Daredevil #1 (1964)
by Stan Lee & Bill Everett
cover by Jack Kirby & Bill Everett
Nothing says how rough the earliest Daredevil issues were like how atrocious the first cover was.
And that’s not even mentioning the eyesore of his original costume.
They are REALLY relying on the publicity of previous books. Not only the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man are on the cover, but the teaser page also reference Amazing Spider-Man #1.
And you sure wouldn’t get rid of it easily, considering that in 2024 someone paid 1.38 million dollars for a copy.
We begin at a place that will show up all the time in future Daredevil comics: a specific gym.
That’s where Daredevil shows up, stopping a poker game to ask some questions about a fixer called… uhm, The Fixer.
Props for efficiency: most Silver Age origins take a while before they introduce the hero in full getup, but Daredevil is there in the very first page after the teaser.
You’ve seen a Daredevil fight, right?
Ah yes, the one thing that could explain a guy fighting really really really well.
Mirrors.
And then we cut to an extended flashback that will tell the origin story.
Beginning in 1950 when Matt Murdock was 8 years old, meaning that in his origin he’s supposed to be 22 years old? I thought he’d be older than that… and in fact a quick search tells me that he’d have to be more likely 25 or 26 to be a licenced lawyer.
Also: the Bill Everett artwork is quite solid in most of the issue, but man does he have trouble drawing children.
Matt’s family history will be expaned upon many years later, but it’s clear that his father has some issues right? Pushing his son to study is one thing, but prohibiting him from doing ANY sport or even playing with other kids cannot be healthy.
Then again, if my friends played like those two on the left, I would also stay away.
And that’s where the name Daredevil comes from: perhaps the most overt case in comics of owning an insult.
Although that is the tamest insult they could have come up with… they’re not even making fun of the way his forehad is being drawn!
Luckily for him, Matt seems to be genetically destined to be a superhero.
Perhaps the reason why his father doesn’t even notice that Matt is putting up muscle despite not being supposed to exercise is that he can’t find work… until the Fixer gets involved.
He looks trustworthy.
Either boxing matches paid a lot more than I imagine, or back then the tuition of a US college was way less.
But just as his father is going home to give him the good news, Matt stumbles into his actual origin.
Did you know that Jessica Jones was almost hit by the same truck?
At least according to Alias #22 from 2003. The timing of this doesn’t work AT ALL, by the way, but that’s to be expected in a Bendis comic.
Notably, this is the moment when the reader discovers that Daredevil is blind: it’s not advertised on the cover or in the teaser page.
Not that it really matters whether he’s blind or not.
It’s even subtly suggested that the radioactive substance that gave him super-senses also enhanced Matt’s intelligence, but thankfully this is immediately dropped.
It’s also where Foggy Nelson is introduced.
And speaking of the super-senses…
…has his super-taste EVER been useful in a Daredevil comic?
I can’t recall a single instance.
But crucially, Daredevil has a sixth sense… radar.
I’ve never really liked the Radar Sense, especially after years of the other senses getting more and more overpowered.
Daredevil doens’ truly NEED the Radar Sense when his hearing already effectively gives him sonar! It might be why all adaptations I’m aware of skip the radar ENTIRELY and just rely on his super-earing to effectively give him sonar.
His father is SUPPOSED to lose the fight… but refuses to do so.
Which gets him killed.
Honestly I can’t gather TOO sympathy for the father in the original version… it’s good an all that you want to impress your son, but you KNOW you’re working with a fixer… is it really that great of an idea to get killed and leave your blind son an orphan?
I know Foggy means well, and he’ll soon grow into one of the best supporting characters in comics, but am I the only one who thinks his reaction at graduation comes off as too selfish?
And finally Obligatory Love Interest fills the supporting cast.
It’s going to take A LONG TIME before Karen becomes an actual character.
Karen’s role for like the first ten years or so of this book is being horny for Matt.
Matt still wants revenge for his father, so he decides to make himself a costume.
Including picking up the right colors thanks to his touch, SOMEHOW.
Matt, you might be able to tell colors apart from each other, but you REALLY can’t sense how they clash against each other.
He’s also a bit of a gadgeteering genius, considering he’s the one come up with how to turn his cane into an all-purpose weapon.
And at PAGE FIFTEEN, the flashback that started on page 6 finally ends.
The first story is pretty clear about Matt just now learning how to use his super-senses to fight. It won’t be until decades later that it will be retconned into him secretly training to be a super-ninja since childhood.
As does Daredevil’s trademark trick: being a living lie detector.
He still needs a little practice with it.
Seriously, Daredevil is not THAT impressive in his first story.
The Fixer escapes, but Daredevil follows him into the subway…
…where he unceremoniously dies.
At least Daredevil gets a confession out of his assistant.
Matt WON’T defend him in court, which is a rarity. You’d be surprised by how many supervillains have been defended in court by Matt Murdock.
Historical significance: 7/10
You’d expect it to be higher, considering how much of a constant Daredevil has been for Marvel. But not a whole lot from the first story has carried through, besides the most basic facts about the origin.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
All things considered, not a whole lot.
Does it stand the test of time? 8/10
For a 1964 story, this is surprisingly decompressed: most of the time in this period an origin like this would be squeezed into four or five pages, leaving superhero action for the rest.
But we spend enough time with Matt Murdock to get to know him, even if he’s not anywhere near as complex as he will eventually become.
He could have used a halfway decent first opponent, though. Even Spider-Man’s first enemy, the guy who killed his uncle, is WAY more memorable than the guy who ordered the murder of Daredevil’s father.
The details of the origin itself will be greatly expanded over the years, from learning that his mother never died but became a nun, to additional details about the gym, and most importantly to establishing that Matt had been trained by his blind mentor Stick from almost the beginning.
Surprisingly though, the detail that took the longest to address was the blind guy who Matt saved from the truck. It would take until 2003 before we meet him again, in the Joe Quesada “Daredevil: Father” miniseries.
Which I HATED WITH A BURNING INTENSITY.
Because it completely wasted bringing back the character to reveal that, after Daredevil saved his life, he spent his late years sexually abusing his daughter.
Yeah Matt Murdock lost his eyesight to extend the life of this trainwreck.
I am WAY more of a Spider-Man fan than a Daredevil fan, but I think I hate Quesada more for THIS than for One More Day.
How close is this to the modern character? 4/10
The Frank Miller run changed the character and the tone of his stories so much that a sizeable section of his fandom completely dismisses all of his appearances in the 60s and 70s; and while I believe that’s taking it too far, it’s undeniable that Daredevil has changed quite a bit.
Daredevil’s creation is refreshingly uncontroversial among early Marvel creations.
Daredevil was very important to me because he was the first superhero I created who had the serious physical handicap of blindness. It was a challenge to me to find ways for Matt Murdock to overcome his handicap and actually function as a credible superhero.
STAN LEE
Although it is notable that Everett’s daughter was legally blind, I could not find any mention of the idea coming from him.
Stan came up with the idea for Daredevil. I designed the costume and drew the story.
BILL EVERETT
That might be the reason why Everett ended up as the penciler: Steve Ditko was reportedly assigned, but he declined.
The first issue was notoriously late: both Sol Brodsky and Ditko had to provide inks and fill in several backgrounds. This is also the reason for the atrocious cover, which was just cobbled together with an initial Kirby concept drawing.
Devil’s original eyesore costume wouldn’t last long: already in issue 7, Wally Wood gave him his classic costume that has more or less remained unchanged ever since.
And for good reason: in its simplicity, it’s just perfect.
Despite some excellent runs, Daredevil would remain a second stringer until Frank Miller arrived.
To give some background, from a 1998 interview Jim Shooter did for manwithoutfear.com :
I got Frank Miller on Daredevil as penciler around the same time Roger MacKenzie started writing it. For a while, every day or so, the financial officer and/or the circulation VP would insist to me that the book, one of our lowest sellers, ought to be cancelled. I argued to keep it, on the grounds that this “Miller kid” was great, and that the book would catch on. At one point, Frank almost quit because he didn’t like Roger’s scripts… but I talked him out of it, and eventually editor Denny O’Neil decided “enough already,” and moved Roger onto something else. I think the main factor in that decision was a spec plot that Frank wrote – the first Elektra story. Denny was amazed at how good it was, I was smug about having picked this Miller kid out as a winner, and the rest, as they say, is well-known.
Shortly after Frank took over writing the book, sales took off, and I looked like a genius to the upstairs execs. Frank, indeed, saved the title.
JIM SHOOTER
By the way, in the same interview Shooter was asked: why wasn’t Daredevil in Secret Wars?
The answer is… unsatisfying, considering Shooter included A TON of things in that miniseries that had absolutely nothing to do with the toy line it was supposed to promote.
Probably because Mattel wasn’t interested in including Daredevil as a toy at first.
JIM SHOOTER
Despite being first introduced to both Spider-Man and Daredevil at around the same time, I’ve always found Spider-Man the more interesting character… but I’ve always appreciated Daredevil.
Although for the longest time, successive runs REALLY struggled to move away from the Frank Miller shadow.
Seriously, there’s like 20 years straight of every single new Daredevil run doing its own version of Born Again… the amount of times Matt’s life has been wrecked went from tragic to laughable.
Sometimes it DOES work and you get an underappreciated masterpiece like the Nocenti run, so your mileage may vary.
To be honest, I tend to find the legal aspect of the character way more interesting than the superhero stuff. And most of the time whenever Matt shows up as a lawyer in another series, it’s going to be a blast… ESPECIALLY if it’s a Spider-Man comic.
