.Don't Dare the Devil or he will get his due a buck O' Five

     Hello one and all and welcome to another exciting installment of the Shadow Knows. What true believers does the Shadow know on this day. Well I have to say that one should always remove the plastic cover before cooking their pizza in the oven. Now I know some people might think this is crazy, but if you don't do it the pizza will taste a bit bland and unsavory. I mean they put these warnings on the package for a reason right... at least I hope so. This week on How I Geek (podbean.com) Greg and the Scooby Gang will be having a general geek discussion on the properness of proper geektitude. So I say verily unto you be there or be square. Hey it's hip to be square so what the heck show up anyway.

     So what is the topic of today you ask? Well that would be one of Marvels most underrated heroes and one of my personal favs Daredevil the man without fear and thanks for asking secret voices in my head. I was first introduced to this character by my long time friend Greg of How I Geek fame. He had some silver age issues he gave to me as a gift and I fell in love with DD's swashbuckling flair. Daredevil got his start in the pages of his self titled book published in 1964. He was the brainchild of Stan Lee, Bill Everett, with input by Jack Kirby who made his famous clubs and yellow costume. While living in the Hell's Kitchen area of New York young Matt Murdock tried to save a blind person about to be struck by a truck. Ironic isn't it? For his efforts he was hit with a radioactive substance that caused him blindness. Fear not though true believers, for those same chemicals that took his sight also enhanced his other four senses to superhuman levels. Come on admit it you read that in the voice of Stan Lee. I know I heard it that way in my head as I wrote it and it sounded cool. Now due to his blindness Matt's father Jack Murdock had to come out of retirement as a boxer to support the family. Alas though due to his age the only person who would sign him was notorious gangster the Fixer. Battling Jack Murdock lost his battle to live when he refused to throw a fight because his son was in the audience and so the Fixer had him broken. In an attempt to claim Justice Matt made a costume from his dads boxing robes and went after the Fixer. It was during his altercation with the Fixer that the gangster too got broken by way of heart attack causing the villains death. Matt Murdock would put himself through law school to become attorney for the helpless by day and savior of the city by night The Daredevil.

     Now it seems to me that Matt Murdock aka Daredevil has had issue since the day the chemical truck struck him. His life never seems to go right for him in any way. Over the course of the series he has had many love interests that all seem to go so wrong for him. The most famous of these being Karen Page. She finds out his secret identity and in the end she just can't handle it. This I get. He is in a dangerous position all the time and she never knows when that phone call will come telling her he has had died. It is what happens after the relationship that really gives our intrepid hero troubles.She moves to Hollywood to try her hand at acting, but after some misadventures she becomes a heroine addict and porn star. In a need for a fix Karen sells Matt's secrets to the Kingpin who takes advantage of his new found knowledge. He frames Matt for crimes he did not commit and has him disbarred. Matt then loses everything and his life spirals out of control. It takes him quite a bit of time to recover and when he does he takes Karen back in and she to recovers from her addiction and starts to live her life again. The two rekindle their romance and she starts a clinic to help drug users. Through the clinic Matt regains his license to practice law and all goes well till he messes up royally. With this one he is on his own and gets what he deserves. It comes out that Matt is having an affair with a woman named Mary Walker. So with this discovery and the burning down of her clinic Karen is devastated and runs off again. Fear not true believers because Matt gets his just desserts as it is revealed that Mary Walker is in reality Typhoid Mary a crazed criminal. This fact of course as you could imagine ends that affair in rather quick order. This event sends our hero off living the life of a drifter for a spell. He and Karen are on again off again for some time after this. With her even being his kinda sidekick for a time. This would all end at the hands of Daredevil villain Bullseye when he ends her life. Murdock has had other love interests as well which include the assassin Electra and Shield agent Black Widow. In both cases the relationships end with the later trying to rekindle what they had and he rebuffing her. I mean really Black Widow comes a calling and you kick her to the curb... damn he really is blind! I can't fault the man to much though. He was in another relationship at the time. But of course that one ended to. Blah he should have chosen Widow nuff said true believers. DD does eventually get married to a woman name Mllia Donovan. Like Matt she is blind, but like all his relationships this one to ends badly with her in a mental institution and a divorce.

      From intense love interests to the loss of everything Daredevil has had many different minds working on his story for many years. In the early years with Stan Lee and Bill Everett our intrepid hero was viewed  like a modern day swashbuckler and this is the Daredevil I had come to know and love. Everett would leave the book and it would be then drawn by John Romita Sr. of Spider-Man fame and later Gene Colan, with a little Wally Wood thrown in there on issues 5-10. Gerry Conway would take over writing from Stan about issue 72 and gave the character a little bit of a pulp feel. Others would sprinkle in their influence each with their own contributions. Books kept being pumped out with the same sort of style and medium till about the early 100's when horror comic writer Roger McKenzie took over. It was he who started the character down a very dark path giving a him a more antihero feel. During this time artist and writer Frank Miller joined the cast and that is when Daredevil took his darkest turn. Miller started off as a penciler, but ended up running the whole book. To me this was like having Tim Burton create a Care Bears movie. Sure you'd end up with something cool, but it would not be in the direction or style such a movie should go in. Miller would make our hero attempt to murder his advisories and even turned one guy into a quadriplegic. Miller also took liberties with the origin story and throwing out or even rewriting entire chapters of his life. He was no longer the swashbuckling hero of old, but rather an antihero who more resembled Frank Castle as the Punisher. Now they say this is due to a drop in sales and that Miller appealed to a new generation of readers all of which is true. Of course his run is one of the most popular of the series and I have great respect for the man and his other works. I just think it is a shame that the integrity of a character has to change just for a ratings hike. Now after Millers run there were many attempts to redefine Daredevil yet again and try to bring him back down Earth with varying degrees of success. Any attempt to bring back the earliest incarnation was met with creators saying that it felt to retro. Retro, really and what is wrong with retro... blah! In the present we see him as leader of the Assassins guild known as the Hand and member of the New Avengers. Through it all I must say it is the early stories I still love the most (I don't care if they're retro). He is a character that no one seems to be able to really lock down and has become more like a man with a multiple personality disorder rather than the super cool hero he could be. I am very glad that his limited appearances on screen did not show this antihero persona.

     What is that you say? Daredevil was on a screen? Why yes he was my excitable little voices. As I have stated earlier Daredevil is really an underrated super hero and as such has had little exposure over the years in movie or television. The first time I ever recall ever hearing about him was in an episode of Spider-Man and his Amazing friends. In the episode he defends Spider-Man against a frame up from an impostor trying to fund his own research by stealing money in the guise of the wall crawler. We don't see the Man without fear again until the Trial of the Incredible Hulk. In this made for T.V. movie Matt Murdock/Daredevil defend the Hulk in a trial for murder. He then appears in 3 of the Marvel block shows from the 90's. First on Fantastic Four where he has to help a powerless FF reenter the Baxter Building to Stop Doctor Doom. His next appearance is on Spider-Man the animated series. Matt Murdock/Daredevil this time around defends Peter Parker from a frame up instituted by the Kingpin. This episode hearkens back to the Daredevil issues in which the Kingpin has framed Murdock for crimes he did not commit. Finally he shows up only in honorable mention as the defense attorney defending Titanium Man on Iron Man Adventures. Nothing is heard from our hero till 2003 when he got his own feature film starring Ben Affleck as Daredevil. This movie also spun off the Electra movie as well. Now these movies take a lot of heat and criticism, but I have to say I liked them both and have them in my personal movie collection. Sure they could have been way better, especially with the budgets they had. But hey at least we got Daredevil on the big screen and that is huge IMHO. Since the 1970's there have been a couple of shows that were put in the works. A Black Widow and DD live action t.v. series to name one. Now I would have loved to have seen that! But alas all of these shows have one thing in common they all had their plugs pulled before production. I would for one would love to see another attempt at a movie and even an animated series, but alas who knows what the future holds for our hero true believers. I will say as a final note that it has been recently announced that Netflix will be making a Daredevil series in 2015. I am very jazzed about this and will have have my face mesmerized in front of my t.v. in great excitement. My only hope is that this series and the other Marvel alumni joining this series will help catapult Daredevil to bigger and better things... nuff said.

     Well my friends that is all the time we have today for this episode. Tune in next week where we hear George Lucas sob "Jar Jar was the death of me". Till next time true believers tell me what you think. Do any of you Shadow fans out there enjoy DD? Do you want to see him get some more screen time. Who do you think should play him? Has anyone seen where I parked? I did find my keys... come to think of it do I even own a car? These are the issues of my deranged mind. Well it is time for me to part ways and maybe even hairs, I will see you next time in the shadows...