The Real Reason Marvel’s Daredevil And DC’s Batman Are So Similar, Explained

A lot of what fans consider essential to Daredevil (Elektra, Kingpin as the main villain, ninjas, Catholic guilt and self-righteousness, “Matt Murdock must suffer”) comes from Miller. Some of the seeds are there from issue #1, like the inner conflict between Daredevil, a lawyer, taking the law into his own hands, and whether he’s disappointing his father by following a life of violence. But they’re barely explored; the ideas feel constrained by the formula of 1960s Marvel Comics. “Daredevil” never found a captivating identity as a book before Miller was writing it — 168th time’s the charm, I guess.

Miller’s “Daredevil” is so synonymous with the overall comic, and so influential on later writers, that it can be hard to understand what a sharp reinvention it was today.

Early Daredevil wasn’t a Batman counterpart, he was more like the low-rent Spider-Man. There’s one reason that characters often team up, in comics and in film (Charlie Cox’s Matt and Tom Holland’s Peter, specifically). Take how Daredevil swings through Hell’s Kitchen with his extended billy clubs, the same way that Spider-Man web slings through Manhattan. In “Daredevil” #1, our hero is quippy and plays cat and mouse with the gangsters who killed his father, like Spider-Man taunting Doc Ock. Later DD would just beat the hell out of them in a (truly) blind rage. The cover of “Daredevil” #1 cover outright compares him to Spider-Man.

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It’s as if Lee wasn’t confident enough in Daredevil to succeed as an idea on itself, or was stretched too thin to do anything but try and recapture lightning in a bottle. Supporting this, come “Daredevil” issue #2, the first super-villain he faces is Electro.

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Even the Kingpin was originally a Spider-Man villain (and often still is). Since he was just a human crime boss, though, he fit the crime comic story Miller was telling. One can feel that Miller approached Daredevil as if it was the closest he’d ever get to writing Batman. (Just one more example: Elektra, and her love/hate dynamic with Matt, feels akin to Catwoman.)

Miller bound Daredevil and Batman together, and since you can tell similar stories with them, it’s no surprise that many other writers have since worked on both comics. O’Neil, who originally succeeded Miller, had revitalized Batman comics back in the 1970s with artist Neal Adams. Brian Michael Bendis wrote the second best “Daredevil” run ever from 2001-2006 and then, like Miller, got to try his hand writing Batman over at DC (see: “Batman: Universe”). Bendis was succeeded as “Daredevil” writer by Ed Brubaker, modern master of Noir and crime comics, who already had some Batman writing experience under his belt.

Most recently, Chip Zdarsky penned “Daredevil” from 2019 to 2023 and is about to finish up a run on “Batman” at DC.