Man Without Fear - Born Again
Diving deeper into the era of Daredevil's history that directly inspired the new show.
Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli are absolute legends in the comics industry. For those of you who are into gaming, they’re essentially the Mario and Luigi of the industry. For those of you who listen to a lot of 70s songs like me, Simon & Garfunkel. For those of you who are into comics… you probably already know their names. Their work on Batman is considered some of the greatest DC work of all time (possibly the greatest), and the run I’m going to discuss in this post, Daredevil Born Again, is possible the most influential Marvel run of all time. They’re both definitely both worth a read for the incredible combination of art and storytelling, but my job here isn’t to advertise Marvel Unlimited (although you should definitely go and subscribe - only £10 a month for over 30,000 comics!). Prepare yourself for the next era in the Man Without Fear’s story - Born Again.
Glorianna O’Breen, an Irish photojournalist, met Matt for the first time during his battle with a terrorist on an overseas mission. Due to Matt’s slow descent into madness and poverty after recent events, he pushed her away - she later moved in with Matt’s good friend Foggy Nelson. Around this time, Karen moved to L.A. to pursue a career in acting. After moving, she sold out Matt’s secret identity to someone whose loyalties quite clearly laid elsewhere, allowing the information to eventually reach the Kingpin. Fisk (Kingpin), used this information against his long-time enemy, methodically using his influence and power to destroy every aspect of Matt’s life, in a dark turn on the once fairly light-hearted character. The framing orchestrated by the crime boss costed Matt his attorney’s license, alongside most of his money. Alongside this, it was also revealed that Fisk had been indirectly responsible for the deaths of both his father and Elektra, only giving Matt more reason to hate him.
Kingpin grew restless, and made the decision to bomb Matt’s house despite the clear risks involved for himself. After Matt escaped, he realised that his life was not being torn apart by pure dumb luck, and suspected that something was going on behind the scenes. After failing at a revenge attack on Kingpin, he was saved by a nun who was revealed to be his mother, a figure who had left his life at a young age. He stayed at the church for a while before leaving to dismantle more of Fisk’s plots to kill him. This led him down the path to battle and eventually defeat a corrupt super soldier by the name of Nuke. The Avengers eventually arrived at the location, arresting the new ‘government operative’ who seemed to have run amok. Although he broke out again, he was stopped by Captain America. After being shot by the military and Kingpin’s men, Daredevil realised that Nuke would die. He used the proof of Nuke’s existence as a government operative to show how far the Kingpin’s influence had spread, which ended his reign of terror for the time being. Matt and Karen moved back to their hometown after the events had died down, but as you may have come to expect by this point, things didn’t stay quiet for long.
Ann Nocenti introduced the character of Typhoid Mary during her run on the series, an extremely complex character with two completely differing personalities. Mary Walker, who began dating Matt, was a sweet and seemingly normal person. Typhoid, however, became a recurring villain of the series due to her cruel and villainous nature. She was tasked by Kingpin to lure Matt into falling for her, slowly driving him over the edge of his sanity. After returning to New York to escape from her, Matt travelled around other parts of the country to get away from the chaos of his hometown. At one point, he joined forces with the Inhumans to defeat various incarnations of Ultron, who was also suffering a complex mental breakdown.
After a not-so-fun afternoon tea with Mephisto, Matt returned to New York having completely lost his memory, including the memory that he was blind. For a while, he told people that he just had a ‘seeing problem’ until he regained enough of his memory to use the name of his father as a replacement for his old identity and to operate semi-regularly. Under the new name ‘Jack Murdock’, he resumed his crime fighting career as a blind boxer, helping him to recover some of his past morals of right and wrong. Bullseye saw this as a chance to ruin Daredevil’s name once and for all, but eventually ended up having his own wave of memory loss, leading him to believe that he was Daredevil himself. Matt progressively regained more of his memory, leading to a showdown between the two foes, each dressed in the other’s costume. He successfully defeated Bullseye and began working on restoring his lost reputation. Nocenti ended off her run on a positive note, with Matt pulling himself back together again, and reconciling with his best friend Foggy Nelson.
That’s where we’ll finish off with Matt’s story for today, although don’t worry, there’s more to come - a lot more in fact. Next week I’ll hopefully get a post out exploring Daredevil’s history throughout the 90s and into the early 2000s.
If you enjoyed the post, leave a like, and if you didn’t, feel free to write a really mean comment about it - I promise I won’t cry.1
Until next time, keep running!
That’s a lie, I probably will - it’s likely you’ll never hear the end of it as well.