The early sixties were halcyon days for the comics industry. Stan Lee at Marvel, along with Jack Kirby and a genuinely creative staff, came up with a new superhero or superhero group just above every month. First there were the “Fantastic Four”. A bit later, a single-shot superhero named “Spider-Man” did so well that he was given his own comic. A scientist named Bob Banner, or maybe Bruce Banner — it took several issues and a command decision by the publisher to finally decide that he would be Robert Bruce Banner, usually known as “Bruce” — was irradiated by gamma rays and turned into an absolutely Incredible Hulk. A girl named Jean Grey got out of a car and stared up at a looming Westchester mansion where she was fated, or doomed, to become part of a group known as the X-Men. And, of course, a young boy named Matt Murdock was struck blind and became both an honest lawyer (if that is not an oxymoron) and a costumed vigilante known as Daredevil.

Of these, the “Fantastic Four” are the only ones still missing from the movie theaters. The X-Men had a trial run two years ago, and will be back this spring. Spider-Man brought down the house a year ago. The Hulk is scheduled to bust his way out of the screen in a few more months. And in mid-February, Daredevil made it to the silver screen. I’ve heard rumors that Marvel Comics are now, after forty years, in the doldrums; but Marvel Entertainment Group has to be making money hand over fist from movie versions of these sixties super-heros.

Murdock (Ben Affleck), the son of a wrestler on the take, sees his father strong-arming someone and, running away in disgust and shame, is doused with a jet of hazardous waste that strikes him blind but makes up for it by giving him a secondary radar sense. After much self-training worthy of a Shaolin priest in a Chinese martial-arts movie, and after “seeing” his father, who has become too honest for his own good, die at the hands of minions of “The Kingpin of Crime”, Murdock becomes Daredevil (The Man Without Fear), and sets out to avenge his father. Along the way he encounters the lovely Elektra Natchios (Jennifer Garner), whose family has also had problems with The Kingpin (Michael Clarke Duncan), and becomes a target for The Kingpin’s minion Bullseye (Colin Farell), a man whose throwing is so accurate that he can shoot a fly out of the air with a pin — when his arms are immobilized in casts.

There have been some changes from the original story; whether these are for the good or not is a matter of opinion. The original Daredevil was struck blind after a cannister of radioactive material fell off a truck and hit him; here we find him being hit by biological wastes. This, incidentally, matches the similar change in the “Spider-Man” story from the original radioactive spider to the current genetically-enhanced one. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, as far as I am concerned. Very uncompelling to me was the change in Wilson Fisk, The Kingpin. The original Fisk was massive, sartorially elegant, soft-spoken and murderous; so is this one. The original Fisk was white as the driven snow. For some reason, this one is black as the ace of spades. There is no good reason for the change, and I would not be surprised if it provided fuel for the conspiracy theorists who believe (not without some justification) that Hollywood prefers to show villains as black well out of proportion to their actual presence in the population.

One might also catch the occasional amusing and amused reference to the world of comic books. I wonder how many non-aficionados would take note of the fact that Jack Murdock’s final fight ⁽¹⁾ was with “John Romita”. John Romita was a Marvel illustrator back in the sixties; it may have been he who inked the original Daredevil comic.

The mood of the film is much darker than that of, for instance, Spider-Man; don’t go to it expecting the same pleasant ride you had with Peter Parker. I’ll probably get it for my DVD collection, eventually, but it won’t ever be one of my very favorite films.

⁽¹⁾ In Peter David’s novelization of the film Spider-Man he has Jack Murdock in the audience at the wrestling match where Peter Parker takes on Bone-Saw McGraw. In this film, Jack Murdock has died years earlier. An inconsistency creeping into the Marvel Universe?