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<\/a>Daredevil <\/b>was the red-headed stepchild of the Silver Age Marvel Comics. He was one of the last concepts introduced in the companies resurgence, and the lack of effort showed.<\/p>\nWhile the character had a good hook (Matt Murdock was a lawyer blinded by radioactive waste as a child who gained radar sense in the accident, and he used that power to fight crime), he came off as a pale imitator of the other urban vigilantes at the time. He was a superpowered Batman (complete with the Joker-like Jester and Penguin-like Owl as adversaries), or a boring version of Marvel\u2019s own Spider-Man.<\/p>\n
Marvel struggled for over a decade to try and create a unique identity for the character. He got a costume change seven issues into his run. He gained a second alternate identity for a time (Mike Murdock, supposedly Matt\u2019s flashy, hipster brother, but really also Matt in disguise). He moved from New York to San Francisco and back again. He got a sidekick\/slash love interest in Black Widow for a brief period. But nothing seems to stick. By the late 70s, the title had gone to a bi-weekly schedule, the last resort Marvel used before it cancelled a title.<\/p>\n
Enter Roger McKenzie and Frank Miller. McKenzie presented Daredevil in a darker, noir style of stories, which the character fit immediately. However, artist Miller didn\u2019t think McKenzie was taking the character too far into the noir world, and threatened to leave the book. Instead, McKenzie was fired and Miller was given the task of writing and drawing the feature.<\/p>\n
This turned out to be the best thing to ever happen to Daredevil. Miller plunged the character deeply into a grim and gritty world of gangsters and ninjas. Death was always an option and betrayal was always near. Miller\u2019s Daredevil was a haunted, damaged hero, one who was almost too willing to stoop to the level of the killers he faced.<\/p>\n Miller introduced an old flame of Matt\u2019s who became the assassin Elektra. He took old DD villain Bullseye and turned him into a raving psychopath with a particular obsession with our hero. And he also made Spider-Man villain Kingpin a feared crime boss more in line with real world crime figures. Miller eventually put these characters on a collision course, one that ended with the death of Elektra at the hands of Bullseye, as ordered by Kingpin.<\/p>\n Miller\u2019s Daredevil was a shock to the system, not only to the character and the title, but also to the larger world of comics as a whole. Miller was at the for front of the artist\/writer movement at Marvel, his reboot sharing the shelves with John Byrne\u2019s Fantastic Four and Walt Simonson\u2019s Thor reboot as well. But he was also part of the larger comic book deconstructionism that Alan Moore and others were working on at other companies.<\/p>\n Miller\u2019s work on Daredevil influenced the character for decades to come. While the character did have some rough periods (namely, the 1990s), Miller set the stage for writers such as Denny O\u2019Neil, Ann Nocenti, Kevin Smith (yes, that Kevin Smith), Brian Michael Bendis, and Ed Brubaker to create excellent Daredevil stories. Even Mark Waid\u2019s current awesome, kinder and gentler take on Daredevil would not be possible without Miller\u2019s influence. And Miller\u2019s influence was also heavily felt in the 2003 film adaptation.<\/p>\n There had been several attempts to bring Daredevil to cinematic life. The earliest was in the mid-70s when Angela Bowie was shopping around a Daredevil\/Black Widow TV project. The character also had a back door pilot with The Trial of the Incredible Hulk<\/b>. But the character\u2019s trek to the big screen began in earnest in 1997.<\/p>\n Casting began on the film. Guy Pierce was approached to play Matt Murdock, but he passed because comic book stuff really wasn\u2019t \u201chis cup of tea<\/a>.\u201d (I guess he got used to the taste of that kind of tea, because a decade later, he would go on to be the main bad guy in Iron Man 3<\/b>). Matt Damon also got the call, but passed over issues with the script and director. Eventually, the role went to Damon\u2019s friend, and fan of the Daredevil comic book, Ben Affleck.<\/p>\n Colin Farrell, once also up for the role of Daredevil, took the role or Bullseye. Jennifer Garner beat out actresses ranging from Selma Hayek to Jessica Alba for the role of Elektra. And for the role of the fat, Caucasian Kingpin, they chose the muscular African-American Michael Clarke Duncan. That might seem to be a fairly egregious bit of miscasting, but Duncan did better in his role than the other two did in theirs. Farrell\u2019s overacting got a bit too much sometimes, and Garner was as believable as a Greek shipping heiress as Brad Pitt would be as the ugliest man alive.<\/a><\/a>That\u2019s when 20th<\/sup> Century Fox first optioned the rights to the character, with Chris Columbus in line to write and direct the feature. This first time didn\u2019t pan out and the rights reverted to Marvel. Disney made a play at getting the rights, but the project was instead set up at Columbia Pictures, with Mark Steven Johnson brought on to rewrite the script. Eventually, they passed and the rights moved on to New Regency in 2000 with Fox now on board to distribute. Johnson was also named director of the film.<\/p>\n
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