Frank Miller’s DAREDEVIL Made History (Because Marvel Didn’t Care)

In the 1980s, Frank Miller turned Daredevil, a dying bi-monthly title, into a comic book tour de force because Marvel Comics was no longer concerned about the future of The Man Without Fear. In a new interview, Miller’s longtime partner on Daredevil, Klaus Janson explored the comic’s enduring legacy and reveals how the creative team made history by breathing new life into a fading Silver-Age hero.

The legendary Marvel Comic character Daredevil, conceived by the resourceful Stan Lee and Sub-Mariner creator Bill Everett, first appeared in print in 1964 and the unorthodox vigilante, blinded by a childhood accident and exposed to radioactive materials that granted him “hypersenses,” was unique in the genre of immaculate heroes. An accomplished attorney by day, Devil of Hell’s Kitchen by night, Matt Murdock, The Man Without Fear carved out an iconic niche in the Marvel Universe tangling with the likes of Electro, The Owl, and Stilt-Man — and Daredevil turned adversity into action in the monthlies for over a decade before the hero’s luster began to fail.

Hampered by turnover in writers and relegated to a bi-monthly publication, Daredevil artist Klaus Janson explains to Marvel that “Before Frank came on, there were a lot of rotating pencillers and… my job was to keep the book looking consistent.” Miller joined inker Janson and three other writers on Daredevil before taking the reigns himself in January 1981, introducing a new character named Elektra and heralding a 23-issue run for the ambitious creative team. According to Janson, “nobody really expected [Miller] to stay on for as long as he did because the pencillers usually would do two issues or three issues and then hop off, but when Frank came on there was definitely a shift in terms of the level of commitment. I think people started to really care about the book.”

With Miller and Janson at the helm, Daredevil’s deadliest adversaries, Bullseye and Kingpin, took on central roles, and the war raging in the criminal underworld of New York City was fought out on rooftops and in the alleys of Hell’s Kitchen. Familiar characters like the unscrupulous Turk, Daily Bugle reporter Ben Urich, Heroes for Hire, Power Man and Iron Fist, a fresh-faced Punisher, and Black Widow fill out the cast and, throughout the process, Miller and Janson were left to their own devices:

We were bursting at the seams to try stuff and one of the advantages to working on DAREDEVIL at that point was that the book was about to be cancelled so no one really had any investment from editorial or from management to say, ‘Oh you cant do this.’ There were no real restrictions on us so we were allowed to sort of have access to all of the things that we wanted to do.

Reinvigorating the characters that built the franchise with a new perspective and enriching plot devices with a real sense of consequence, the duo created a story arc in which “there was a cohesiveness to DAREDEVIL that you could sense. There was a common vision, a cohesive vision.”

Daredevil’s appeal came from the inventive artwork of Miller and Janson, created with noir-inspired inking techniques and dynamic action sequences, as well as rich characterization of the usual suspects though Miller’s intriguing plotlines and realistic dialogue. “We were able to push the envelope and do things that hadn’t been seen. I was able to do a lot of coloring techniques and use black and white in ways. In some ways, it was a boiling point for a lot of ideas that Frank and I had and they just happened to coincide at that moment, at that time.”

As an introduction to Daredevil and the epic Frank Miller/Klaus Janson collaboration, co-creator Janson offers, “I would tell new readers to read it twice. Read it once for the story and then twice to look at how we did it, and don’t be afraid to look into the corners of the panels and then into the corners of the story. There’s a lot going on. Frank and I put a lot in there. You discover new things all the time.”

Catch up on the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen with the “Daredevil by Frank Miller & Klaus Janson Sale,” featuring Daredevil by Frank Miller & Klaus Janson Vol. 1, 2, and 3 and read the interview with Klaus Janson in its entirety at Marvel.com.

Source: Marvel

About The Author