Daredevil - Netflix

If you were to peruse my comic collection, it is clear that I collect two superhero titles regularly.  One is ‘The Amazing Spider-man’ which has been consistently great since it was taken over by writer Dan Slott.  The other is Daredevil.

Back when I started reading comics, I was told of the legendary run by Brian Michael Bendis and I dove in feet first.  While reading that 81 issue run, I became a die hard fan.  Like most people, I had no interest in Daredevil in the slightest.  The movie became synonymous with the terrible age of superhero adaptations and turned the masses against the character.  This put me in a strange place where I loved the character and saw all of the potential, but it was unlikely anyone would ever get to see it.

Then Marvel announced the show.  It was a big deal because up until that point, Daredevil rights were apparently locked in a loophole with 20th Century Fox.  With the character back in very competent hands, I was cautiously optimistic of the outcome.

The show is brilliant.  I being a comic nerd have issues with some of the choices made, but overall it’s hard to argue that Marvel knocked it out of the park.  With the success of the show now, it’s hard to remember how much of a gamble it was to take such a strong tonal shift with the show.  The gritty violence and slow-paced talking heads could have been a disaster for the property, but Marvel knew what market they were hitting kept the show pretty sophisticated.

© Marvel

The fight scenes in Daredevil are memorable and great but for a superhero show they are pretty unimportant.  The real interest comes in the plotting, which takes the viewer on a wild twisting road episode by episode.  The reveals come frequently, normally once per episode, which seems like it’d burn out the viewer.  Instead, the great characters and engaging dialogue make it easy to get invested which gives a hard hit with every twist.

Truly, the show’s strength comes in the character building.  With memorable and fleshed out roles played by amazing actor’s, pretty much the whole cast brings their A game.  Charlie Cox is the spitting image of Matt Murdock and plays his part incredibly well.  I was hoping he’d be directed to be the cocky fearless character that Matt Murdock is in the books, but this is more than made up for with the deep and interesting character choices made for the Kingpin played by Vincent D'Onofrio.

I am glad that the show did as well as it did.  Daredevil was the front runner for a new batch of shows for street-level heroes including the recently released Jessica Jones and upcoming Luke Cage and Iron Fist shows.  This is absolutely perfect as these are the types of stories that I love to read in comics.  With my life so engrossed in games right now, it’s hard for a show to pull my attention, not to mention that this is the first non-cartoon TV show I've blogged about.  Daredevil lived up to a high bar with the comics and Jessica Jones is shaping up to be even better.