“You run around dressed like a moron, beating people up!”
“It’s not that simple and you know it!”
I was pleasantly surprised by Netflix’s new TV show Daredevil, based on the Marvel comics character.
I’m a bit over growlyman vigilantes, but it has a great supporting cast, an interesting and vulnerable villain, plus a New York where there’s plenty of languages other than English being spoken.
With its gangland politics, comic book elements, and deliberately narrow colour palette, Daredevil is kind of like The Wire, but set in Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy universe. If you took the superhero out of it, I’d happily watch a show where a plump, mouthy lawyer, a woman with a troubled past, and a weary journalist decided to take on a larger-than-life crimelord and his syndicate.
I never read much Daredevil, as a kid or an adult, but Mark White in New York got me to buy a Christmas issue of the comic a couple of years back. It was an unexpectedly thoughtful story on the limits of macho heroism and the importance of education.
I wrote about the comic, and about men working in education, over at Role/Reboot a couple of years back. You can read “The Man Without Fear: Heroism and Elementary School” now.
matt finch / mechanical dolphin 