Daredevil Message Board

[Marvel Knight]

Maybe this is redundant but I'm curious about what you guys think is the appeal of a character like Daredevil? And what does he mean to you personally?

Since I'm new to the board I thought it would be cool to see what other fans think about my favourite fictional character. Maybe this thread can be a discussion about the meaning behind the Man Without Fear, and how universal you think his appeal is (don't get all sentimental on me now, jk lol).
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Andrew

[Gloria]

I like Matt's willpower and resilience.

I mean, his "superpowers" aren't of the earth-shattering kind. He's got his Radar and enhanced senses over the average guy, but he's blind, and, in this regard, in disadvantage with said average guy. He's well trained in fighting skills, but at this point he's just like a lot of vigilantes (and another lot of vigilantes and villains have greater physical strenght, etc. than him), so...

His real power lies in his sense of justics & ethics, his sheer will to train himself to be the best possible hero, and be the best possible lawyer. His dislike of the mighty who step on the weak. He's basically a human being with some extra habilities, but with this little extra, he does much more than other people with greater power.
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Gloria
Devuélveme el rosario de mi madre y quédate con todo lo demás

"Para la cuesta arriba quiero mi burro, que la cuesta abajo yo me la subo"

[Marvel Knight]

Thanks for the reply Gloria. I really liked your answer, and I agree about his resilience. One of the reasons why I love the character so much is because to me he represents the underdog, victims like himself, of injustice. So it's hard not to root for him.

I also like what Joe Q once said: "He is the comic's character who most strongly displays the dual nature of man. This is a guy who practices law by day and vigilante justice at night, that makes for a heck of an interesting character. Also, everything in Matt's life is very Shakespearean in nature, bigger than life. His romances are deeper, more intense, they never end well. There is no middle in Daredevil's life, there are only extremes."
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Andrew

[Darediva]

It's that "never give up" thing that does it for me. From the beginning, Daredevil has been outclassed strength-wise and powers-wise if you compare him to other superheroes. Sheer determination to do what needed to be done: study as hard as he could to make the best grades, work to be a first-class lawyer, then prepare himself physically (mostly in secret) to become a champion athlete.

Matt Murdock got dealt a crappy hand in life, but it's never stopped him from going after what he thought was right. That's powerful stuff for me.
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Alice




Those who throw dirt merely lose ground.

[Neilan]

When I was a kid, the idea of a blind superhero seemed like a work of genius. This was a Stan Lee creation, this was another disaffected hero, like Spider-Man, but now there was something new, that is, he was blind. That's why the original hornhead was a wiseacre, as my grandma used to say. By the time, Miller took over, DD had been a sci-fi series and now was a noirish, darker strip. Like Joe Q alluded to, the Kingpin-Murdock relationship certainly took on Shakesperean tones. I agree with Alice, the determination and refusal to give in, which, I feel, was a huge part of the Nocenti era, make Matt Murdock special. His intensity rules the day, though his first instinct is not always the right one, his heart is always in the right place. I've made no bones about being a Spidey guy. Murdock and Parker have always been my 2 favorite heroes. I find DD especially impressive, working with his level of powers, his what could have been a handicap, and his sense of justice.
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It's never too late to have a happy childhood!

[Clayton Blind Love]

I was born deaf (hereditary). I was fortunate to have half the normal hearing range. Believe it or not, this was enough for me to avoid having a speech impediment. My parents never learned that I was deaf until I was four! Somehow, my observation skills compensated for my hearing loss well enough to get by to that point. Specifically, the lip reading. When I was five, I became the youngest person in my province to wear hearing aids (1976). My elementary years were trying at times. Certain teachers felt I should be held back simply because I wore hearing aids. This started right away with kindergarten. Really, how does one fail that!?!?. Anyhow, without going into more detail, you can imagine my love for this comicbook when I found it. Talk about a serious confidence booster! The power to believe you can do anything you want can never be understated. Obviously, this superhero means a lot to me.

C.
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Love is blindness, I don't want to see
Won't you wrap the night around me

[Marvel Knight]

[jumonji]

I'm a fairly new fan, but have done my best to cover a lot of ground in the last few months (while still keeping up to speed with my job, friends and other interests...). I think the main appeal of DD is the complexity of the character which I think really appeals to the adult reader. I mean, I'm now at twenty-nine back to reading comic books for the first time since I was twelve!

I like that the reader never loses sight of the guy in the suit. With a lot of superheroes you get the feeling that the masked hero represents the "real" person whereas the civilian alter ego is secondary. With DD it's almost the opposite. The masked hero persona is a part of Matt Murdock, but the civilian identity is just as important. They are both different sides of the same guy, and there is no neat and clean division between the two identities.

There is also the dichotomy between different aspects of the character. First, there's the whole lawyer vs. vigilante bit, which is always interesting. Then there's the tormented and moody side matched up with at least a half-decent sense of humor and an underlying sense of optimism. There's that fighting spirit that some of you mentioned above. If Matt would constantly walk around thinking that everything he did was meaningless, and ultimately futile, he wouldn't be doing it. If he weren't an optimist at the core, he would have checked himself into a mental institution a long time ago (although I suppose there have been times when that wouldn't have been such a bad idea).

There is also, on the physiological level, the dichotomy between disability and superability. Matt's perception of the world is very different from that of other people, being at once both more and less detailed. If you compare him to, say, Doctor Mid-Nite (the only other blind superhero I could think of off the top of my head, I know there are others), his blindness isn't rendered entirely inconsequential by his powers. His powers let him go beyond normal human perception in many ways that give him an edge over his enemies (in and out of court), but the fact remains that the modern world is constructed for and by people whose senses operate differently from Matt's. A nifty radar and super-hearing may be obvious advantages when fighting street thugs, especially at night, but they don't really cut it in every imaginable situation. I actually think it's kind of funny that Matt would have better odds fighting Bullseye than mastering the iPhone. Matt Murdock may in fact be the perfect poster boy for the otherwise ridiculous label "differently abled," in that his unique condition, for lack of a better word, can manifest itself as both an advantage and a disadvantage, depending on the situation.

To sum up this rather long post, I guess you could say that the appeal of the character, to me, is that he remains a likeable and powerful figure despite his moral, psychological and physical flaws. He is not perfect, and if he were, he would be a whole lot less interesting.

/Christine