What’s ahead for Daredevil?

First of all, sorry for not posting since Tuesday. I will get back on track with a couple of posts today. First I just wanted to link to this interview on IGN with Daredevil editor Warren Simons. While it’s mainly about the introduction of Lady Bullseye, Simons goes farther than he has in other interviews (see my previous post) in giving us some indication about what’s ahead for DD in the longer run, and I’m not sure how I should interpret the following:

“Lady Bullseye arrives like a tornado in issue # 111, which is on sale in September. As DD fans will see over the next year, her introduction into the title is going to have extraordinary repercussions on Daredevil’s life. The consequences of this arc – and the next one – will put Daredevil in a position we’ve never seen him in before, and we all know he’s been through the mill twenty different times. This is some earth-shattering stuff in the pipeline.

Joe Q and Ed and I talked a bit when Ed was in town for the last editorial retreat, and there are just 800,000 great ideas that we’re going to see in DD over the next nine months. I’m incredibly excited for what’s happening. I think DD fans are going to be in for a wild ride over the next year.”

The good:
They have “800,000 great ideas” (huh?) for the title and Warren Simons is very excited. Okay, I’m all for that. Daredevil will be in a position he’s never been in before. This, along with the admission that he’s “been through the mill twenty different times,” should suggest that they at least plan to do something that’s new. I so dearly hope that “new” doesn’t mean that they will ruin his life in worse and more spectacular ways than ever before. If it does, that means they are really out of touch with fans these days, the vast majority of whom are really not interested in reading about how much worse Matt’s life can get before he puts a bullet through his brain.

The bad:
Well, I sort of touched on “the bad” above. Things need to happen to characters in serialized fiction. If nothing happens, it’s boring. There needs to be conflict and drama. But if the novelty here is only in finding a new way to quite sadistically brutalize the main character, I will be very disappointed. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this won’t happen, otherwise I fear that Daredevil might become a parody of himself.

As I’ll touch on in an upcoming post (today or tomorrow), the fact that Matt’s life is so tragic and his suffering so relentless is actually one of the main reasons “non-fans” state for not being interested in the book. There is no doubt that Daredevil has some pretty sadistic fans. Even as low as he is now, I’ve seen people comment that they look forward to seeing how much worse his life can get. But as it stands now, I’m sure that these fans constitute 20% or less of the fanbase. That doesn’t mean the rest want everything to always be nice and cheerful, but they want to see some balance and moderation. The number of new fans that could be brought in by having the book be just a little more optimistic probably greatly outnumber the ones who view it as uninteresting if Matt isn’t constantly backed up against a wall. This is something for Marvel to think about if they care about the long-term survival of this character.

If it were any other character, terms like “extraordinary repercussions,” and “earth-shattering” would fill me with excitement. Because, for most characters, that could mean a hundred different things. However, for Daredevil – at least since the (excellent) volume 2 relaunch – earth-shattering has come to be synonymous with devastatingly life-altering for the title character.

I wish I could feel excited about the prospects Simons hints at, instead I find myself fearing for the Man Without Fear.