Rated 5 out of 5*
Cover art by Monique Müge.
Cover design by Phyllis Sa.
From the Introduction to “Being Matt Murdock
– One Fan’s Journey Into the Science of Daredevil”
“[It] is not a coincidence that I have chosen to give this book the title Being Matt Murdock. While Marvel has long excelled at featuring the people behind the masks as prominently as their costumed alter egos, I cannot help but feel that this is especially true for Matt Murdock. His civilian persona has been at the center of some of the most interesting Daredevil stories ever told, and his unique combination of sensory enhancements and deficits is guaranteed to affect every aspect of Matt Murdock’s life, whether he is in costume or not.
During my many years of blogging at The Other Murdock Papers, a blog devoted specifically to Daredevil that I launched in 2007, I have been fortunate enough to connect with other fans who share much of my appreciation for the character, as well as my occasional frustrations. When I gradually turned to writing more frequently on the topic of Daredevil’s senses and how they relate to real-world science, I was worried that it might turn some people off. Perhaps the subject would be too technical, or my takes too… well, “nit-picky” is a word that comes to mind. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my science posts consistently ranked among the most popular – and the most commented on.
I think this has been partly due to the lack of information on this topic elsewhere. Aside from the occasional mention in the popular science press, usually when a writer wants to make a culturally relevant point about echolocation, there has been little written about Daredevil from this perspective. I also like to think that my regular readers have enjoyed my science posts because they have conveyed at least some of the enjoyment of writing them. If I’m having fun, the odds are good that my readers are too. I have brought that same passion, and more than occasional irreverence, to the writing of this book.”
*) Based on 13 ratings (Amazon + GoodReads)
Part One – Foundations
Chapter Subheadings
The Blind Super-Senser • The Blind Martial Artist • The Blind Superhero • The “In-Betweener”
Chapter 1: The Literary Adventures of the Super-Blind
Daredevil is not the only blind hero. He wasn’t even the first! Chapter 1 starts us off with a closer look at the myths and literary tropes that give rise to blind fictional characters with heightened senses. We also look at others (almost) like him, such as the Shroud and Dr. Mid-Nite, and ask ourselves why partially sighted characters – like Mole-Man – are so rare.
Chapter Excerpt: “Although the Daredevil comics never suggest that Matt Murdock would have acquired these heightened abilities without that helpful dose of radiation, it is interesting to note just how common heightened senses similar to Daredevil’s have been in fictional depictions of blindness even when the character in question is presumably “just blind,” without the benefit of Silver Age superhero magic.2 The opening quote of this chapter, from H. G. Wells’s The Country of the Blind, mentions such Daredevil staples as hearing heartbeats and being able to tell individuals apart by smell. Another one of Bolt’s examples, so extreme that it would put even Matt Murdock to shame, comes from references to the character Andreas in Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1906 novel Sir Nigel: […]”
Chapter Subheadings
The “Five” Senses • Understanding the Stimulus • Stimulus Problems
Chapter 2: Sense, Nonsense, and the Stimulus
What is the difference between what Daredevil does, and the powers ascribed to someone like Darth Vader? Ideally, it is the presence of some kind of real, measurable stimulus out in the real world. We take a closer look at the matter and energy so vital to human sensation, and why so many sensory oddities in Daredevil are really “stimulus problems.”
Chapter Excerpt: “In the case of sound and hearing, the rubbing of tires against asphalt, as someone hits the brakes on their car outside our window, is an example of a distal stimulus. The proximal stimulus is the vibrations of air caused by this event that set our eardrums in motion. When we smell something wonderful from the kitchen, freshly baked bread might be the distal stimulus, and the scent that reaches our noses – in the form of a microscopic sample of the bread itself – is the proximal stimulus.
It is sometimes subtly suggested that Daredevil can “reach out” with his senses. For instance, in Daredevil #349, by J.M. DeMatteis and Cary Nord, a caption reads ‘He casts his hyper-senses out like a net across the city — sifting through scents and sounds for the smallest hint of his teacher.’ However, this is not a great description of how sensation works. If there is any reaching to be done, it is the stimulus that has to do it.”
Chapter Subheadings
Sensory Receptors • Sensory Organs • What Is Meant by “Heightened” Senses?
Chapter 3: Body, Meet World
How do the matter and energy of sensation interact with out bodies? And, how do our sensory organs, and the cells and proteins they consist of, detect this stuff of sensation. How would you go about making the senses better, and what are their physical limits? We also look at the impossibility of using temperature to sense remote object, as seen on the Daredevil television show.
Chapter Excerpt: “The size of the receptive field matters a great deal to how much detail can be resolved by a particular sensory system. The reason we can see in such fine detail at the very center of the visual field is because the photoreceptors here, exclusively cones in this case, sit very close together, with each photoreceptor relaying its information to a single neuron in the optic nerve. Meanwhile, the neurons that receive input from the rods are hooked up to many rods each, around one hundred on average. So, while the density of cones and rods is roughly the same, an individual cone can pass along much more detailed information. The way the retina is “wired” means that cone input is like the latest HD video game graphics, while input from rods is more like an 8-bit Nintendo.”
Chapter Subheadings
The One-Note Language of the Nervous System • Patterns in the Brain • The Metamodal Brain • The Brain Without Sight • Sensory Substitution
Chapter 4: Senses, Meet Brain
How do the matter and energy of sensation interact with out bodies? And, how do our sensory organs, and the cells and proteins they consist of, detect this stuff of sensation. How would you go about making the senses better, and what are their physical limits? We also look at the impossibility of using temperature to sense remote object, as seen on the Daredevil television show.
Chapter Excerpt: “We spent the last couple of chapters focusing on what sorts of stimuli are available for us to sense, and how they interact with our sensory organs through dedicated sensory receptors endowed with specialized protein micro-machinery. This first step, during which a proximal stimulus is detected and converted into a chemically mediated electrical signal, is called transduction. The signal, or neural impulse, which travels along the nerve fiber to the brain, is called the action potential and is at once one of the most banal and fascinating phenomena in nature.
The action potential is common to all the senses – all neural activity, in fact – regardless of which sensory pathway gave rise to it. Nothing about the nature of the particular stimulus from the outside world is preserved in this spike of activity. In fact, the action potential is so basic that we can liken it to a kind of morse code, but instead of having short pulses and long pulses, there is just one sort of pulse. The action potential is all or nothing. A more intense stimulus causes more signals to be sent, and through more nerve fibers, but the magnitude of the individual spike doesn’t change.”
Part Two – Super Senses
Chapter Subheadings
The Ear – An Audible Crash Course • The Things We Can(not) Hear • What Daredevil Actually Hears (Maybe)
Chapter 5: Super Hearing
Can you hear heartbeats? Or whispers from blocks away? How much extra mileage would “super hearing” afford Marvel’s famous blind superhero, and how much comes down to limitations set by the laws of physics? This chapter takes a closer look at the functioning of the human ear, and the physics of sound, and what it all means for Daredevil.
Chapter Excerpt: “One feature of the auditory system that is helpful in this regard is one we’ve talked about already: The fact that we have one ear on each side of the head and an auditory system that is able to use the difference in information between the ears to locate sounds in three-dimensional space. As mentioned previously, a single ear can also perform some functions of spatial hearing, but not to the same degree.
Using spatial hearing would obviously be a good way for the brain to figure out which features of the soundscape belong together. And this is certainly a contributing factor. However, there are other cues as well. One is the difference in fundamental frequency between two sounds such that two sounds are easier to separate if the difference between them is large. Another factor is the temporal aspect; a group of frequencies that begin at the same time can be interpreted as belonging together. Ultimately, there is probably even more going on here.”
Chapter Subheadings
The Cornell Experiments • Edward Smallwood and the Super Echolocators • Your Brain on Echoes • Echolocation on Steroids
Chapter 6: A Sense of Space
Eyesight is not the only sense that can support the perception of the shape and presence of solid objects. The ability of some blind people to “see” with sound long remained a mystery, and has only recently come under serious scientific scrutiny. This chapter takes an ambitious look at the science of human echolocation, and the extremes of human sensory achievement.
Chapter Excerpt: “This also means that Smallwood, while obviously relying on sound without being aware of it, didn’t actively attempt to make any of his own sounds, such as by clicking his tongue or snapping his fingers, in the course of his daily life. Obviously, his own footsteps would have provided guidance, but it also seems reasonable to assume that he must have been well tuned in to the ambient sounds around him as well.
What makes Smallwood even more interesting though, is how exceptionally good he was at detecting the obstacles in the experiment. He not only vastly outperformed the sighted subjects, but he also crushed his blind “opponent” Michael Supa, making the difference in performance between the two much larger than the difference between Supa and the sighted subjects. This was particularly evident in terms of the measure of “first perception,” i.e. the distance at which the obstacle could first be detected. In fact, the experimenters initially seemed to have quite a bit of trouble even finding a distance from the obstacle where Smallwood couldn’t immediately detect it.”
Chapter Subheadings
Your Nose Is Better Than You Think • The Science of Human Smell • The Smell of Hair Tonic • The Scent of a Memory
Chapter 7: The Forgotten Nose
Despite the fact that smell is one of Daredevil’s heightened senses, it has often been downplayed or forgotten in the comics and beyond. Is this the natural consequence of the role of this sense among humans generally? If modern science is now telling us that our noses are actually quite good, why does this sense remain so elusive? This chapter aims to demystify the sense of smell.
Chapter Excerpt: “Over the course of the following twenty issues, Daredevil’s sense of smell is referenced, on average, less than once per issue, with most instances being fairly mundane. There is one mention of Karen’s perfume, both the Owl and the Ox apparently use hair tonic, and there are a couple of references to the smell of gasoline.
What strikes me as the most creative example of the bunch is a line from Daredevil #18, by Stan Lee and John Romita: “I smell salt water, and the kind of raw lumber used in packing crates! We must be near the docks!” Here, we actually have Matt noticing useful pieces of information about his surroundings, and doing so in a way that doesn’t shy away from the core concept that his remaining heightened senses are supposed to be relaying vital information about things he cannot see. As mentioned though, this example stands out to us because it is rare.”
Chapter Subheadings
Color, Heat, and Temperature • Reading by Touch • Haptic Exploration
Chapter 8: Heat and Touch
What happened to Daredevil’s early ability to sense colors by touch, and did it ever make much sense? How do blind humans read by touch, and could you actually read print this way? And, why does Daredevil rarely use this sense for the manual exploration of objects? This chapter addresses these issues by looking at key concepts of thermodynamics, as well as the biology of touch.
Chapter Excerpt: “In the Daredevil comic, we can assume that Matt Murdock learned how to read braille between pages ten and eleven of the first issue, and he has been demonstrating this ability on a somewhat regular basis ever since. The Daredevil television show showcased it frequently.
Matt’s relationship with braille is complicated by the fact that he can also read print by touch. The early comics would have us believe that he can do so just as easily as he can read braille, reducing the latter to simply a part of the ruse that protects his secret identity, and a burdensome one at that. To quote a caption from Daredevil #4 (1964), where we see Matt doing research in his office: “[…] We find him rapidly scanning his braille law books, even though his super-sensitive fingers could ‘read’ ordinary print if he wished, merely by feeling the impression of the ink on the page!”
Part Three – Radar Sense
Chapter Subheadings
Humble Beginnings • Silver Age Shenanigans
Chapter 9: The Perplexing Origins of the Radar Sense
We begin our deep dive into Daredevil’s radar sense by looking at where it all began. What did Stan Lee and the numerous artists he worked with have in mind? Was the early radar sense ever defined or explained? Are we actually dealing with a metaphor? This chapter represents a humorous journey back to the Silver Age and sets us up for the coming chapters.
Chapter Excerpt: “Let us take a moment to consider what is going on here. Over the course of the first few issues, Daredevil has sensed some remarkable things, including those that lie outside the typical set of human senses, such as electricity, and evil auras. His senses have been described as razor-sharp. But there’s an odd gap in his perceptions that remains unexplained.
In Daredevil #4, when Matt and Karen climb the steps of the courthouse, Karen comments on how quickly Matt moves up the stairs. He thinks, “I’m getting careless! I mustn’t let on that my extra-keen senses take the place of my eyesight!” But the problem is that his extra-keen senses, as they have been described thus far, don’t come close to explaining how Daredevil is able to accomplish any of his most advanced physical feats.”
Chapter Subheadings
The Radar According to Frank Miller • The Self-Sufficient Radar • A World Without a Radar Sense • Sound Waves Versus Radio Waves
Chapter 10: Making Sense of the Radar Sense
The Silver Age leaves us with a few different themes regarding the nature of the radar sense. Which became prominent, and how? And what did someone like Frank Miller have to say on this topic? Or the Daredevil movie and Netflix show (now on Disney+)? And, if we bring the science back into the picture, which understanding of the radar sense holds up best to scientific scrutiny?
Chapter Excerpt: “What makes Frank Miller’s take on the radar sense interesting enough to deserve its own section doesn’t just come down to the fact that his runs hold such a prominent place in Daredevil history, even though that’s certainly one reason. After all, his time on the book brought the character a brand new set of fans and significantly raised his profile. Even in our own decade, you will find few self-professed Daredevil fans who haven’t read Miller’s work while the earlier issues are not viewed as required reading to the same degree.
Another thing that makes Miller’s take on Daredevil’s senses particularly interesting is that he brought one idea of the radar sense to his early work, and then later changed his mind! In Born Again, Miller doesn’t noticeably reverse course so much as leave the radar sense out of the conversation entirely. However, another even later example of Miller’s work comes to us in the form of the five-issue Daredevil: Man Without Fear mini-series, which featured art by John Romita Jr. and came out in 1993. Set apart from the main book, Man Without Fear provides these creators with the chance to reimagine Daredevil’s origin, including the very nature of the radar sense. Here, there’s no mention of it at all, though Matt is still bestowed with an unnamed ability to sense objects in space.”
Chapter Subheadings
The Radar Sense Experienced • Visualizing the Radar • The Conspicuously Absent Radar
Chapter 11: There Is Something It Is Like to Radar Sense
Regardless of what we make of its nature, there have been common themes in how the experience of the radar sense has been written. This chapter also takes a closer look at what the artists have had to add to our understanding of what it is like to radar sense. Learn more about what the writer describes as “the conspicuously absent radar,” and what we might learn from psychological concepts like salience and crowding.
Chapter Excerpt: “When I mentioned that this particular treatment of Matt’s senses has been common throughout comic book history, this was not an exaggeration. Whether writers are doing this deliberately, or simply following tradition or some unspoken rule of how things ought to be is anyone’s guess. Is there perhaps a feeling deep down that relying too much on the radar sense is a bit of a cheat?
Whatever the case may be, the fact remains that Daredevil does not appear to be “radar-sensing” by default at all times. The practice of letting Matt first make references to what his other senses are detecting, before acknowledging the radar, is obviously easier to spot in the earlier issues. These tend to contain more internal monologue about what he is picking up and when, but you can detect it by reading between the lines, or panels, in many of the more recent comics as well.”
Chapter Subheadings
The Oddly-Shaped Elephant in the Room • Blind Moments • The Toolbox
Chapter 12: The Missing Sense
The book’s final chapter takes a closer look at how Daredevi’s blindness has been depicted in the comics, and the television show. Why is it that so many fans and Daredevil creators alike seem to suggest that Matt Murdock is not meaningfully blind at all? This chapter asks whether part of the answer may lie in the way comics are written, and makes a case for a more complete understanding of this famous Daredevil trait.
Chapter Excerpt: “Another major issue that comes into play in any piece of fiction is that we are not witnessing real events constrained by real complications. Writers and artists – and their employers – are the literal gods of these universes. They can do whatever they think serves the story, and have it play out any way they choose. In the case of Daredevil, this might mean conveniently providing him with everything he needs to know to execute the required sequence of actions.
If the writers and artists are interested in exploring Matt’s senses or blindness – and at least a few certainly have been! – they are free to do so. But they can also choose not to, and make only the most minimal of efforts to stay within reasonable boundaries. All they have to do is set up the story in such a way as to minimize any potential trouble for the main character, while also not including any scenes that directly address his blindness.”