There are None so Blind...

Matt Murdock

Marvel Television

Character Information

Matt Murdock is a lawyer by day and a vigilante known as Daredevil by night.

He was blinded by radioactive chemicals as a young child and learned to adapt to life without sight with the help of his father until Jack Murdock was killed by the mob. After his father's death, Matt went to a Catholic orphanage. It was there his senses started to become more sensitive and he struggled to do anything more than trash in bed. A nun contacted another blind man she knew, Stick, to try and help the boy.

Stick taught Matt how to harness his senses and how to use them to fight. Matt spent a few years under Stick's training but when Stick couldn't beat the compassion out of him, he vanished from Matt's life.

Matt went on to study law at Columbia University where he met his best friend and future law partner, Foggy Nelson. It was when they were just starting their firm Nelson and Murdock, that Matt could no longer ignore the cries for help he heard at night. He disguised himself and went out to fight back. At first he was known as the Man in Black. Then he got a better suit and became Daredevil.

He balanced his life as a lawyer and a vigilante with many failures and successes. Foggy and Karen learned the truth about him and while they've had their rough patches, they formed Nelson, Murdock, and Page to help the little guy in Hell's Kitchen.

And then Foggy was murdered.

Matt stopped being Daredevil for a year, unable to cope with the loss of his best friend. Nelson, Murdock, and Page closed. Karen went to the west coast. Matt stayed and tried to be a defense attorney with another firm.

As an old enemy, Wilson Fisk, gained power and became New York City's new Mayor Matt could no longer sit by. He put the Daredevil suit on and came back swinging.

Appearance

Matt is average height with brown hair that has hints of red in it. He was blinded at a young age by chemicals but the damage to his eyes didn't leave any visible traces, no scars, no paleness. His eyes are brown and nice to look at but useless for sight. He's rarely seen without a white cane. Underneath his nice suits, he's well built and scarred thanks to his secret life as the vigilante Daredevil.

The most iconic part of his look are a pair of glasses with red lenses. He wears these almost all the time as he knows his unfocused gaze and difficultly looking people in the eyes makes them uncomfortable. It's much easier to get through the day to day business of life with these glasses on.

Skills & Abilities

Enhanced Senses: While medically blind Matt’s other senses are enhanced to superhuman levels working together to create a radar-sense of the world around him. He often refers to this “image” in his head as a “world on fire”.

Enhanced Hearing: The most important of his enhanced senses Matt’s hearing works very much like echolocation. He can detect objects around him by the soundwaves that reflect off of them. The tapping of his cane is not just to guide his way but those soundwaves bouncing back to him let him know the size and location of objects around him. A similar effect is created when he fights in the rain. He is also able to hear things from several blocks away, memorize the specific ticks of watches, and use listening to people’s heartbeats to know when they’re lying. Take this senses away from Matt and he’s not able to paint a clear picture of the things around him leaving him in essentially total darkness.

Enhanced Smell: Matt’s nose is so sensitive he can detect cheap cologne three floors above him, tell what you had for lunch two days ago, and detect cancer in people. He has used this skill to follow a trail of blood back to the Punisher’s hideout and knew by smell alone that the wrong type of fuel had been used in rocket boots.

Enhanced Taste: Stick was the one who taught Matt how to focus this sense. He is able to pick out individual ingredients used in food, taste small amounts of blood in the air, and he can even name specific name brands simply by taste alone. He’s been able to do this from across the room from another person, knowing what alcohol they had drank half an hour earlier.

Enhanced Touch: Matt has famously said that sleeping on cotton feels like sandpaper. His enhanced sense of touch helps him detect things around him in a few different ways. Most often he picks up on vibrations of things around him usually by placing his hand on a surface. He can track everything from people running to the subway underground. He can sense the changes in temperature around him down to one half of a degree with touch and he can pick up on electrical currents flowing through wires in walls and under the floor. Wearing gloves can dampen this sense and often he takes off his Daredevil gloves to better feel things through his fingertips.

Enhanced Balance & Agility: Because Matt’s hearing is enhanced, so is his sense of equilibrium. He has fantastic coordination, dexterity, and agility which have been trained into not just martial art skills but acrobatic skills as well. This is best seen in his ability to traverse the city around him. He can jump, flip, and basically parkour his way through Hell’s Kitchen with ease. His reflexes have also been enhanced by this making it possible for him to dodge everything from superhuman punches to bullets at close range. He’s able to catch high speed objectings coming towards him even from behind.

Meditation Empowerment: While not part of his enhanced senses Matt has trained his body through meditation to heal faster and help him block out the pain from his wounds to get back to fighting faster than is probably medically sound.

Martial Arts Mastery: Matt has been shown using a number of different fighting styles including but not limited to: boxing, muay thai, wrestling, kung fu, wushu, judo, aikido, brazilian jiu-jitsu, capoeira, jeet, kune do, taekwondo, eskrima, silat, and ninjutsu. He was trained in many of these styles at a young age by Stick and while Stick abandoned him because he felt Matt was too softhearted Matt continued his training alone. His martial arts skills are helped by his enhanced senses allowing him to fight in total darkness and in conditions that leave opponents helpless. He is not undefeatable, however. Superhuman strength, better fighters, and the right tools can take Matt down.

Weapon Skills: While Matt refuses to kill and uses non-lethal methods he is comfortable with a number of weapons including swords, staves, billy clubs, nunchaku, and a length of chain. Often he’s shown throwing these weapons and hitting targets with precise aim which he can only do because of his enhanced senses.

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