#rowlerants

Forgot to post that I got my print from @blanc-ci like a week ago!!!!!! I was having an awful day at work and this instantly flipped my mood a whole 180 degrees!!!!! SPUCK!!!

I’m dying to discuss it with somebodyyy

Ooooh man. Let’s do this! I’ll continue below the cut so I don’t fill up your entire screen lol

Oh boy, time to unleash Pandora’s box.

So Daredevil is a fairly long running comics character in the marvel universe, known for his super senses, bright red spandex with devil horns, and general acrobatic prowess, hence his name. In his civilian identity, his name is Matthew (Matt) Murdock, a blind defense lawyer known for his largely pro-bono law practice “Nelson and Murdock” with his best friend, and former college roommate, Foggy Nelson.

He’s a street level superhero typically known for protecting his small neighborhood in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. Historically that region was a pretty poor neighborhood (not so much today, but times change) consisting largely of poor Irish Catholic immigrants, and that’s how he grows up- son of an single, immigrant father who does boxing for a living, known in the ring as “Battlin’” Jack Murdock.

Now Jack Murdock doesn’t want this life for his son- he’s old and losing his strength from years of fights, and forces encourages young Matt to stay in school and study hard so he won’t end up like him. It’s not just the physical degradation that makes him so adamant to ensure Matt doesn’t follow his path though, it’s also the fact that he’s been forced to compromise his morals and start throwing fights for money, under a local crime boss’s command.

Matt is unaware of this at the time, but he’s got plenty of other stuff to worry about, like bullying from other kids his age when he refuses to go outside and play with them (his dad wants him to study), and the fact that he gets blinded at the ripe age of 9 by some radioactive chemicals, after diving to save a man crossing the street, who was about to get hit by the truck containing said chemicals. These chemicals don’t only blind Matt though, but also enhance his other senses to superhuman levels, giving him a massive amount of sensory processing issues on top of the superpowers lol.

His father helps work him through the traumatic event, and beginning of his readjustment to life without sight, gets him reading braille, and starting to study again, hoping maybe his kid can be a lawyer or something when he grows up. However it isn’t long before he ends up getting killed by the crime bosses he was throwing fights for, after finally refusing to throw a fight.

So Matt, now alone in his world, gets sent to a Catholic orphanage, and spends the rest of his childhood there, utterly alone until he meets his mentor - Stick. He’s also a blind man, but he’s different from Matt in that he doesn’t have any special enhanced senses, but he is a master in martial arts, mostly learned from people in various fantasy Asia locations that marvel has created. He trains Matt to hone his senses, block out all the unnecessary noise, and punch really hard.

He’s big on tough love teaching styles, some of which to be honest are straight up abusive, but Matt, as a young impressionable orphan, sees him as a substitute father figure. Stick doesn’t stick around for long though, and the reasons for this vary in different comics and the tv show. Regardless, the impact is that Matt has been abandoned once again, and there’s really no notable people in his life until he gets into law school and meets Foggy Nelson.

Foggy is his college roommate, and while they don’t initially get along (one comic says Matt nicknamed him Foggy because he felt like the snoring he made while asleep sounded like a foghorn), they quickly become inseparable. Various comics disagree on their dynamic but I like how Waid portrays them, with Foggy as the smart one and Matt as the charismatic one, both reliant on each other to prepare the best defense for their clients.

In college, he also has a fling with Elektra, who is the start of his endless string of lovers. She is the daughter of some rich millionaire, but what Matt likes about her is the danger she represents. By this point, Matt has been actively masking the fact that his enhanced senses allow him to sense his surroundings much more than an ordinary blind person might be able to for more than half of his life. He never told his father about his enhanced senses, and Elektra is the first to see him for who he truly is, mask off, and accept it. However the problem he runs into is that Elektra’s morality is much more gray than the black and white lines he’s constructed as a Catholic lawyer. She urges him to more and more reckless stunts until an event (differs between different comics/the tv show) where his actions lead to death or near death. They break it off and he doesn’t see her for many years following.

Once he kicks off his career at Nelson and Murdock, he also starts his early vigilante career. I’m not too familiar with the reasons around why it only kicked off then (I haven’t read daredevil: yellow yet or the very early comics) but he quickly racks up small time enemies and a very unbalanced work-vigilantism schedule.

Their first office manager is named Karen Page, and she’s the first and most prominent love interest for Matt. Her story starts out with her and Matt being in a very innocent relationship while both of them mask the darker parts of their personality from each other. The early comics don’t do this very well because well, people were much more misogynistic in the 1960s. However I think the tv show beautifully adapts this storyline and fleshes Karen out a considerable amount. In the comics though, Karen eventually is killed by Bullseye, who you can probably guess the powerset of by his name.

Bullseye also kills Elektra after she and Matt have a reunion, both in comic suits, where she has become an infamous assassin in the time after she left Matt in college. Technically he kills Elektra before he kills Karen but Elektra gets revived later so it’s all good. In any case, bullseye cements himself as a major rogue of daredevil haunting him through his deceased girlfriends. He represents a main antagonist for the martial arts/ninja side of daredevil, along with the Hand, a cult of ninjas that worship a creature called the beast, who can resurrect the dead.

On the law side, with Matt Murdock, the kingpin tends to be his main enemy. If you’ve seen into the spider-verse, you’ll know that Kingpin has beef with Spider-Man too, but with Daredevil, it’s a lot more personal. The Netflix show demonstrates him with perfection but I think the Frank Miller Born Again run demonstrates his ruthlessness best, where he discovers the secret identity of Daredevil and then systematically and slowly dismantles his entire life, getting him disbarred, then manipulating his tax records and utility bills so that he loses his house, leaving him homeless, sleeping on the streets, with only one thought on his mind: revenge against Kingpin.

I’m gonna be honest I don’t read that much fanfiction. However there is one fic that I swear is what I will imagine mcu canon as post-snap no matter what the new born again series gives us. I spent several hours trying to find it again so you better read it lol.

Premise is post-NWH Spider-Man trying to tough out life and Matt trying to establish a presence in Hell’s Kitchen again after being snapped. Lots of found family tropes, and really hits the spot for my interpretation of Matt ngl. I haven’t checked in on it in a year and now ao3 is requiring an account to read it so idk how it is now, but highly recommend.

As for reading recs on comics, I think my favorite runs are bendis/brubaker, waid, and zdarsky if I had to pick some, but honestly they’re all good. Like objectively speaking daredevil has some of the most consistent quality writing compared to other comics.

Especially in bendis there is some really fantastic art by David Mack and storytelling, best used to describe the origin story of echo, who currently is getting a show produced about her in the mcu. Apparently the trailer just dropped so I’m pretty hype about that. Overall I think bendis is the bread and butter of daredevil. It accumulates the early history of daredevil into what forms his core character.

Zdarsky is really good if you’re a fan of the Netflix show. It leans more heavily into the religious side of daredevil if you’re into that, and honestly the characterizations feel like they could be ripped out of the tv show. I especially enjoy the first half (pre devil’s reign), but the second half is also pretty good.

Waid I think is my all time favorite run, mostly because it builds onto everything else that makes daredevil’s character and creates a sort of meta analysis of it. Plus it feels the most emotional - at this point he’s trying to go public with his secret identity and it’s a genuinely painful process for him to allow himself to be vulnerable. Yet it’s also a time where you get to be happy for him that he’s finally reaching happiness. I genuinely start tearing up whenever I reach the end of this run. I appreciate the soule run very much (blindspot is awesome!) but I can’t ever forgive him for robbing Matt of the ending of waid.

New run of daredevil is also currently in the works with Saladin Ahmed if you want to start out with a totally fresh story for daredevil. There’s only like 2 issues out so I can’t impose any judgment on it yet but it’s certainly an interesting new position they’re putting daredevil in.