Back to basics.
Daredevil is a 2011 superhero comic book series from Marvel Comics. It is the third series to use the Daredevil title.
From 1998 to 2011, Daredevil had gone to some pretty dark places. The book had sent Matt Murdock through hell over and over again. So Mark Waid thought it was time for it to become a bit more fun, so when it was relaunched in volume 3, Waid and artists Marcos Martin, Paolo River, Javier Rodriguez, and Chris Samnee returned the character to his more "swashbuckling" persona.
Which wasn't to say that the book couldn't get dark: it could and it did. At one point, Matt's father's remains are dug out by the Mole Man and Matt thinks he's going crazy. During one crossover with Spider-Man and the Punisher, Daredevil protects a MacGuffin called the Omegadrive from being taken by Black Spectre and other evil organizations. But the book also introduced Kirsten McDuffie, a new ADA who teases Matt about being Daredevil, and really fun moments like Matt entering a Christmas party with a sweater proclaiming "I Am Not Daredevil."
Matt is eventually beaten by a new villain, Ikari, who has all of Matt's powers, but isn't blind. Defeating Ikari and Lady Bullseye, Matt and Foggy realize the real villain behind everything is Bullseye, who has become completely paralyzed and is seeking revenge against Matt. Even after defeating Bullseye, Matt still feels the pull of hopelessness and Waid finally gives him a reason: he has depression. Meanwhile, Foggy himself is diagnosed with cancer and begins treatment.
Eventually, in order to stop the Sons of the Serpent from taking over the city's law enforcement, Matt goes on the witness stand and reveals to the entire world that yes, he really is Daredevil. Disbarred from practicing law in New York, Matt decides that he'll go to the one city where he previously practiced law: San Francisco.
Relaunched again, Daredevil vol 4, by Waid and Chris Samnee, saw Matt, Foggy, and Kirsten living in San Francisco, with Foggy getting cancer treatments until he has to fake his own death (again). Matt has trouble when confronted with the Purple Children, the children of the Purple Man, who stir up his depression again, but manages to work on it with Kirsten's help. Matt then decides to write and sell his autobiography to Kirsten's father, but this was interrupted by the Owl, who had gained new powers. Defeating the Owl and outsmarting the Kingpin (again), Matt returned to his friends as the world turned white.
Tropes in Mark Waid's Daredevil run:
- Always Someone Better: Ikari, Daredevil's Evil Counterpart, is played as this, as a heavily skilled and similarly empowered mook of Bullseye who has the ability to see. During each fight, Ikari brutalizes Matt, despite Matt's years of training and experience, and is only defeated by outside forces and later killed offscreen entirely.
- And I Must Scream: The ultimate fate of Bullseye in #27. After a demonically possessed Daredevil killed Bullseye in Shadowland, Lady Bullseye manages to resurrect him, but he's completely paralyzed, has lost all his senses except his eyesight, and needs to be placed in an iron lung. Bullseye comes up with a rather elaborate plot to torment Daredevil and ultimately kill him. He fails and in the process loses his sense of sight. One of the most vicious, psychotic, and frightening villains in the Marvel Universe is now, in the words of Daredevil, "a living brain in a flesh and bone coffin."
- Constantly Changing Name: A Running Gag is that Kristie keeps changing the name on the door of the law firm every time it appears.
- Continuity Overlap: Waid and Samnee's Daredevil ran parallel to the then-current Marvel Universe (2011-2015) and acknowledges and/or is affected by developments in other books:
- Fear Itself: Waid's run opens in the aftermath of the event and the death of Bucky Barnes. This actually ends up being a plot point when Captain America tries to bring Matt in for Shadowland. Matt deduces Steve's uncharacteristic anger is less about Shadowland and more about Steve projecting his guilt and anger over Bucky's trial (in Ed Brubaker's run) and death onto Daredevil.
- Greg Rucka's Punisher: The Rucka-era Frank intersects with Matt during the Omega Effect crossover.
- Superior Spider Man: Otto Ocatavius-as-Peter shows up partway through the 2011 volume.
- Original Sin: The 2014 volume ties into the event, using the Watcher's visions to advance Matt's character arc as he finally discovers why Maggie Murdock really left Jack when Matt was still a baby.
- Death by Origin Story: Issue #11 mocks this trope. Daredevil delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to The Punisher's female partner, shooting down her contention that heroes can only be driven by the deaths of their loved ones. Given the popular trend toward heroes being defined by tragedy, Daredevil's comments seem downright meta.
- Disability Superpower: The run plays around with the limitations of Daredevil's "vision". While his sense can allow him to perceive shapes around him, it's still nearly impossible for him to perceive color or other visual details (for instance, someone holding up a tablet with the image of the Jester's public identity, he can make out the shape of the tablet, but can't see what's on the screen.) In another issue, while pursuing the Mole Man into Subterrania, he moves through what he perceives to be an empty tunnel. The first panel shows his surroundings through the eyes of his radar sense. The next panel shows what his surroundings as normal where the bumpy-looking walls are actually hundreds of gigantic creatures remaining perfectly still, watching Matt pass.note Thankfully, none of them attack him. He also has had trouble fighting undead opponents, as their body temperatures are typically low enough that he can't sense their body heat and they lack a heartbeat for him to hear. Matt also gets in serious trouble when he encounters Ikari, an assassin who has the same powerset as him sans blindness.
- I Let Gwen Stacy Die: In issue #11, Daredevil rather conspicuously calls out The Punisher's partner Cole for believing in this trope — there are millions of cops and firefighters who simply want to do what's right, and claiming that they aren't as driven as someone with a dead loved one is a "vomitous insult".
- Karma Houdini: Professor Leopold York in the issue #12 flashback. Matt and Foggy successfully prove he tried to frame the latter for plagiarism (to get him expelled). As York's tenured, however, nothing comes of it beyond a quiet apology for the 'misunderstanding' from Columbia. The only consolation is York leaves both of them alone for the rest of their education and allows Foggy to pass (albeit while still taking one last petty potshot at Foggy on his way out the door).
- Lighter and Softer: Mark Waid accepted the offer to write Daredevil on the condition that he could move the series away from the overwhelming bleakness that had dominated the character for the better part of thirty years. Surprisingly, the results have been rather successful.
- Losing Your Head: One arc has Daredevil break up a human trafficking ring with the twist that the lynchpin is a new villain named Coyote who has replicated the Spot's powers. Coyote uses special collars with his portal abilities to indefinitely separate peoples' bodies from their heads, keeping them on shelves in a room, the disorientation and horror of the situation making them compliant laborers for various illicit operations.
- Nebulous Evil Organisation: The second arc of the Mark Waid series involves Black Spectre and rival organizations AIM, Hydra, the Secret Empire, and Agence Byzantine all gunning for DD's head.
- Not-So-Harmless Villain: The run does this with the Jester. For years, he was nothing more than a C-list Joker knockoff who no one took seriously, in-universe or out. Now he is a diabolical mastermind with a love of chaos and a need to make Matt's life hell. It culminates in him cheerfully crossing the Moral Event Horizon when he makes Foggy Nelson hang himself just to spite Matt.
- Obfuscating Disability: A possibly unintentional example. Daredevil assumes that his Evil Counterpart Ikari has the same disability as him because of having the same Super-Senses. Ikari ends the illusion when he suggests that Daredevil grab a red bat to use as a weapon, at which point Daredevil realizes he's screwed.
- One Dialogue, Two Conversations: In issue #17, a flashback to the early days of their law office shows Matt and Foggy having a spat about the division of workload. Foggy accidentally makes an insensitive remark about sight and apologizes, but artwork implies that Matt's retort to this was actually obliquely referring to his double life as Daredevil.
- Open Secret: As of Mark Waid's run, virtually everyone suspects Matt is Daredevil — forcing him to play the bumbling blind man in an attempt to throw people off his scent. It hasn't been working too well, and Matt's career is in danger.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Daredevil delivers one in issue #11 to Rachel Cole (as well as anyone who believes that True Art Is Angsty), as documented in the Shut Up, Hannibal! entry below.
- Required Secondary Powers: Bruiser can shift his center of mass to make himself super-strong or make it difficult for Daredevil to flip him. Using his radar sense, Matt can detect that Bruiser's body can't handle the changes to his body made by the power, so he concentrates on one shattering bone and hits it, escaping from Bruiser.
- Running Gag: "I'm not Daredevil."
- Save the Villain: Daredevil saves Bullseye from drowning in radioactive chemicals in the latter's latest appearance. However, he is left a prisoner in his own body due to the injuries that accumulated over time.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Daredevil pulls off a lovely one against Cole, a female protege of The Punisher. Also a Take That! against the Darker and Edgier school of comic book storytelling.Cole: You know what gives me the strength? My loss. We're alike that way, I imagine. Admit it, nobody who's a stranger to that particular pain could ever be as driven as us.
Daredevil: Never... [throws his staff at her face, purposefully missing it by mere millimeters] ...Don't you ever say that to me ever again, that is a repellent statement, it's a vomituous insult to every cop, every fireman, every soldier alive who steps up to fight for those who can't! [points finger] I am sorry for your loss, but if you genuinely believe that only the death of a loved one can motivate a human being to take up a cause...then get your pathetic cynical ass out of my way so I can do my job! - Significant Wardrobe Shift: During the San Francisco run, without his secret identity, Matt decides to discard his regular costume for a completely red three-piece suit, but he goes back to the classic costume in the end.
- Silly Rabbit, Cynicism Is for Losers!: In issue #11, Matt encounters a female protégé of the Punisher (who lost her fiancé) and tries to sympathize with her by bringing up heroes who also lost loved ones. However, when she says that nobody can be as driven as her and Matt without a tragedy, he ultimately throws his billy club at her face, and gives a speech stating that the idea that you need a tragic event to fight for justice is ludicrous.
- Suddenly Ethnicity: Done deliberately. Daredevil finds out that the NYPD has been infiltrated by members of the white supremacist group the Sons of the Serpent, and thus realizes that any of the cops in the courthouse with him could be one of them. One of the officers is a young woman in a pair of Cool Shades, who eventually removes them to reveal that she's Asian-American. This then assures the reader that there's no way she could be one of the Serpents.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- After Bendis and Brubaker mostly danced around it during their runs, Waid explicitly confronts the impact of Matt's outing on Nelson and Murdock's caseloads. The question of whether Matt's a vigilante or not is tainting their cases and they keep getting hit with repeated mistrials thanks to stunts from prosecutors or opposing attorneys. It's what forces Foggy and Matt to adjust their business model to now serve as legal/self-representation consultants.
- The aftermath of the Coyote incident. While Matt's vindicated that he was being gaslighted and set up, it does not automatically heal the rift Coyote caused between him and Foggy. Foggy said and did things to Matt that can't easily be taken back (and likewise, Foggy's arguments about Matt's mental health aren't entirely wrong). Of course, Foggy's anger and behavior were also being influenced by the likely impending cancer diagnosis.
- Take That, Audience!: When the Punisher's new apprentice is cornered by Hornhead, she gives a small rant about how the only people who are actually serious about being heroes are those who've suffered tragedy. DD chews her out and gives a long rant about how he finds this line of thinking disgusting as, while he himself has suffered tragedy (in fact, probably more tragedy than any other character in comics), he finds the idea that doctors, police officers, fire fighters, and heroes who are heroes because they want to do good are somehow not as heroic as he is just plain disrespectful and appalling to think. It's almost definitely an Author Filibuster aimed at fans who think that the only interesting heroes are the Darker and Edgier, angsty, miserable sort, which is a line of thinking that Mark Waid is well-known for hating with a passion, but the speech is still pretty awesome and befitting Daredevil's character.
- The Topic of Cancer: In the second half of the run, Matt discovers that Foggy has cancer. Complicating matters is right around this time Matt has gone public with his identity, so people know he's a friend of Daredevil, which means that if he checks into a hospital to try and have it treated, any villain who wants to settle the score with Daredevil could target him. This forces Matt to fake Foggy's death while he undergoes treatment in secret.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: Parodied. Kirsten provides directions to Matt over an earpiece as he's getting re-adjusted to San Fransisco's geography. However, when he starts asking for the sort of hyper-detailed information that the trope can usually supply, she flatly tells him that she's getting all her info from Google Maps.
- Wham Episode: Issue #36 ends with the New York Bar Association reluctantly disbarring Matt for previous perjury (i.e., denying being Daredevil on record) and the questionable ethics and legality of his vigilantism. As Kristen points out, it's nearly impossible to get onto another state's bar unless you've practiced law there before... and Matt did previously work in San Francisco, California, prompting a move.
- Wham Line: "Try the red one". Matt had assumed Ikari was blind like him until this moment.
