Welcome To Daredevil Week With Born Again
by Tony Thornley
Welcome to Comicon.com’s Daredevil week, celebrating the return of Marvel’s greatest street level hero to TV.
Matt Murdock has many nicknames — the Man without Fear, the Guardian Devil, the Hero of Hell’s Kitchen. But his greatest is Daredevil. When an accident with a radioactive isotope blinded him, Matt found his other senses heightened. He went on to train his mind and body, becoming not just a talented attorney, but a skilled fighter, skills he brought to his home to defend it against the criminals that were determined to destroy his home.
The character has one of the most impressive creative pedigrees in comics. Honestly, there isn’t any character that has a better percentage of “good” stories, especially not for those that have been around for decades. Honestly, good is selling Daredevil short — most of his stories are somewhere between great and all-time classic. When you see creators like Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Denny O’Neil, Frank Miller, Ann Nocenti, David Mack, Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, Andy Diggle, Mark Waid, Charles Soule and Chip Zdarsky in the character’s pedigree, you know his stories are worth reading. That’s just the writers, not to mention the amazing artist lineup like Miller, Wally Wood, John Romita Jr., David Mazzucchelli, Alex Maleev, Joe Quesada, Chris Samnee, and many many more.
The new television series, somewhat of a continuation of the series that debuted on Netflix and somewhat a new entity with the same cast, premieres tomorrow on Disney+. It series takes its name from perhaps the most famous Daredevil story, collected as Daredevil: Born Again from Miller, Mazzucchelli, Christie Scheele and Joe Rosen.
The story finds Karen Page at her lowest point- reduced to a porn performer and addict- looking for one last fix, and selling the last thing she has — Daredevil’s secret identity. The information makes its way into the hands of Wilson Fisk. Fisk then proceeds to tear apart the lives of not just Matt Murdock, but everyone around him. But Fisk is too bold, and he makes the biggest mistake — he takes away Matt’s hope, and he signs his work…
I read the story for the first time this weekend, and it’s clear why it’s considered one of the greatest comic stories of all time. This is an exceptionally tense and gripping thriller of a story. In the course of just the first issue of the story, Fisk ruins Matt’s life. In the second, he beats him nearly to death, then leaves him to die in a cab in the East River. Over the rest of the story though, Matt regains his health, confidence, and gets the evidence he needs to pay back Fisk for every ounce of pain he inflicted on Matt.
Honestly, this is the template for almost every modern comic run. It’s impossible to read it and not see how Miller changes the game for the industry here- the serialized nature of the story, the character moments, the detailed plotting all gives future writers a model to follow. The pace is incredibly quick too. The first issue tells a story that a lot of modern writers would take 4 to 6 issues to tell today, but Miller does it just as effectively.
Mazzucchelli’s work is exceptional. There are numerous standout pages and sequences. The three page sequence in which Ben Urich hears his only source being murdered in his hospital bed over the phone is terrifying, and Mazzucchelli is entirely the source for the horror simply by zooming in on Urich’s face. And the page that sees Matt return to his costume to battle Nuke is absolutely incredible, a top five greatest full page splashes of all time, easily.
The upcoming series doesn’t appear to be a direct adaptation of this story. It seems to be drawing more from the runs by Soule and Ron Garney and Zdarsky and Marco Checchetto. But this is the model on which Daredevil is at least centered, if not based around.
It’s a stunning story, and a great way to kick off Daredevil week. Now watch through the rest of the week, and even some the rest of the month, as the entire Comicon.com team dives deep on Daredevil and the life on the page and behind the scenes of the Man Without Fear.