{"id":19738,"date":"2019-06-18T17:04:42","date_gmt":"2019-06-18T17:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/propstore.com\/?p=19738"},"modified":"2019-06-24T08:50:41","modified_gmt":"2019-06-24T08:50:41","slug":"marvelsdaredevil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/propstore.com\/blog\/marvelsdaredevil\/","title":{"rendered":"BLIND JUSTICE – The History of Marvel’s Daredevil"},"content":{"rendered":"

As props and costumes from Marvel\u2019s<\/em> Daredevil<\/em> are being offered to fans in Propstore\u2019s upcoming Marvel Television Live Auction, we examine the origins of the gritty, groundbreaking Super Hero.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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When Marvel\u2019s<\/em> Daredevil<\/em> launched on Netflix in April 2015, it gave us the kind of Marvel hero we\u2019d never really seen on screen before. As star Charlie Cox said of the show at the time, \u201cThis is much darker than anything I\u2019ve seen Marvel do.\u201d While undeniably the \u2018good guy\u2019, this Super Hero was tortured, conflicted, and not afraid of inflicting extremely grievous bodily harm on his foes. His world was shadowy and gritty, located in the crime-ridden neighborhood of Hell\u2019s Kitchen, which felt more like the New York of \u201970s crime dramas than the gleaming city where Tony \u2018Iron Man\u2019 Stark built the Avengers tower. In short, this was a Super Hero story pitched purely at grown-ups.<\/p>\n

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At the time it was a startling move for Marvel Studios, whose cinematic adventures never edged above the PG-13 rating. But when you look at the comic-book roots of the character, you realize it made perfect sense.<\/p>\n

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Created by Stan Lee and Bill Everett in 1964, Daredevil, aka lawyer Matt Murdock, was blinded as a child in the same accident that gave him his extra-sensory powers, and motivated to fight crime by the murder of his father by a gangster. The character took a darker turn in the late \u201970s, when writer Roger McKenzie began blurring the line between upright hero and brutal vigilante. But it was when Frank Miller took the title over in 1981 that it really embraced the shadows and pushed the \u2018adult\u2019 content \u2014\u00a0Miller\u2019s much-praised \u201cBorn Again\u201d storyline, for example, made the character of Karen Page (played in the show by Deborah Ann Woll) a heroin-addicted adult-movie star.<\/p>\n

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During Miller\u2019s tenure, three crucial villain characters were introduced \u2014 all of whom had a huge significance to Marvel\u2019s adaptation for the Netflix series. Imported from Spider-Man<\/em>, the bald, burly Kingpin became the series\u2019 core bad guy, a manipulative, spiteful crime lord who became devoted to destroying Murdock\u2019s life, most notably during \u201cBorn Again,\u201d which formed the basis of the show\u2019s final season. Then there was the deadly Bullseye, a professional killer who could turn any object, from a paper-clip to a playing card, into a deadly weapon. And finally, Elektra, the highly trained assassin with the iconic red sash and paired sai daggers, who became a rather complicated love interest for Murdock.<\/p>\n

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These characters were intrinsic to Daredevil\u2019s morally ambiguous and daringly edgy tone \u2014 one which became tinged with a social conscience under the writer Ann Nocenti between 1987 and 1991, then ultimately reinforced by a tough, real-world feel during a stellar five-year run by Brian Michael Bendis a decade later.<\/p>\n

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However, the series found its true champion in the form of Joe Quesada, who joined Marvel Comics in 1998 and brought a new direction to Marvel Comics by injecting a cool, indie sensibility to its titles, with Daredevil leading the way. Quesada and Kevin Smith\u2019s \u201cGuardian Devil\u201d storyline explored the Super Hero\u2019s relationship with his Catholic faith like no other, while testing Murdock so harshly, at one point he even contemplates suicide.<\/p>\n

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Quesada would go on to become Marvel\u2019s editor-in-chief, then the Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Entertainment. As such, he is Executive Producer on all TV adaptations, and was instrumental in making Daredevil<\/em> the show it was. Unsurprisingly, the showrunners (Steven S. DeKnight for Season 1, Marco Ramirez and Doug Petrie for Season 2, and Erik Oleson for Season 3) never strayed far from the storylines and style of Miller, Nocenti, Bendis, Smith and Quesada.<\/p>\n

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The first and third seasons smartly placed Kingpin as the front-and-center antagonist, with the casting of Vincent D\u2019Onofrio (Full Metal Jacket<\/em>) proving a masterstroke. Perpetually simmering with barely suppressed rage, yet at times almost inviting sympathy through his oddly almost-childlike mannerisms, he was never anything less than compelling, delivering what many still believe is Marvel\u2019s greatest ever villain performance. To the degree that the show could have titled the first season Wilson Fisk<\/em>, and it still would have made perfect sense.<\/p>\n

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Elektra (\u00c9lodie Young) drove the second season (alongside Jon Bernthal\u2019s ballistic Punisher, who was later rewarded his own show), pushing the guilt-ridden Matt even further away from the light as their shared past was revealed \u2014 along with the narrowing difference between their relatively \u2018villainous\u2019 and \u2018heroic\u2019 methods. And Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) made a late but welcome appearance in the final season, receiving a complex origin story that saw him turn from heroic FBI agent into a full-on murderous psychopath, thanks to Fisk\u2019s insidious machinations.<\/p>\n

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All the while, Marvel\u2019s <\/em>Daredevil<\/em> maintained a moody, back-alley-gloomy visual style and a flair for unflinchingly brutal action, which rarely left its suffering protagonist unscarred. The show\u2019s signature set-pieces involved intricately choreographed single-take, single-camera melees that simply pummeled the breath out of you, the most impressive coming in the fourth episode of Season 3, when Charlie Cox\u2019s Matt has to fight his way out of a prison during a riot.<\/p>\n

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Yet, although the show explored violence and darkness, Marvel\u2019s Daredevil<\/em> never lost sight of Murdock\u2019s steely moral core, forged through his belief in the sanctity of the law and, more pertinently, his Catholicism. One of his mentors was a priest and his mother (Joanne Whalley) a nun. While faith-related images permeated the show, with the Super Hero even making a church his base of operations in the third season, where we often saw him surrounded by statues of angels and saints.<\/p>\n

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Cox\u2019s commitment to the role was never once in doubt, whether he was portraying Daredevil\u2019s internal battles with his Catholic faith, making Murdock\u2019s sightlessness convincing, or pulling impressive fight moves that required months of intensive training.<\/p>\n

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Marvel\u2019s Daredevil<\/em> was all about keeping it real, keeping it layered and keeping its lead character on a tightrope walk between doing good for the people of Hell\u2019s Kitchen, and doing more harm than good. Something which any long-term fan of the comic-book surely appreciated.<\/p>\n

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Follow us on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0to be the first to know about all current & upcoming Propstore Auctions and more!<\/p>\n

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\"blog<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As props and costumes from Marvel\u2019s Daredevil are being offered to fans in Propstore\u2019s upcoming Marvel Television Live Auction, we examine the origins of the gritty, groundbreaking Super Hero.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":230,"featured_media":19739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,674],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-auction","category-marvel"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/propstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19738"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/propstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/propstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/propstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/230"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/propstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19738"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/propstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19789,"href":"https:\/\/propstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19738\/revisions\/19789"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/propstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/propstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/propstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/propstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}