My latest book, A Philosopher Reads… Marvel Comics' Daredevil: From the Beginning to Born Again, is now available — if you're curious, check out the introduction below (and also see my recent posts at Psychology Today drawn from the book).
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I don’t know about you, but I’ve always envied people who seemed to “have it all together.” We all know people like this, who somehow manage to integrate all the various aspects of their life, both external and internal, into a tidy, cohesive package. Of course, we can never know how smooth and successful their lives truly are; their outward appearance may be managed and polished like an Instagram influencer’s, while behind the curtain (or screen), their actual lives are a mess.
Although some people manage their lives better than others, we all have complications that we struggle to reconcile. Even if we can balance the many external roles we fill—friend, family member, romantic partner, employee, community member—we also need to balance our internal lives, including our desires, impulses, and moral code, all of which may be multifaceted.
This process of “getting your life together” can be difficult for anybody, and most of us have struggled with this to some extent at some point in our lives. Unfortunately, some people find it particularly difficult, especially with respect to their thoughts and feelings; such people may cycle through good times and bad times their entire life, some gradually improving over time, and others spiraling downwards into ever worse states of internal disarray.
This is the point at which I introduce the subject of this book, a man who may appear on the outside to have made a successful life for himself, but on the inside, he “contains multitudes,” as Walt Whitman famously wrote in Leaves of Grass.
Matthew Murdock is, famously, a man of contrasts. He was an only child, raised in poverty and growing up to become a successful lawyer—largely due to his single father, a boxer and part-time mob enforcer who pushed his son to study rather than fight. Matt was blinded by a freak accident that also heightened his other senses, granting him a range and depth of perception that sighted people can only dream of. He uses these senses, together with fighting skills acquired in violation of his father’s wishes, to fight crime as the costumed vigilante Daredevil—and, in the process, regularly violates laws he has sworn to uphold as a member of the bar.
Beneath the surface, we discover even more fascinating conflicts. He is perpetually unsettled about who he is or should be: Matt Murdock or Daredevil, man or hero, lawyer or vigilante. He is obsessively concerned with whether he makes a positive contribution as Daredevil, or does “good” for the world, and assuming he does, he questions whether that good is his true motivation for doing it. He places a high value on rules but repeatedly finds himself in the position of breaking them—and even when he can justify doing this, he worries about the justification itself, and what it means that he had to find a justification at all. (Exhausting!) Most superheroes struggle from time to time with who they are and what they’re doing, but none as unrelentingly as Daredevil, and as soon as he comes to some resolution, something inevitably happens to make him doubt himself once again.
All of these conflicts help to create one of the most dramatic characters in superhero comics. This is unfortunate for Matt Murdock, of course, but it’s great for the creators of his comics, who rank among the best in the industry, attracted to the character because of his complexity: outwardly charming yet inwardly tortured, one moment ecstatic and the next despondent. It’s also great for his fans and gives us a chance to explore the philosophy behind Matt’s internal conflicts, as well as what they mean for the man who suffers them.
In this book, I’ll focus on the early years of Matt Murdock and Daredevil, from his first appearance in 1964’s Daredevil #1 to 1986’s Daredevil #233. The latter was the final issue of the classic “Born Again” storyline, which also marked the end of legendary comics creator Frank Miller’s time on the book. (I’ll also discuss the 1993-1994 miniseries The Man Without Fear, in which Miller expands on Daredevil’s origin with many of the concepts he introduced during his run on the monthly title.) As is true with many long-running comic book characters, the Matt Murdock we know today is not the Matt Murdock we met in 1964, but it is fairly close to the one that Frank Miller wrote. Although Miller is properly credited for crafting the modern version of Daredevil, he didn’t radically change or “reboot” the character. Rather, he refined and emphasized certain aspects of Matt Murdock that had been gradually introduced by his creative teams since the beginning. Miller made the characterization of Matt Murdock more consistent, which ironically allowed his internal contracts and conflicts to come to the surface more clearly—and dominate most of his stories ever since.
Through this short book, we’ll explore the moral character and behavior of Matt Murdock, including his belief in the importance of rules, the role of promises in his life, and his sense of responsibility, each of which he tends to take farther than he should. We’ll also see how his penchant for violence grew over the years, as well as how far he’ll take it—and why. Then we’ll look more deeply into who Matt Murdock is—why he does the things he does, in terms of both motivation and the basic character traits that influence his choices (for better or worse). Finally, we’ll see how he gradually starts to come apart at the seams, the roots of which appear early on but intensify as the years go on, reaching a climax in “Born Again” as his personal dissolution gets a little push from someone else.
Matt’s recovery from this final episode suggests ways for us to deal with the myriad internal conflicts we might have in our lives (even if they are less dramatic and colorful than Daredevil’s). Future stories in the comics—and possibly future books in this series—will reveal whether Matt manages to hold himself together in the long run. For now, though, we’ll learn how Matt Murdock became the Man without Fear we’ve come to know and love, and who continues to thrill us to this day in the comics, movies, and television series.
Copyright © Mark D. White 2024
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Mark D. White 