Matthew Murdock (Earth-616)edit
From Marvel Database
Contents |
History
Early Years
One day, Matt saw a blind man walking towards an oncoming truck. Matt pushed the man out of the way. The truck crashed and a radioactive isotope spilled out, striking Matt across the face and blinding him. While recovering in the hospital, Matt discovered his hearing, smell, taste, and touch were amplified to superhuman degrees. He also developed a "radar sense" that formed a mental picture of his surroundings.[1]
During his time in the hospital, Matt was visited by a nun wearing a gold cross. Long thought dead, Matt would one day find his mother, "Maggie", was living as a nun. Matt wouldn't know who this woman was for many years.
Years later, Matt received training from the ninja master Stick. From Stick, Matt learned how to control his new abilities and honed his skills in acrobatics and martial arts.
Matt continued to study and entered Columbia Law School. At Columbia, Matt met and fell in love with Elektra Natchios. It was a first love for both of them. When Elektra's father was accidentally killed by police, she retreated from the world and Matt.,[2]
Meanwhile, Jack Murdock was desperate to get fights. He reluctantly joined with a crooked fight promoter known as "The Fixer." The Fixer set up Jack to be a heavyweight contender, just to have him take a dive. Jack refused and won his fight. Later that night, Jack Murdock was shot dead by The Fixer and his men.
The now orphaned Matt earned his law degree and opened a practice, Nelson and Murdock, with Franklin "Foggy" Nelson. Karen Page was hired by Foggy as their secretary. Karen was attracted to Matt, and found it a pity that such a wonderful, handsome man could be so handicapped.
He also searched for his father's killers. Matt made a yellow and black costume out of his father's old boxing robes. He finally found the Fixer's gang and confronted the Fixer himself. Matt chased The Fixer until he died from a massive heart attack.[3]Although his father's death was avenged, Matt continued to fight crime as Daredevil.
Daredevil
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Though some of his early enemies were considered laughable, (Matador,[4] Stilt Man,[5] Leap Frog),[6] Daredevil gathered an impressive and dangerous rogues gallery. Electro was first costumed villain Daredevil face.[7] The Purple Man was a spy for a foreign country. When he was accidentally doused with experimental chemicals, they turned his skin purple and gave him the power to control people's minds. His power wasn't very effective against Daredevil since it worked best when people could see him.[8] Mister Fear seemed like a natural enemy for a "Man Without Fear". He was a wax museum curator obsessed with bringing his statues to life. Instead, he discovered a gas that filled people with terror. He used this gas as Mister Fear to commit daring crimes.[9]
Murdock moved to San Francisco with Natasha Romanova, the Black Widow. Although their relationship later ended, they remained friends. But sometimes Natasha wished they were more. While living in San Francisco, Matt worked for another law firm. He left when he realized his bosses were more concerned with their careers than with their clients.
Bullseye was the world's deadliest assassin. He had perfect aim, a backbone made of unbreakable metal, and the uncanny gift to turn anything into a weapon. His hatred for Daredevil stemmed from his many defeats.
Matt was reunited with Elektra under the worst circumstances. After college, Elektra became an assassin. She had trained with an evil ninja cult called The Hand. Although she left The Hand, she had become cold and violent. Elektra was killed by Bullseye. Fortunately, ninja magic and Murdock's love brought her back to life and "cleansed her spirit". She moved to a remote mountain retreat to live with The Chaste, the Hand's heroic counterpart.
Heather Glenn, Matt's one-time fiance, was the heiress to Glenn industries. After Elektra's death, Matt proposed to Heather. He then went to work proving Glenn Industries' board of directors were involved in illegal dealings. He found enough proof to ruin the company, and leave Heather with no choice but to marry him. Foggy saw what Matt was doing was wrong. With the Black Widow's help, he broke up Matt and Heather. Years later, a drunken Heather called Matt for help. When he learned she was lying, he angrily left and ignored her. Days later, she hanged herself.
Karen pursued an acting career in L.A., but ended up a porn star hooked on heroin. She sold out Daredevil's secret identity; information that eventually reached the Kingpin. The Kingpin of crime, took a piece of every illegal deal on the East Coast. It was Fisk who systematically destroyed every piece of Matt Murdock's life; who was indirectly responsible for the deaths of Elektra and Jack Murdock; who knew Murdock is Daredevil, but never told anyone, just to play power games with the hero. Matt took Karen back and they built a life together.
Typhoid Mary was the living embodiment of the Madonna/whore complex. Mary was a sweet but frightened woman who had been a successful actress. Typhoid was the trashy, cruel killer with telekinetic and pyrokinetic powers. The Kingpin hired her to make Matt Murdock fall in love with her, and then drive him crazy. Typhoid Mary succeeded in getting Matt to cheat on Karen Page and nearly beat him to death.
Glorianna O'Brien was an Irish photojournalist who met Matt when he fought an IRA terrorist. But Matt's decent into poverty and madness, brought about by the Kingpin, pushed her away. She later moved in with Foggy Nelson. Years later, Glorianna was killed by Victor "Kruel" Krueller, a madman trying to remember his past by beating witnesses to his attempted murder.
Matt created an imaginary twin brother, Mike Murdock, to protect his secret identity. He would often pretend to be "Mike" to act like the confident, cocky Daredevil for his friends. "Mike" would die in a fight, allowing Matt to become the "new" Daredevil.
The Kingpin destroyed Matt's life, taking away his home and livelihood. But Matt put his life back together. He opened a free law clinic in Hell's Kitchen where he lived with the newly returned Karen Page.
Matt's secret identity was threatened by a New York tabloid. Though he protected himself, he still faked his death. Even Foggy and Karen were fooled. Matt now lived as a street hustler named Jack Batlin. He kept fighting crime as Daredevil, this time with an armored costume and a meaner attitude. This led to an identity crisis.
Guardian Devil, Identity revealed and eventual Breakdown
Mysterio was one of Spider-Man's most persistent enemies. But when he was diagnosed with inoperable cancer, he conceived an elaborate "final performance". Knowing he couldn't beat Spider-Man, he tried to drive Daredevil mad, and then kill him. Bullseye was working for Mysterio when he killed Karen Page. Murdock overcame Mysterio's traps and illusions and showed how the villain failed. Shamed and despairing, Mysterio shot himself dead.
Maya Lopez was born deaf. She also had the gift to recreate any physical motion she sees. The Kingpin used her in another plot to destroy Matt Murdock. First, he arranged Matt to meet her, knowing Matt was lonely after the recent death of Karen Page. Then he tricked Maya into thinking Daredevil killed her father. Maya created the identity of Echo and fought Daredevil. She didn't know he was Matt and he didn't know why she now hated him. Matt soon explained himself and Maya attacked the Kingpin. She left him blinded for many months.
Murdock was outed by the press as Daredevil. He publicly denied this and sued the paper.
The latest woman in Matt's life was Milla Donovan. Like Matt, Donovan was blind. Matt saved her life and a year later they were married. Milla eventually learned their marriage may have be part of Matt's mental breakdown. She filed for an annulment.
Murdock continued to fight crime, ultimately defeating Wilson Fisk and claiming the title of "Kingpin of Hell's Kitchen". No one was allowed to commit any crime in Hell's Kitchen. The neighborhood's improved, but Matt might have been going crazy. After all, his true love had died, he was lying to the public, and he had taken the name of his worst enemy. Hardly the signs of a stable person.
Matt was eventually captured by the FBI and sent to prison for his actions. Foggy Nelson was believed to have been killed and a Daredevil impostor was sighted.
Matt learned the Kingpin, Bullseye, and Punisher were also serving time. An attempt at a breakout was made by Black Tarantula. Matt was able to stop Fisk and Bullseye and saved the warden. He and Punisher then escaped.
The impostor was confronted, revealing himself as Iron Fist and that he had been hired to do so. The two and Ben Urich searched for information. The employer seemed to be an injured but very much alive Foggy Nelson.
Daredevil then set out to Europe to trace the figure who had had Foggy killed and employed a fake Daredevil. Much to his surprise, this was the Kingpin's wife Vanessa Fisk, who was dying after she killed her son and wanted revenge on Daredevil, who, along with Kingpin, she blamed for her situation. She offered to solve his secret identity problems once and for all if Matt would corrupt himself by fighting as a lawyer to free Kingpin from prison. Matt refused, but Vanessa had already set her plan in motion, having the FBI director who imprisoned Daredevil killed, leaving a suicide note saying he had framed Matt. Matt was able to return to his life in New York City, reunited with Foggy and Milla. Matt decided to honor Vanessa's last wish out of respect for the person she used to be before the Kingpin's influence corrupted her and had the charges against the Kingpin revoked, although he lost his U.S. citizenship and left the country. Vanessa died of her terminal illness.
Hell to Pay
With the charges against him for being Daredevil cleared, Matt decided to move his office to a new location due to constant threats from his enemies and resumed his life as a lawyer with Foggy and Becky Blake. Disaster struck when he went up against the new crime boss The Hood. Mister Fear who was working with him at the time, poisoned Milla with a psychedelic drug which he did with the help of Lily Lucca, a young woman in love with Matt whom he met while in Europe. This put Milla into a mental institution with Matt accepting the fact that he ruined Milla's life when Mr. Fear told him there was no cure for her.
Out of grief for what happened, Murdock accidentally had sex with Dakota North and recently he went up against Lady Bullseye and The Hand, where in her civilian disguise as a Lawyer, Lady Bullseye showed the pictures of Matt and Dakota together to Milla's parents, resulting in them being granted full custody of their daughter with Matt regretting that he had betrayed his wife. Matt decided to sign for divorce.
The Devil's Hand
A drunken, blind and immortal sensei Master Izo targeted Murdock in his war against The Hand - and Murdock was forced to team with his old enemy the Kingpin to take the Hand down. However, the price that was paid for this, is that this agreement combined with his ever-growing irrational behavior resulted in Foggy firing Matt from the firm when he found out about the arrangement. The Kingpin attempted to betray him, but Murdock beat him and his assassin, Lady Bullseye, and seized control of the Hand, with Izo's help on the condition that they are to never be involved with either Lady Bullseye or the Kingpin again.
Lady Bullseye, sent by the Kingpin, killed two associates of Norman Osborn, H.A.M.M.E.R. director and leader of the superhuman community. Enraged, Osborn sent his to assassin, Hawkeye, the original Bullseye, to kill Daredevil, whom he suspected was responsible for the kill. Bullseye lured Daredevil to a trap, detonating a bomb in and apartment bulding full of families that were holding out against an Oscorp development site.
Pushed to the brink by Osborn and Bullseye's acts, Daredevil rallied his associates in The Hand to "send a message" - and take back the streets of New York from Osborn's corruption.
Powers and Abilities
Powers
- Superhuman Sense of Touch: Daredevil's sense of touch is so acute that his finger can feel the faint impressions of ink on a printed age, allowing him to read by touch. The rest of his skin is equally sensitive, enabling him by concentration to feel minute temperature and pressure changes in the atmosphere around him. Even with his senses of smell and hearing blocked, he can feel the presence of a person standing five feet away from him simply by his or her body heat and disturbance of air. A side effect of his sense of touch is Daredevil's ability to manipulate his muscles and internal organs. The sense of touch is not just external, but internal too (central nervous system), thereby giving him the ability to have total body control, increasing his strength and reflexes to near peak human levels and increasing his agility to enhanced human levels.
Superhuman Sense of Smell: Daredevil's sense of smell is so acute that he can distinguish between identical twins at twenty feet by minute differences in smell. He can detect odors of an atmospheric concentration of thirty parts per million. Further, his ability to remember smells enables him to identify any person he has spent at least five minutes with by smell alone, no matter how he or she might try to camouflage his or her natural odor. His powers of concentration are such that he can focus upon a single person's smell and follow it through a crowd of people at a distance of fifty feet.
Superhuman Sense of Hearing: Daredevil's sense of hearing enables him to detect an acoustic pressure change of one decibel at a pressure level of seven decibels (whereas the lowest threshold for average human hearing is twenty decibels.) He can hear a person's heartbeat at a distance of over twenty feet, or people whispering on the other side of a standard soundproofed wall. Through practice, Daredevil is able to control his hearing acuity, mentally blocking out specific sounds like his own breathing and heartbeat, all ambient sounds to a normal human level of perception, or all sounds but a particular sound he is concentrating upon. If taken by surprise, Daredevil can suffer more distress from a painfully loud sound than an ordinary human would. Also, beyond a certain size, crowds of people tend to create too many sensory impressions for him to sort through.
- Lie Detection: Daredevil can tell whether a person is lying by listening to changes in his or her heartbeat (though he can be fooled by a pacemaker or those able to control their own heartbeat.)
- Person Identification: Daredevil can identify people by the specific patterns of their heartbeats.
Superhuman Sense of Taste: Daredevil's sense of taste enables him to detect the number of grains of salt on a pretzel. His ability to remember tastes enables him to determine every ingredient of a food or drink he tastes, as long as there are at least twenty milligrams of that substance present.
Superhuman Sense of Balance: It is a common misconception that balance isn't a sense, but Daredevil's balance centers give him equilibrium on par with Spider-Man.
Radar Sense: Daredevil can also sense the proximity and arrangement of objects about himself. According to one theory, Daredevil's "radar sense" functions via his brain's generation of energy within a certain portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The signal emanates from sending regions of his brain, after which it travels outward, bounces off objects around him, and returns to receiving regions of his brain. Another theory is that this sense functions more closely to sonar in which Daredevil hears the faint echoes of sounds as they bounce off nearby objects. His sense may operate by a combination of these techniques or by other, unknown means. In any event, via this ability, Daredevil synthesizes a very close analogue of three-dimensional human sight. After he lost the Radar, Matt's instructor Stick retaught him his Radar/Senses through special training. Stick told Matt the radiation gave him a "free ride" but now he must develop it like everyone else. Its resolution is not very fine, probably on the order of several feet at a distance of one hundred feet. By repositioning his head and adding input from his other senses, Daredevil is able to resolve the image of an average flagpole (three-inch cylinder) at a distance of over eighty feet.
Telepathy: Due to Stick's training Daredevil has displayed minor telepathic abilities.
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Abilities
Gifted Intellect: Matt has a high IQ; he's an accomplished strategist as well as an expert in interrogation, disguise, medicine, science and detective work.
Expert Detective: Daredevil has shown to be an expert detective using his intellect to figure out complex problems and hyper-senses to find clues and evidence to crime scenes.
Expert Tracker: With the aide of his hyper-senses Matt is able to track objects and people from miles away with ease.
Interrogation Expert: Matt uses many different interrogation methods to extract information from criminals. His knowledge of criminology and torture is unerring and often overwhelming.
Professional Lawyer: He is a skilled lawyer, specializing in criminal justice.
Master Acrobat: Daredevil is classed superb-Olympic athlete, gymnast, acrobat, and aerialist due to constant training and exercise. His reflexes and agility are equally remarkable and are on par with the finest human athletes.
Weapons Proficiency: Thanks to his martial arts training, Matt is proficient in wielding various different weapons. Since Ninjutsu is the only identified martial art that teaches weapons, it would indicate he is trained in the use of katanas, spears, naginatas, kusarigama, knives, and projectiles.
Expert Marksman: He is very accurate in throwing projectile like weaponry along with his billy clubs.
Expert Stick Fighter: Matt is an expert in wielding all types of stick weapons which range to staffs, batons, nunchaku, and paired eskrima sticks.
Master Martial Artist: Daredevil has also been trained in the ninja arts by Stick, a master and member of the secret order The Chaste. Nick Fury former director of Shield commented that there are only a handful of individuals that know what Matt Murdock knows, referring to the Chaste. Stick helped Daredevil control his powers and taught him valuable fighting techniques with ninja-stealth, ninja-vanishing, to even life-energy(chi/ki)control. Matt uses a variety of pressure points as in paralyzing an entire body or certain parts of the body. He's disabled eye sight, speech, induced pain, and even has knowledge of death pressure points. Daredevil's fighting style blends American-style Boxing, Ninjutsu, Judo, Aikijujutsu and various other martial arts, most notably Stick Fighting with his acrobatic ability. His skills have proven sufficient to allow him to defeat, or at least hold his own, against some of the greatest fighters on Earth. He has fought opponents such as the Black Panther, Taskmaster, Sabretooth, and Wolverine to standstills, even impaling Wolverine with a sword while the mutant was in a feral state due to brainwashing by the terrorists known as Hydra.Strength level
Daredevil is an Olympic level weightlifter and possesses the normal human strength of a man of his age, height, and build that exercises intensively and regularly. At his peak, Daredevil possesses sufficient strength to lift aporoximately 450 lbs.Weaknesses
Daredevil's superhuman senses render him extraordinarily vulnerable to excessive sound, odors, etc., which can temporarily weaken his Radar Sense. If he is bombarded by too much sound at once, Daredevil can easily be immobilized which causes him great pain and leaves him disoriented. He is unable to discern pictures or video images, and he can only guess at colors based on the amount of heat they are absorbing or reflecting. Also, Daredevil is as susceptible to physical injury and disease as any normal human.
Paraphernalia
Equipment
- Daredevil has used three costumes in the course of his career as a crime fighter: his original yellow-and-black costume, his modern red costume, and a newer black-and-red armored costume. When Murdock experienced a psychological break, each of the three costumes came to be focuses for three distinct separate, distinct personalities within Murdock. Since that time, Murdock has resolved his psychological problems, and now exclusively uses the red costume. The horns on his costume are antennae that can pick up radiowaves, allowing them to serve as a police scanner.
Transportation
- Daredevil usually travels by foot across city rooftops through the art of parkour, aided by the grappling hook and cable in his billy club.
Weapons
Matt currently wields a multi-purpose weapon that has many different modes. It's initial form is two billy clubs held together by an extendable cable. It can shift from a nunchaku- like weapon to a manrikigusari(a long rope/chain weapon with two weights on its ends), dual billy clubs which can be wielded in an Eskrima-like fashion, staff, or a cable with a grappling hook. The weapon can also be adjusted to combine both sticks into an Eskrima stick. The weapon is held by a holster on the side of Matt's left leg.
-Former weapon-
Daredevil's billy club is a multi-purpose weapon, it has a retractable microphone, a miniature tape recorder, chamber for firing projectiles, and a wire cable which allows the club to be used as a grappling hook, it can also be used as either as a baton or a cable.
Trivia
- Daredevil was portrayed by Ben Affleck in the (2003) motion picture Daredevil. Previously, Rex Smith played the role in The Trial of the Incredible Hulk (1989), and the late Edward Laurence Albert voiced the character in the 1994 Spider-Man animated series. The character also appeared in the Fantastic Four (1994 TV series) voiced by Bill Smitrovich. He also appeared as a cameo in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.
- Daredevil and the Black Widow were comics' first unmarried couple to live together.
- In the video game Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Daredevil appears as a playable character. In his simulator disk, Daredevil tracks down Bullseye on the Omega Base and has to protect Elektra from him.
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Links
- Appearances of Matthew Murdock (Earth-616)
- Character Gallery: Matthew Murdock (Earth-616)
- Images that feature Matthew Murdock (Earth-616)
- Fan-Art Gallery: Matthew Murdock (Earth-616)
- Quotations by Matthew Murdock (Earth-616)
- Daredevil article at Wikipedia
- DD Resource
- Daredevil screenplay (unproduced)
- Official webpage at Marvel.com
- Daredevil bio at MarvelDirectory
- Man Without Fear fan site
- The religion of Matt Murdock, Daredevil
- "Secrets, lies - and lawyers!", Douglas Wolk, Salon.com, January 5, 2006. Retrospective of the Bendis/Maleev run.
- Marvel Toonzone
- Stomp Tokyo Video Reviews - The Trial of the Incredible Hulk
- Daredevil resource
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