I love how the writer explain every moves logically/physically. One of them involves radar ability on how Chinmi able to detect the exact location of person/thing behind big wall/obstacle.

Just sharing. And I love your works

Off the top of my head, Brubaker had DD do this at least twice (kind of). Once, during the Mr. Fear story, DD sat back and listened for Fear’s metallic voice somewhere in the Kitchen. At the very end of Brubaker’s run, Master Izo found Milla by finding her scent in the city, something he claims Matt could’ve done if he had simply focused hard enough. (I’m just going to assume that Izo’s senses are roughly equivalent to DD’s without really having any evidence for this other than their shared history/type of training.) It doesn’t look like our modern writers are going to be abandoning DD’s one super power any time soon.

I think the most interesting idea in O’Neil’s use of the radar sense is the idea of DD sending forth a signal. I had always assumed that if DD had, strictly speaking, either radar or sonar, it was certainly passive radar or passive sonar, i.e., he simply received information via radio or sound waves, but did not send forth his own radio or sound waves to force reflection off of objects. To suggest that DD emits a radar-type signal is fascinating and… really weird.

Well, I think that the idea that it’s an actual signal that is sent out is pretty old, and that the idea that it’s a passive system is the much more recent one. I think most people (and writers) do imagine him being like a bat, though where the heck this signal is coming from sure beats me. I prefer a more down to Earth DD whose “powers” are easily explainable by his four remaining sense. Superhearing, by itself, is enough to give him a good idea of solid obstacles around him and a general idea of what they look like. It would give him the echolocating abilities of a normal blind person, except it’s passive echolocation on hard core steroids.

I think it’s also worth noting that the modern DD, without an amazing built-in radar/sonar has much greater capabilities than does O’Neil’s DD. Nowadays, DD is practically omniscient concerning his immediate surroundings. Back in the day, he seemed to have to *actively* make inferences. That would slow you down to a crawl if you were worried about running into thugs around every corner.

I agree, except I think the omniscient DD was limited to Bendis’s run and toned down quite a bit during Brubaker’s (I even saw him criticized on various message boards for making Matt less than the apparent demi-god he was under Bendis). As much as I liked Bendis’s DD generally, I really disliked some of the ways he wrote Matt’s senses. On the surface, the new “radar” (an ability composed of other underlying abilities more than a separate sense) came across as more realistic than a guy shooting radiowaves through his skull, but the things he was able to do were often completely absurd. I think I’m going to have to devote a post to this somewhere down the line.

I think there needs to be a happy medium somewhere where DD is able to function realistically as a superhero without having him be magically aware of everything going on, even blocks away (where he was always able to sort out the exact piece of information needed). I’m of the strong opinion that his powers should abide by the laws of physics. It’s not possible to hear what someone is saying in the basement of a tall building while you’re comfortable seated on the roof (as in the Trial of the Century arc), because sound quite simply doesn’t travel that far through layer upon layer of cement. That’s no longer superhearing, it’s some kind of sixth sense. Generally, writers need to stop being so afraid of allowing for any kind of weakness. He’s a blind human with heightened senses, not some kind of omniscient antenna with a “useful information” filter. I think most fans actually appreciate his human side, as well as his characteristic vulnerabilities, though the latter is something writers are even more afraid of even hinting at. The guy can’t read a street sign from three feet away. There’s no need to highlight that, but there’s no need to hype up his senses beyond belief to get around it either. Okay, rant over.

I think the most interesting idea in O’Neil’s use of the radar sense is the idea of DD sending forth a signal. I had always assumed that if DD had, strictly speaking, either radar or sonar, it was certainly passive radar or passive sonar, i.e., he simply received information via radio or sound waves, but did not send forth his own radio or sound waves to force reflection off of objects. To suggest that DD emits a radar-type signal is fascinating and… really weird.

It’s one thing for Matt to collect radio/light/sound/whatever wave information and create an image of the world at large, which is what I think Bendis and Brubaker had him doing. It’s quite another to suggest that DD is like a bat, sending out ultra-sonic emissions or radio waves and then using the reflections of those waves, ala active radar/active sonar. This would seem to open the possibility that you could easily enough construct a Daredevil detector by determining what the heck he’s shooting out of himself in the same manner that we have bat-detectors that listen for their ultrasonic screeches. Of course, under O’Neil’s view, it would seem possible for DD to simply run silent and trust his nose and ears to navigate.

More importantly, to state that DD is emitting a signal begs the question of what type of signal has no problem getting through concrete walls, bouncing off something, and then getting back to DD with little difficulty. (And yet can’t get through those damned trees!)

I think it’s also worth noting that the modern DD, without an amazing built-in radar/sonar has much greater capabilities than does O’Neil’s DD. Nowadays, DD is practically omniscient concerning his immediate surroundings. Back in the day, he seemed to have to *actively* make inferences. That would slow you down to a crawl if you were worried about running into thugs around every corner.