I’ve never been a Daredevil guy. Not for any specific reason or grievance with the character. X-Men got its hooks into me when I was 12, and I just kind of went on from there.
People tell me the Frank Miller run is good, and I believe them, though I’m not really looking to engage with Miller post-Holy Terror.
People tell me the Nocenti run is good, and I believe them even more, because I love everything else I’ve read from her (Longshot, The Seeds) and it’s my understanding Matt loses a fight to a vacuum cleaner.
I have read a good chunk of Mark Waid’s run, but he also was very much trying to do things differently from previous writers and harken to more of a Silver Age style as a sweetener for DD’s heavier themes. And my god, that Chris Samnee art.
I watched the Netflix Daredevil series until about halfway through Season 3. By then I was on my second child and had officially become, and remain, Bad at Television. Now there’s way too much Daredevil TV for me to catch up to it. I can’t even finish an episode of Wonder Man without interruption, and I like that show.
If only there was a way to engage with a complete Daredevil story that synthesizes the history of the character without getting bogged down in it, and leaves enough room to show Matt Murdock’s place in the larger Marvel Universe.
HOLY CRAP, THERE IS.
Enemy of My Enemy: A Daredevil Marvel Crime Novel, by Alex Segura and Hyperion Avenue, gives outsiders a tour of gangland Marvel New York, without shying away from the cyborgs, ninja and spandex as “too comic booky,” and while keeping a tight focus on Daredevil and his usual coterie.
In it, Frank Castle, The Punisher, is accused of killing the Kingpin and a New York City cop. Matt Murdock chooses to represent Castle in court, inserting both himself and his hornheaded alter ego into a criminal conspiracy and a gang war spurred by all the B-tier crime bosses who think they now have a shot at the big time. Along the way, we meet a host of those B-tier toughs, as well as some of the many women who’ve survived dating Matt Murdock (Pro tip: Don’t date Matt Murdock, he’s a generous lover but a terrible boyfriend).
If you’re unfamiliar with Daredevil, there’s plenty of 101 in this book. You’ll read about how he got his powers, how his dad was a washed-up boxer who died tragically, how he was trained by Stick, how he and the Kingpin are locked in an endless cycle of rising and falling, how he’s blind but uses an enhanced “radar sense” to perceive the world around him, how he’s an attorney with his best friend Foggy Nelson, his romantic history with Elektra, etc. It handles the basics in the Jim Shooter style of “Every (novel adapted from a) comic is someone’s first.”
But if you love comic book nonsense, there’s plenty of that, too. This isn’t an adaptation that’s ashamed of the source material, which I’d argue was a problem with, at least, the original Netflix show (I haven’t seen Born Again; again, Bad at Television). I can’t provide examples without providing spoilers, but I’d argue there may have been too many guest stars from the wider world of Marvel, though I reckon a couple of them are there to set up the next book in the Marvel Crime Novel line, a Luke Cage book by S.A. Cosby due out this fall.
What I will say is, as much as this novel splits its time between the courtroom and the streets of New York, like any good Daredevil story OR any good episode of Law and Order, the newspaper editor in me got a specific kick out of the scenes involving journalist and longtime Daredevil supporting player Ben Urich, Marvel’s romantic ideal of Woodward & Bernstein in a superhero world. Segura has written plenty of journalist protagonists in his day alongside superheroes, private investigators and Star Wars characters, and gets what makes the good ones work while entertaining general audiences.
And that’s the trick that makes Segura’s writing so engaging, the comfort in knowing he can explain Daredevil to your friend at a party who doesn’t read comics, then record a four-hour podcast about Kirsten McDuffie (who does not appear in this novel).
But that’s a treat for me. For you, if you want a good, easy summer read about Daredevil and his friends and enemies (categories into which his exes fall on both sides) that has an Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe’s breadth of knowledge of random costumed goons, I definitely recommend cracking this one open on the beach.
But seriously. Don’t date Daredevil.
Buy Enemy of My Enemy: A Daredevil Marvel Crime Novel here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)
Dan Grote is the editor and publisher of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Paul Winston Wisdom. Follow him @danielpgrote.bsky.social.
