by Robin Reed
In Marvel Studios/Disney’s ongoing efforts to take over the media universe, they have now reached Netflix, where the original series Daredevil recently debuted. Thirteen episodes fell all at once into our binge-watching lives, and I have taken in six of them in the last three days.
I am a long-time Marvel comics reader, though I faded away from constant comics consumption in the late eighties when I realized that the characters would never really change, that by the nature of the industry they couldn’t change. I craved endings, and superheroes never end as long as their books, movies and TV shows sell. Even death isn’t the end, they come back whenever there is another chance to profit from them. Sometimes they snap back to their beginnings and devoted readers such as myself are left with years of stories in our heads that have been rendered nonexistent.
Daredevil was created when someone at Marvel said, “How about a blind superhero?” How this was possible was explained half by the old saw that blind people compensate with sharper hearing, smell, and touch; and half by a mysterious chemical that spilled over young Matt Murdock in an accident. At least it wasn’t radiation, the other favored bit of handwavium in the Marvel universe.