Daredevil Resource
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Amazing Heroes #182 (August 1990)

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Silver and Gold: Divided Daredevil
by Peter Sanderson

The fact that so many people use the phrases "The Golden Age of Comics" and "The Silver Age of Comics" demonstrates the extent to which mainstream comic books center on super-hero stories. They're what people who speak of the Golden and Silver Ages are really talking about.

After all, what about the EC comic books, which chronologically fall in between the Golden Age, which as I define it ran from 1935 (with the debut of Siegel and Shuster's Doctor Occult) to 1951 (with the demise of the Justice Society, among others), and the Silver Age, which started in 1956 (with the first appearance of the Barry Allen Flash)? And what about comics in forms other than books, namely comic strips? Didn't the "Golden Age" of comics in general actually begin with Little Nemo? (And if so, does anyone have any suggestions as to when the Silver Age of comic strips began?)

And although everyone seems to agree as to when the Silver Age of Super-hero Comics began, I don't believe there is a uniformly accepted date for when it ended. My own theory is that the Silver Age came to an end with the close of Mort Weisinger's career as editor of the Superman titles, the departures of John Broome and Gardner Fox from the titles edited by Julius Schwartz at DC, and the end of Stan Lee's run of writing Fantastic Four and Spider-Man. Roy Thomas, with his work on The Avengers and other titles in the late 1960s, was the last major writer of the Silver Age.

There have, I think, been two "ages" of super-hero comics since then. The Third Age -- I will not attempt to name them after precious metals, thank you -- begins with the Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow series, the new Schwartz editorial regime on Superman, the return of the Batman to his original characterization as a dark avenger (thanks to O'Neil, Adams, Bob Haney, Frank Robbins, et al.), and Jack Kirby's Fourth World books at DC. Even greater changes were worked at Marvel with the influx of a large number of new writers (Conway, Englehart, Gerber, McGregor, Moench, Starlin, Wein, and Wolfman, among others) and a massive expansion of the Marvel line of comics and magazines in terms of both numbers and subject matter. The culmination of the Third Age was the Claremont/Byrne X-Men at Marvel and the Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans at DC.

The Fourth Age, characterized among other things by its radical reinterpretations of Golden and Silver Age characters, began with Frank Miller's debut as the writer of Daredevil. This heralded a new kind of psychological exploration of the central characters of super-hero stories, as well as inaugurating the film noir-style treatment of super-hero material that has since degenerated in the hands of others into the "grim and gritty" stereotype. The Miller Daredevil was also the first major reconceptualization of a Silver Age character, although, to date, it has not deleted any past Daredevil stories from the current continuity. Rather, Miller's Daredevil took elements of the character and his history, specifically his origin, and developed them in new ways.

Daredevil's origin, which appeared in Daredevil #1, was the work of scripter Stan Lee and artist Bill Everett and has been retold and reprinted on several occasions, most notably in the Simon and Schuster paperback Sons of Origins of Marvel Comics. It was a tale of a driven youth avenging his father's death amid a world of urban corruption. Summarized thus, the links between the first Daredevil story and Miller's work are clear to anyone familiar with the latter.

But strangely, Stan Lee's Daredevil stories after issue #1 veered increasingly away from this world of vengeance and realistic crime. (Perhaps this fact is an indication of how strong a role Everett, who quickly left the series, had in plotting the original story.) Lee began pitting Daredevil against costumed super-villains like Electro and even sent him off to the prehistoric Savage Land. To my mind the series floundered for quite a while until it finally found its voice in Lee's collaboration with John Romita, Sr. and Gene Colan.

The wisecracking swashbuckler of a hero that Lee's Daredevil became is very different from the Daredevil of today's comics, yet each interpretation of the character is valid and is based on elements present in the very first Daredevil story.

In the Lee-Everett origin tale, Matt Murdock, the future Daredevil, is raised by his father, the boxer "Battling Jack" Murdock, in the area of Manhattan known as Hell's Kitchen. Jack gained what little success he has had in life through using his fists, and says he promised Matt's mother (whom Matt -- and we, until Miller's "Born Again" storyline, believed dead) to make a better life for Matt by teaching him to use his brain and never be a fighter. Matt promises to abide by his parents' wishes, although he is a great fan of his dad's boxing career.

So Matt becomes the perfect student, constantly training his mind. But by abiding by his father's pledge to his mother, Matt is also cutting off an important side of himself, the side that is his father's son, the part that is potentially a great athlete and fighter. Matt and his parents have divided his personality in two, encouraging the cerebral side and suppressing the physical one. Like Clark Kent, Matt suffers from others for being a bookworm, a wimp, somehow less than the conventional ideal for masculinity.

But whereas Clark Kent is putting on an act to conceal his "true" self of Superman, Matt is denying the other, physical side of himself in order to obey his parents' wishes. The young Matt is frustrated and enraged at his dilemma, and finally decides to secretly train himself in fighting and athletics. Thus, even in childhood, Matt adopts a secret life in order to express a side of himself that he cannot display in public.

The symbolic death and resurrection of the hero is a perennial theme of origin tales, and in this one we have two. The young Matt sacrifices himself by risking his own life to save a blind man from being hit by a truck carrying radioactive materials. The blind man functions in the story as something of an omen, for Matt is hit by the truck and becomes blind himself.

This is his symbolic death -- the end of his sight -- and yet he transcends his fate by developing his other, super-human senses as a result of his exposure to the radiation. (Radiation in these Silver Age stories serves as a form of magic, both capable of harming a person or granting him great powers.) For reasons that are unclear, Matt tells no one about his new powers, making them yet another part of the secret side of his divided life.

Matt's father performs his own self-sacrifice for his son. Battling Murdock agrees to take a dive in a fight, but then he changes his mind and wins the fight in order to make Matt proud of him. In retaliation, a criminal called the Fixer has Battling Murdock murdered. In this case the symbolic resurrection will come when Matt takes his father's place as a fighter to avenge his father's death. Anguished by his father's death, Matt continues his education, fulfilling his parents' plans for him.

Matt and his friend Foggy Nelson graduate from law school on a Thursday, and on the very next day Matt first visits the office for the new law firm he and Foggy are setting up with financial support from Foggy's father. It is on this same Friday that Matt first meets their new secretary, Karen Page. So within two days Matt achieves three signs of adulthood: the completion of his education, the establishment of his adult career, and the beginning of his relationship with the woman who is to be his true love (at least until Stan Lee stops writing the series).

But Matt is not yet ready to embark on his adult life. There is one final goal he has to achieve. "I'll never be able to concentrate on my law work until Dad's murderer is finally brought to justice," Matt tells himself. "But years ago I promised Dad that Matt Murdock would use his head...never become a fighter." So Matt Murdock never does resort to force...but somebody else will...somebody totally different from Matt Murdock," namely his new costumed identity of Daredevil.

Matt has already been leading a dual life for years, in which the world knows him as a studious blind man whereas he secretly has another, hidden self who is an athlete with super-human senses that more than compensate for his lack of sight. By adopting the role of Daredevil, Matt takes this duality to an extreme: He is now telling himself he is two people, not one.

Matt actually doesn't start work as a lawyer till Monday. So Matt becomes Daredevil, and he tracks down and confronts the Fixer on Saturday. It's as if Matt could not commence his adult life, could not truly become an adult, until he avenges his father's death, succeeds in thwarting the Fixer where his father had ultimately failed, and takes his father's place as a successful modern-day warrior.

Moreover, to avenge his father's death Matt has taken on the guise of a super-hero, a larger-than-life figure, a contemporary equivalent of the demigods of myth. By donning this costume, becoming a "devil" (complete with horns) who exercises super-human powers rather than just a man's, Murdock makes himself into a larger-than-life symbol of vengeance. So in a sense Matt is correct: Daredevil is a very different being than just plain Matt Murdock. He is a "devil" fighting for justice, the side of Matt that exists in defiance of the rules (his promise to his parents) yet devoted to supporting them (avenging his father, upholding law and order).

In taking on the costumed identity Matt is not just avenging his father; he is also becoming his father's successor, taking on a persona in which he too can become a fighter. Through the Daredevil identity he can express the physical side of his nature that the cerebral Matt Murdock must supress. So it's no wonder that right from the start, in his first fight with the Fixer's gang, that Daredevil is cracking jokes: His subversive sense of humor, something he also conceals as Matt, is also emerging.

As Daredevil Matt also transcends the kind of man his father was. Matt has both brains and brawn, and, while Battling Murdock was a brave but flawed ordinary man who could not prevent his own murder, Daredevil is a super-human figure, a symbol as well as a man, who is capable of bringing the murderers to justice.

But then why did Matt decide to continue being Daredevil even after evening the score with the Fixer? The most reason that Matt gives us is "with my agility, my extra-sharp senses, there is so much I could do. I can't let all my powers go to waste." Matt's decision to continue as Daredevil nevertheless feels right. The Daredevil identity makes Matt complete, providing him with a physical side as well as a cerebral one, an id as well as a superego. And in battling criminals he is a fighter on a grander, more important scale than his father.

In short, Daredevil fights crime as a super-hero not from an obsessive need for vengeance on all criminals or from a deep-rooted sense of guilt, but for personal satisfaction and fulfillment. You can tell from the pleasure he takes in exercising acrobatic maneuvers or making his witticisms during fights: he enjoys being Daredevil.

Let's look at two later stories, from the Lee-Colan period, to see how these themes were further developed. Daredevil #25, reprinted in Marvel Adventure #4 (June, 1976), introduces the man who is perhaps Daredevil's most absurd adversary, the Leap-Frog, a guy who dresses up in a giant frog costume and jumps around, committing crimes. But Daredevil -- and presumably Stan Lee -- apparently regards him as no more or less ludicrous than other costumed adversaries of his. There were plenty of villains named after animals (and often costumed to look like them) in Silver Age Marvel Comics, and heroes as well: Spider-Man, Ant-Man, and the Wasp.

Once again, consciously or not, Stan Lee and his collaborators were tapping into primal myth here, linking the Marvel Universe to the ancient gods with the heads or forms of animals, to the legends of heroes who battled great beasts, and even to the world of fairy tales with their own talking animals.

But the Leap-Frog is not the reason why this story is of interest. Rather, it's because of the insight that the story gives into Daredevil himself. At one point, once Foggy and Karen are safely gone, Matt Murdock hurriedly changes from his everyday clothes into his Daredevil costume, telling himself, "I felt like I was suffocating in that business suit of mine. I'd have jumped out of my skin if I had to wait any longer to get into my working clothes [his costume]. I never realized Daredevil was so much a part of me! It's like DD is my real identity -- and I'm just playacting as Matt Murdock!"

Now remember how in issue #1 Matt became Daredevil on a weekend, in order to take care of the Fixer before he had to go to work on Monday? It's as if Matt Murodock is a career yuppie who plays Daredevil as his hobby on his time off from work. As Matt he's hemmed in by the uniform -- his suit -- he must wear to work, by the responsibilities of his career, by his inhibitions with regard to the woman he loves, by his role as a staid, respectable professional, and even by society's expectations of what a blind man must act like. The role of Daredevil is his escape from all that.

In the Lee-Colan issues the idea that Matt has fun being Daredevil becomes a major theme. Matt Murdock is dull, but as Daredevil he comes vividly to life. So it's no surprise that Matt begins to wonder which of his two selves is more truly his real one. Being Daredevil seems to be an addictive pleasure for him.

As if that wasn't enough, in issue #25 Matt concocts yet another identity for himself to keep Karen and Foggy from learning he is Daredevil. He convinces them that he has a fictional twin brother, Mike, and that Mike is the one who is really Daredevil. Matt continued to impersonate brother Mike for many issues to come, but Lee apparently grew tired of the character and eventually had Daredevil fake Mike's death at the end of the issue.

That's too bad, because actually Mike Murdock wa a clever idea that was not only a new twist on the convention of secret identities, but also provided more insight into Daredevil's personality. Mike too becomes a release for the side of Matt that feels suffocated by his staid everyday self. Mike wears garishly loud clothes, puts his feet up on the furniture, compulsively cracks jokes that are both good and bad, and says anything he wants, whether he is cheerfully insulting Foggy, or, significantly, flirting with Karen. Mike did the things that Matt obviously would like to do, but felt that he didn't dare in his respectable "true" identity.

I'm also interested in Daredevil's attitude towards the Leap-Frog. In the climactic fight scene between the two, Daredevil is, of course, punching away at him, but he also batters the Leap-Frog verbally, keeping up a barrage of comedic banter, belittling the Leap-Frog's pretensions to being an invincible menace ("You're a mighty tricky toady, aren't you?") and also making their battle into a kind of game. "No matter what kind of weird powers or stunts I'm up against," DD declares as he knocks Froggy down, "nothing ever beats a solid punch in the kisser! Somehow it's so clean -- so clear-cut -- so sincere! And, best of all -- it's as American as mom's apple pie! Stay still when I'm trying to relate to you! You're losing the message -- missing the poetry of it all!"

Yes, Daredevil is being facetious with all of this on one level, but on another level I suspect that he and Stan Lee both mean it. Daredevil enjoys what he does, and to him there is something "clean" and "American" and even "poetic" about his tussles with costumed villains.

I don't think it has anything to do with a sadistic love of brutality, either. He doesn't seem to hate the Leap-Frog; the worst DD says about him is that he is a "joker" and a "clown." There's no compulsion to exact revenge here; DD just thinks of it as his duty to capture him. The key to understanding Daredevil's attitude lies in the very last panel of the story, in which Matt Murdock decides to defend the captured Leap-Frog in court.

It has been said that Daredevil's role as a costumed vigilante and Matt Murdock's job as a lawyer contradict one another. Back in these stories, though, I don't think they did. Daredevil turns the Leap-Frog over to the police at this story's conclusion, and I suspect DD regards himself as a good citizen using his special abilities to aid the police, not to supplant their authority. In agreeing to defend the Leap-Frog, Murdock is once again fulfilling a role in support of the existing legal system. Moreover, it is clear from his decision that he bears the Leap-Frog no hard feelings. (In contrast, Matt did not want to defend the Fixer in Daredevil #1.) Again, Daredevil seems motivated by a desire to uphold the law, not by a compulsion to exact vengeance on criminals, like so many crimefighters of today.

Daredevil's attitude towards his crimefighting is underlined in his meeting with Spider-Man only two issues later, in Daredevil #27 (1966), reprinted in Marvel Adventure #6 (October, 1976). Spider-Man is fighting three ordinary thugs when Daredevil arrives and joins the fray ("Hey, Spidey -- is this a private fight -- or can anybody join the party?") Up until then, spider-Man had been characteriscally joking away while overpowering the crooks, much as Daredevil does. Back then, it probably seemed to many readers that Spider-Man and Daredevil were very much alike. But that is not so, for when Daredevil arrives on the scene, Spider-Man's mood abruptly changes.

Although Daredevil is friendly towards Spider-Man and in obvious good spirits, Spider-Man is decidedly angry, telling DD to "get lost...Someone might think it took two of us to lick three pennyante hoods!" Lee here demonstrates a sharp difference between these two otherwise similar characters. Spider-Man is decidedly the more neurotic of the two and is so insecure that he worries that his image might be hurt by accepting help from Daredevil. In comparison, Daredevil seems perfectly well-adjusted. (The question of whether it is normal behavior to dress up in costume and fight crime was rarely addressed in these times.)

Lee makes this point about Daredevil and Spider-Man with admirable conciseness in a space of only four panels. But this is only one example of Stan Lee at his best as a master of conveying characterization through dialogue. The very next scene is a minor masterpiece of this craft.

The scene's purpose is to establish the story's two villains, the Masked Marauder and the Stilt-Man, and their various gimmicks. You might expect the villains to be blustering away as Lee so often had them do, but instead he tires something more subtle, giving each of these two villains a distinctive personality. The Stilt-Man is full of impatience, uncomfortable in the Marauder's presence and burning to go out and exact revenge on Daredevil. The Marauder, on the other hand, is calm, clearly the master of the situation, showing his paraphernalia off to his intended partner as if he were a proud homeowner conducting a tour of his house.

The Marauder affects modesty, referring to "our little endeavor" and his "little demonstration," but his egotistical pleasure in his own achievements shines through. Though the Stilt-Man clearly does not want to team up with the Marauder, the latter is already roping him into the scheme verbally ("our little endeavor"), while pointedly interrupting his genial manner to remind the Stilt-Man of the debt he owes the Marauder.

It's also obvious that the Marauder does not think very highly of Stilt-Man, and that his politeness is actually a subtle form of amused condescension towards him. (After Stilt-Man wonders aloud how they will use a helicopter against Daredevil, the Marauder replies, in mock innocence, "I was hoping you'd ask.") But the Stilt-Man is not so stupid as not to notice ("Don't get cute with me, mister! Just answer the question!"). This scene becomes a test of will between the two villains, each in turn genuinely startling the other with a display of his abilities, resulting in their agreement to an alliance.

Later, the story unintentionally exposes the fallacy in the convention of the super-hero's secret identity. The Marauder has captured Matt, Foggy, and Karen in order to force them into revealing Daredevil's secret identity, which he suspects they know. Now supposedly Silver Age super-heroes did not even tell their closest friends their secret identities for fear they would reveal them. Well, in this Daredevil story, even with their lives at stake, Foggy and Karen do not betray Daredevil's secret identity, and remember, they think DD is Mike Murdock, whom they don't even like that much. Instead, it's Matt who spills the beans that Daredevil is "really" Mike Murdock, much to Karen's dismay.

So if Karen and Foggy were that trustworthy, why couldn't Matt have told them the truth? In the same story Matt even fakes his own death, fully aware of the anguish he is causing Karen, in order to keep his double indentity secret from both the Marauder and her. (Yes, Karen did reveal DD's true identity many years later, but her still unexplained transformation into a junkie who would betray a friend's secret for a fix could hardly have been predicted back then.) You might as well ask why Matt Murdock has to have three separate identities to act out the various sides of his personality instead of integrating them into a whole.

The idea that a super-hero must have a secret identity, secret not only from his enemies but even from his friends, has been a central part of the super-hero myth. You can't have Superman without Clark Kent. And yet the hero with a double identity also has a divided self, and will never be a truly complete person as long as he fails to integrate these two selves into one.

This issues climaxes with Daredevil battling the Masked Marauder in his helicopter as it spins wildly out of control above Manhattan. This is one of the first of a whole series of spectacular action scenes that Lee and Colan concocted for Daredevil over the next few years. Whereas more recent writers seem to interpret Daredevil's name as making him an avenging devil on the side of justice, Stan Lee appeared to take his full name, "daredevil," literally, plunging DD into ever more incredible situations against an array of ever more powerful foes.

And so over the next few dozen issues we would see the super-strong Beetle hurl Daredevil down a waterfall; Daredevil walk a tightrope spanning two tall buildings without the use of his super-senses; Daredevil versus Doctor Doom; Daredevil clash with the Jester atop the Statue of Liberty; Daredevil take on Mister Hyde and the Cobra, who were then regarded as powerful enough to prove a match for Thor.

Yet Daredevil triumphed in all of these situations through an astonishing series of acrobatic feats and clever ploys, made more astonishing by his very lack of super-human powers (apart from his heightened senses) and his blindness. Just as the Daredevil personality enabled Murdock to transcend the limitations of the conventional role and persona he had to adopt for his everyday life, so too his special talents as Daredevil, combined with his genuine courage ("man without fear") enabled him to transcend the boundaries of what a normal human being is supposed to be able to accomplish. Thus, though Daredevil's super-powers were minor compared to those of other costumed characters, he embodied the joyful, dynamic spirit of the super-hero far more than most.

The Daredevil of the 1980s evolved into a very different sort of character. There is no going back to Daredevil as he was in the mid-1960s, nor, probably, should there be. But one of the keys to a great comics character -- or any great fictional character -- is the wide latitude he or she presents for varying interpretations. The Lee Daredevil became a great if underrated achievement; the Miller Daredevil deservedly won its own acclaim. Neither is definitive; the character encompasses both interpretations. And perhaps years hence the series will move into yet another equally valid direction that we cannot even foresee at the present.


Daredevil TM & ©2003 is the property of Marvel Characters, Inc. - all rights reserved.
Corner logo graphic is courtesy of Piekos Arts.

Silver and Gold: "Divided Daredevil" ©1990, 2002 Peter Sanderson

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