Daredevil Would Have Super-Speed in The DC Universe

Matt Murdock, also known as Daredevil, has a large variety of powers including super-hearing, super-echolocation, enhanced senses of touch, taste and smell – but if he were in the DC Universe, he would also have the power of super-speed. The most famous blind superhero certainly does not lack for superpowers, but the DC universe operates quite different from their Marvel counterpart (it has a Speed Force whereas the Marvel Universe does not), and certain abilities are more powerful than others. The new series 2021 Suicide Squad: King Shark proves that were Daredevil to have trained in the DC Universe, he would eventually acquire the ability to become another speedster.

In Suicide Squad: King Shark, the titular hero is summoned from his prison at Belle Reve (run by Amanda Waller, who readers later learn took King Shark from his family as a child) by his father: Lord Chondrakha, the God of All Sharks. Lord Chondrakha has placed his son in the Wild Games – a gladiatorial combat tournament between the avatars of all species. Among the various humanoid mammals, insects, birds and other animals is one Vik Wynn, a successful businessman by day, but is in the Wild Games is better known as the Man King.

The Man King has trained his body to absolute perfection; as the avatar of humanity, he needs every advantage he can get against those similar to King Shark with sharp teeth, claws, and other natural defenses. But he has also willingly blindfolded himself – and absolutely refuses to remove it, explaining that his extensive training involved opening himself to elements that most humans can’t even begin to comprehend. “This blindfold focuses my sights to only my mind’s eye.” Perhaps because of this, he possesses supreme acrobatic skills, including the ability to “move faster than moments!”

The Man-King’s training is eerily similar to Daredevil’s (except, unlike the Man-King, Matt Murdock’s blindness was the result of an accident and was not by choice) in that, by blocking off one sense, the others grow stronger and sharper. In Mark Millar’s run on the character, his group the Chaste specializes in this particular kind of training. “All that happened to you back then was that you got opened up to senses that everybody’s got, but don’t use,” Stick explains to Murdock in Daredevil #188. “It ain’t the radiation. Never was.” The skills gained by this sort of training in the DC Universe are considerably more extreme – so were Daredevil to fully commit to his training – as does the Man-King – he could exhibit acrobatic feats similar to the one depicted in the above image.

Daredevil’s powers have changed throughout his history in comics. Aside from his super-senses, however, he is only a human and is subject to the same limits as any other non-powered human. But those limits are not the same limits in the DC Universe; Daredevil would oddly benefit from enhanced training should the Marvel and DC worlds cross over again.