one.

Daredevil vol. 1 #248 by Ann Nocenti, Rick Leonardi, Al Williamson, Joe Rosen, and Petra Scotese

There are other examples of Matt and/or Foggy offering free or discounted services on a case-by-case basis to people in need, but you get the general gist. The answer is an emphatic: sometimes.

I enjoy when Matt is on teams, though the trade-off is that it often means his perspective gets lost and he just kind of becomes one of the crowd. Matt has been an Avenger before (he was on Luke Cage's New Avengers roster, and he's still a card-carrying reserve member), and he was on the Marvel Knights lineup and then, briefly, part of the MCU-inspired Defenders team back in 2017. But it's true that he does tend to operate solo, and we can look at this from two different viewpoints. From the perspective of Marvel's creative teams and editorial, Daredevil has built up a history as a character with a strong solo title, who works well in his own comic, operating as the main character. Arguably, this is the context in which he is the most popular. Therefore, he's not naturally someone who is going to get picked for team rosters, and it's possible (I can neither confirm nor deny this, but I suspect)--that since he almost always has a solo comic going, it gets logistically complex to have a comic running concurrently in which he is also on a team, which may be why that has tended to not happen very often.

In-universe, as you point out, Matt has a ton of superhero friends. He's deeply enmeshed in the NYC superhero community, and I really enjoy that about him. But he prefers to operate on his own. He has strong ideas about how he wants things done, it's annoying for him to have to account for the behavior of other people, and from that ultra-important sensory perspective, having another person-or-five around him is distracting and, potentially, a liability, especially in a fight. With that said, he has had a lot of wonderful team-ups--you mention the Daredevil and the Black Widow era, and the other big name to include here is his superhero BFF Spider-Man, who he has also teamed up with a lot. As a big Iron Fist fan, I always enjoy his team-ups with Danny Rand, I'm thrilled that Matt is finally getting to hang out with She-Hulk, and I also love surprising, unusual team-ups that put Matt in fun new situations.

Daredevil vol. 8 #24 by Saladin Ahmed, José Luis Soares, Oren Junior, Jesus Aburtov, and Clayton Cowles

Daredevil vol. 1 #-1 by Joe Kelly, Gene Colan, Matt Ryan, Christie Scheele, Richard Starkings, and Comicraft

Jack Murdock drops his son off at college, from the Daredevil "negative one" retrospective issue. This is the only time we see this specific event from Matt's early life on panel, and I love that the issue emphasizes what a massive shift this is for both of them—for Jack, who has always been over-protective, now seeing his son go off and do something he's never done himself; and for Matt, who is eager to prove himself and assert his independence but, nevertheless, is in a whole new world and comes to realize just how much he's going to miss his dad.