Marvel Comics Exec Editor Reveals Publisher Almost Turned Daredevil Into “An Out-And-Out Villain” In Order To Spite Fox Over Horn Head’s Media Rights
In a near-perfect example of just how petty the entertainment industry can be, Marvel Comics Executive Editor Tom Brevoort has revealed that during the brief period of time at the beginning of the Marvel Cinematic Universe when Fox still owned The Man Without Fear’s media rights, a desire to trip-up the competition and support their own ‘home team’ led the publisher to seriously consider the idea of turning Daredevil into a full-blown villain.
Brevoort, as per usual, provided this new, albeit unsurprising insight into Marvel history while answering fan questions for the January 19th entry of his weekly Substack blog, Man With A Hat.
Pressed by a fan on whether or not it was possible that comic books fans “could ever see an accepted hero turn bad that wasn’t just designed as a temporary change in personality or exposure to Element X or being possessed by a noxious cloud of fear?”, the Marvel Comics editor opined, “Yes, I think it could be done, but it requires an extraordinary amount of commitment, more than we typically have, because every character is somebody’s favorite, and having a hero take a turn to the dark side is always something that fans of that character will want to see overturned.”
“Just look at how many different creators over the years have attempted (unsuccessfully as it turns out) to redeem Hank Pym after he struck his wife Janet,” he added. “In that story, writer Jim Shooter was trying to chart the course of a hero going legitimately bad, but that course was reversed even before the story was completed, and so creators still try to take back the bad stuff the character did in those set-up stories.”
And it was on the topic of such attempted ‘super hero heel turns’ that Brevoort confirmed that one such twist was, at one point, planned for ol’ Horn Head.
Moving to raise a more recent example of this phenomena, the editor then now that “a decade-plus back, when we were working on the Shadowland crossover, there was a real push internally to make Daredevil an out-and-out villain.”
“At the time, Fox controlled the media rights to the character and it didn’t seem like they’d be coming back any time soon, and there was an interest in beginning to build up Moon Knight as a similar player that could be exploited across other media,” he explained. “The DD editor of the period, Stephen Wacker, had to work very carefully and very quietly to prevent Matt Murdock from crossing any lines-of-no-return in that story.”
Drawing his recollection to a close, Brevoort asserted, “And it’s a good thing that he did. Because only a couple of years later, those rights did come back to Marvel and we wound up doing three seasons of a television series (plus DEFENDERS).”
“And so,” he concluded, “had we gone for it during Shadowland, we would have had a lot more work cut out for us in suddenly needing to redeem Matt so that he could be a headliner again.”
Primarily penned by noted industry writer Andy Diggle, the Shadowland event was a 2010 crossover event that saw the more experienced of Marvel’s street-level heroes – such as Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Moon Knight, and Spider-Man – teaming together to stop Daredevil, who had taken over the group of ninja assassins known as The Hand and established their new iron fortress right in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen.
As noted by Brevoort, the event featured all the makings of a ‘permanently evil Daredevil’, even beginning with Matt Murdock killing Bullseye out of revenge for a multi-fatality rampage the villain committed through Hell’s Kitchen during his time as ‘Hawkeye’ on Norman Osborn’s Dark Avengers.
However, it’s admittedly a bit curious that Brevoort frames Wacker’s work in making sure that Daredevil wasn’t “crossing any lines-of-no-return” as a sly and subtle effort, as in reality, the entire event, including the hero’s more murderous actions, were ultimately revealed to be the result of his possession by The Hand’s patron demon, The Beast – and really, it doesn’t take that much effort to handwave everything bad that a hero does by blaming it on mind control.
But regardless, at the end of the day, the media rights to the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen’s eventually returned to Disney, who then partnered with Netflix to give Daredevil fans three of the best television seasons ever put into production, as well as a damn fun crossover in The Defenders.
Sadly, it seems the hero’s luck has since run out, as following the collapse of Disney and Netflix’s Marvel television deal, the MCU incarnation of Daredevil has been relegated to nothing more but cameo roles, which themselves have ranged from the good in Spider-Man: No Way Home, to the bad in Echo, and the ugly in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
Yet, a red-lining still exists on the horizon for fans of Charlie Cox’s take on Matt Murdock, as Daredevil: Born Again – which will be the first of Marvel Studios’ television projects to be produced following their recent turn back to hiring actual writers and showrunners – is currently set to hit Disney Plus on March 4th.
Whether or not it actually turns out to be good remains to be seen, but hey, it’s bringing back Wilson Bethel as Bullseye, so here’s hoping.
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