10 Things You Should Know About Daredevil
Image Source: The Popverse, Comicbook Treasury
He is a lawyer by day and a brutal vigilante by night. He is blind but can hear the heartbeats of others. He is deeply rooted in Catholicism but wears a devil costume. Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil, created by Stan Lee and Bill Everett with input from Jack Kirby, first appeared in Apil 1964 as a new character for Marvel Comics.
The Netflix show Daredevil, starring Charlie Cox as the titular character, ran from 2015 to 2018 and was recently added to the official MCU timeline. Cox later reprised his role in Spider-Man: No Way Home, She-Hulk, and most recently in the Hawkeye Spin-off Echo, where he battled Maya Lopez. His next portrait of "the man without fear" will be in Daredevil: Born Again, which recently resumed shooting and will premiere in 2025 on Disney+.
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To bring you up to speed, here are ten things that you (probably) don't know about Matt Murdock/Daredevil:
10. From Yellow To Red
Image Source: Movieweb
For the first six issues of the comic series, Daredevil's costume was mainly yellow (including his mask) with a black and red swimsuit-like body. Matt made the costume from the boxing robes of his deceased father, Jonathan "Jack" Murdock. Daredevil's costume changed with issue 7 to the typical red and black attire he has mostly kept since then. Daredevil's red and yellow suit, which he wore in his guest appearance in She-Hulk is a reminiscence of this early costume.
9. Neighborhood Heroes
Image Source: Spider-Man Fandom
From early on, Spider-Man was one of Daredevil'the closest friends, as they both operated in New York City, hunted gangsters like Kingpin, and Peter Parker's "spidey-sense" is not too far from Murdock's ability to anticipate looming danger and imminent attacks. Throughout all the iterations and reboots of Daredevil, Peter Parker has discovered several times the true identity of the devil of Hell's Kitchen and vice versa Matt Murdock that of Spider-Man.
If Marvel indeed plans to create a kind of "street level Avengers" with Daredevil, Frank Castle, Maya Lopez, and Wilson Fisk as their main antagonist, the alter egos of Peter Parker and Matt Murdock will likely meet again after the events of No Way Home.
8. Foes And Lovers
Image Source: ATCL
The first episode of Disney+'s Echo has Daredevil fight Maya Lopez in an impressive martial arts combat. The blind man and the deaf woman have been enemies in the comics as well, where Maya, who was under the tutelage of Kingpin was tasked with proving to Matt Murdock that her boss was not an evil person. While Maya and Matt fell in love, she still tried to kill Daredevil in her role as Echo, not knowing his true identity. Discovering a way to disturb Daredevil's senses, she nearly killed him and only stopped when she found out that her enemy was also her lover. Kingpin's betrayal led to Maya shooting her "uncle" in the face and leaving the US. When she returned, she tried to reconnect with Murdock, only to find out he had married Milla Donovan, a blind woman.
7. Twins
Image Source: CBR
In the early run of the Daredevil comics, Spider-Man unintentionally exposed Daredevil's true identity, forcing Murdock to invent his fictional twin brother Mike, whom he claimed to be Daredevil. Unlike the stern and emotionally withdrawn Matt, Mike was a much more easy-going character. For a time, the writers hinted that having to juggle the personalities of Matt, Mike, and Daredevil led to a mental disorder, but dropped this potline soon, and Matt let his twin brother die.
6. In love With An Avenger
Image Source: CBR
In the early 1970s, the Daredevil comics briefly turned towards science fiction when "the man with no fear" had to fight a robot from the future who tried to change history. Murdock also moved from New York to San Francisco, where Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow became his crime-fighting partner and love interest. Their professional and personal relationship broke up when Murdock returned to New York. Natasha later tried to revive their romance but to no avail.
5. A Blueprint For Batman
Image Source: National Review
In the 1980s, Frank Miller took over the Daredevil series, giving the comics a much darker and more brutal direction. Miller ignored or disregarded most of Matt's previous story, for example, changing his father into an evil and abusive character, causing his son to become a lawyer. At the same time, he made Daredevil a kind of antihero who had no hesitation in killing criminals. Despite these drastic changes, the issues created under Miller's leadership are among the most popular to date.
Miller left Daredevil in 1983 and joined DC three years later to work on Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. During this time, he turned Bruce Wayne's alter ego into a dark and bruting avenger.
4. Daredevil Before Daredevil
Image Source: Bleeding Cool
Stan Lee might have invented the character of Matt Murdock, but the name Daredevil is much older: In September 1940, Lev Gleason Publications released Silver Streak #6, an issue that featured the character Daredevil, the alter-ego of Bart Hill. As a boy, he had to witness his father being killed, which left him muted. After becoming a masked avenger, he used a boomerang to fight his enemies, and much like Captain America, his main opponents were Hitler and the Nazis.
When Lee pitched the idea for a Daredevil comic, he proposed to either resurrect Gleason's Daredevil or create a new character, which was the direction Marvel chose.
3. The Turtles And The Devil
Image Source: Turtlepedia
The story of Daredevil has a lot in common with that of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as both develop superpowers after being exposed to a toxic/radioactive liqúid. Both Daredevil and the TMNT strike from the shadows and use martial arts as their preferred fighting style. The turtle's mentor Splinter bears some resemblance to Murdock's teacher Stick, and the TMNT's criminal organization Foot is not unlike the Hand, the ninja clan from Daredevil.
The TMNT comics published by Mirage Studios include a scene in which a boy is involved in an accident with a truck that carries a mutagenic compound. As a result, the boy's four turtles are splashed into the sewers where they turn into the TMNT. The boy blinded by the compound, is implied to be the young Matt Murdock.
2. A New Avenger
Image Source: View Comics Online
Although Murdock/Daredevil never officially joined the "original" Avengers, several issues of the Marvel comics released between 2010 and 2013 featured him as a regular member of the New Avengers, together with Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Captain America, and Spider-Man.
1. Mayor Of New York
Image Source: CBR
The post-credit scene of Echo's last episode sets up Wilson Fisk's plan to run for mayor of New York, something he achieved in the comics back in 2017. Once there, he tried to imprison all masked vigilantes, which backfired on him when the Hand attacked, and Kingpin ended up in a coma. Through a legal loophole that Fisk overlooked, Matt Murdock was able to become the new mayor, freeing the arrested heroes and stopping the Hand. It remains to be seen if the MCU moves in a similar direction in future projects.
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