It’s a busy time for the Man Without Fear. Netflix is gearing up to release another season of Daredevil, this time focusing on a conflict between the titular hero and darker, more lethal vigilante The Punisher (Daredevil’s sometimes-enemy-sometimes-love-interest Elektra is also joining the fray).
The show’s first season, while often brutal, cared about the moral weight of violence in a way rare among comic book adaptations. Daredevil’s crime fighting took a toll on his body and soul. When he’s tempted to break his rule against killing, he visits a priest to be pulled back from the brink. With a few grievous missteps (the first episode opens with a blatantly heretical treatment of penance), Daredevil made an effort to ground its hero in Catholicism: we were treated to the rare sight of a superhero wrestling with God (and no, Thor doesn’t count).
Meanwhile, writer Mark Waid’s acclaimed run on Daredevil’s comic has come to an end. Chris Soule, himself a real-life lawyer, has begun writing a new run of the comic that teams up blind lawyer/superhero Matt Murdock with a sidekick named Blindspot who is an undocumented Chinese immigrant.
A superhero duo made up of a blind man and an illegal immigrant? There’s definitely a tension there with the central appeal of superheroes: empowerment.
In my previous Acculturated posts about superheroes, I discussed Superman’s joy, Batman’s compassion, The Joker’s discredited nihilism, Spider-Man’s responsibility, The Fantastic Four’s family values, and Hellboy’s free will. Every piece looked at what makes heroic characters aspirational—in other words, what might make us want to be like them. We read superhero stories partly out of a desire to identify with larger-than-life figures and be lifted out of our (sometimes dispiriting) daily lives.
But Daredevil, by contrast, has become the epitome of a Marvel Comics innovation: the superhero with a lot of personal problems. Stan Lee’s and Bill Everett’s original comics painted a relatively happy-go-lucky Matt Murdock, but they did distinguish him from other superheroes by giving him not only unusual abilities, but also a disability. Daredevil has incredible radar senses and martial arts skills, but he cannot see. This blindness was the beginning of a long history of tribulations for Matt Murdock. Later writers like Frank Miller have bestowed struggles with depression, demonic possession (yes, really!), and an unfortunate romantic history involving more than one lady supervillain. Daredevil is the superhero who cannot catch a break. Writers compete to invent new struggles for him.
It seems clear from his nickname, The Man Without Fear, that the virtue we should look for in Daredevil is courage. Like most superheroes, he constantly embodies courage with his death-defying feats. But there’s a particular courage to Daredevil, a white-hot core of resolve that shines all the brighter as his circumstances get darker and more desperate. Frank Miller’s Born Again made it a key component of the character, and comics creators ever since have come back to it: Daredevil won’t stay down. Like his father, boxer Battlin’ Jack Murdock, Daredevil is in his element when he’s on the ropes and grinning in defiance. What’s aspirational about Daredevil is his courageous response to the darkest of circumstances.
For the Daredevil of the comics, this courage helps him shun temptations like self-pity or hatred. Mark Waid’s run lays this out as an explicit credo. At one point, Daredevil fights against a mob riled up by the Klan-like Sons of the Serpent (a group the comic suggests is inspired by the Serpent, Satan himself). While Daredevil does the legwork of battling the Serpents, his ally Kristen McDuffy sends out a radio message to New York (and the comic’s readers):
“Daredevil’s declared war on a gang of racist scumbags because he’s pissed. As am I. Let that be our job. To shoulder that rage. Because if we as New Yorkers are going to take back our home from a band of manipulative bigots, we have to rise above our anger. The Sons of the Serpent—they want you angry. At the world. They need us all to feel like victims. And it’s an easy get, because times suck. […]
We feel at the mercy of forces beyond our control. And that makes us scared. And that’s rocket fuel for S.O.B.’s like the Sons of the Serpent. They prey on us when we’re frightened. They tell us our enemies are the immigrants down the street, or the food stamp family next door. They encourage us to turn our fear into rage, and we fall for it because it’s ‘empowering.’ Except it’s not. We don’t become ‘empowered.’ We become weaponized. So that while we lash out at one another, they can take from all of us.”
We could say that Daredevil’s definition of courage is a refusal to embrace victimhood. In spite of his manifold troubles, Daredevil doesn’t let his limitations or grievances determine his fate. Like McDuffy (and Waid) say, he has to rise above his anger. He seeks to protect rather than punish: perhaps Season Two of Daredevil will see the hero realize his own identity more strongly when he rejects the Punisher’s death-dealing methods and becomes a true Man Without Fear. That’s a lesson about courage that all Americans can appreciate.
