COMICS: Daredevil Scribe Spills All

Marvel writer Mark Waid had a chance to answer some queries in an interview for abnormaluse.com earlier today. The legendary scribe of Kingdom Come fame has most recently geared his talents towards everyone's favorite blind vigilante, Matt Murdock. In this candid interview, Waid talks at length about bringing the character to life and evolving the Daredevil mythos.

Here's a bit of the interview, but to see more visit abnormaluse.com

JIM DEDMAN: Matt Murdock has two full time jobs: attorney in private practice and costumed super hero. You’ve described that as a sort of a “paradox of a vigilante by night, lawyer by day.” How does he manage doing both those tough jobs?

MARK WAID: Like all good comic book superheroes, he manages to squeeze an awful lot in a 24 hour day. When I go to the bank and the post office, I’m done, and I have to lie down. But these guys, in Matt’s case, one of the things that’s enormously helpful to him is that he relies very, very heavily on his partner and best friend, Foggy Nelson. Their dynamic is such that Matt is brilliant in the courtroom. He is a showman, he is charming, he is well spoken. What Foggy brings to the table is . . . an eidetic memory for court history and for case history. So he’s the one who was always in law school, nose in the books, 23 hours a day, while Matt was out chasing skirts and stuff. So, if you will, Matt’s the face, and Foggy’s the brain, and sorry to say, the brains have the harder job.

At this point, it’s public knowledge that Matt Murdock is Daredevil, at least for the most part, and the new assistant district attorney actually tells him, “Every litigator in the game is going to use your Daredevil identity against you every time you set foot in a courtroom.” You’ve said in a past interview that Murdock is doing his clients “no favors by representing them.” Why is his identity as Daredevil such a problem in his private practice?

MW: Because every time he steps into the courtroom, a smart lawyer on the other side will invoke – especially in criminal cases, particularly criminal cases – the fact that Daredevil is an unsanctioned vigilante, and therefore, he must have some sort of antagonistic relationship with law enforcement or by nature must have some sort of antagonistic bent against authority, none of which is true, but it doesn’t matter. . . . [W]hat I’ve been told is that, paradoxically, the courtroom itself is the only place where you don’t have to worry about slander because lawyers can say whatever they need to about each other in order to win the case, essentially. There’s boundaries to that, but Matt is not in a position to sue an opposing attorney for slander for calling him Daredevil in court.

Now, Foggy appears to be in a romantic relationship with the new assistant district attorney. Is that going to present him any problems, romantic or ethical, in the future?

MW: I think the key word there is “appears,” so I’m afraid I will have to actually stall the question for a couple more issues.

Fair enough. As Daredevil, Matt has witnessed many crimes and foiled many villains. Now that his identity is out there, might he be subpoenaed to testify himself or even be sued by any of these villains for brutality?

MW: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a dangerous place that Matt is in where he’s gone public . . . . Like I described in the first issue, . . . his identity is sort of out there, but following on Daredevil continuity from a few years ago, when he was originally exposed, he denied all charges. He sued the newspaper that reported his identity and won the case. He did everything he could to fight back. Now, that’s past continuity, and that’s not my story. I feel kind of squidgy about that, frankly, because as a reader, that bugged me that a superhero and a lawyer would deliberately mount a false case even though it was all for a greater good. That he would sue the newspaper for telling the truth really bugged me. But those are the cards I was dealt. So instead of focusing on the history of that, what I take away from that is that the reality in Manhattan now is that about a third of the people remember that he was accused of being Daredevil and they think it’s probably true. A third of them think this is crap because he’s a blind man and this is some sort of weird publicity hoax. And the final third of them just don’t care anymore because it’s like news of Anna Nicole Smith at this point. It’s old news.

Last question. More generally, you tweeted very recently that “[n]ot all mainstream comics have to be written for the existing fan base.” What’s your philosophy about that?

MW: My philosophy about it is that it makes me insane that most comics today, most super hero comics, are written specifically for the guys who’ve been reading them all their lives, which is a really inbred way of going about getting new readers. When I sit down and write a first issue, whether it’s Daredevil or Fantastic Four or anything else I’ve done, but particularly with Daredevil – I bend over backwards to make sure that it’s a comic that you could hand to anyone if they’ve read a thousand comics or they’ve never read comics before – it doesn’t matter. They understand who the character is, what he wants, and what’s in his way, and why we should care. Those are the four litmus paper questions that need to be asked about every story.