Daredevil (Man Without Fear)

Born again! Blind lawyer Matt Murdock rescues a young girl from Kingpin's thugs completing his transformation into Daredevil: The Man Without Fear. Not every creator gets to utterly define a character, but Frank Miller's managed to do it twice. He did it with Batman, of course (for better or worse), but that was only after he'd already done it with Daredevil. Put on the floundering Daredevil title, he made it one of Marvel's top sellers within months of becoming its writer, and everything that Matt Murdock is as a character today can be traced back to Miller. But it's interesting that in both those cases, he also got to redfine their origins: Batman in Year One, and Daredevil in Man Without Fear. Released in 1993, Man Without Fear was really an antithesis of what was popular in comics at the time: the writing was substantive and John Romita Jr's art, while great, has never been what you'd call "flashy." The story followed Matt from his (sighted) childhood all the way up to choosing to become an active vigilante, which gave him some great depth, allowed Miller to ex post facto foreshadow some of the out-of-nowehere elements he'd created during his initial run, and gave us a look at Matt's first attempt to conceal his identity. Since this is just a suit he put together while he was in law school, Matt's original "costume" isn't anything overtly superheroic, but simply a black sweatshirt and sweatpants, sneakers, gloves, and a bandana tied around his face. This is such a smart, simple look that even the Netflix show adapted it (which led to funny moments of some True Fans™ attempting to dunk on the show by complaining that it was trying so hard to be "kewl" that it forgot masks need eyes to see; remind me what hero we're talking about again, and what his powers are?). Of course, wearing a sweatsuit means every bit of this figure needs to be new; only possible sourse for existing molds would have been the Tracksuit Draculas, and they're too skinny. The clothes have subtle, realistic wrinkles like you see on any normal sweatS, but the details on the shoes are only paint. He's got a hood, dropped around his neck with the drawstrings flapping against his chest. His bandana covers the entire upper half of his head, and the ties on it billow off to the side. The suit is solid black, so the only paint to speak of is on the sneakers - knockoff Adidas, considering the two stripes on each side. The little bit of Matt's hair we can see sticking out the back of the mask is blonde rather than red, which is weird, but it does match the coloring in the book. For whatever reason. This would have been an instance where we'd wish the toy was more accurate to the vibe than to the reality. Matt's only accessory is his billy club - it's not the fancy, break-apart kind he'd carry later, just an actual stick he stole from a policeman when he was a kid. It's a solid piece, with a grooved handle, and a real string looped through the end. He has two hands capable of gripping it, a pair of fists, and then one random gesturing right hand. Okat then. The figure has swivel/hinge feet, swivel ankles, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, balljoint hips, swivel waist, balljoint chest, swivel/hinge wrists, double-hinged elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, pectoral hinges, a balljointed neck, and a barbell head. What's that? A figure with all the joints? On a sculpt with no immediately obvious re-use potential? Who are you, and what have you done with the real Hasbro! But good news for fans of stuff that sucks, though: Series 14 is one of the ones that doesn't have a Build-A-Figure, but instead comes with a small plastic comic that supposedly honors the character's appearance. "Supposedly," because it's increasingly plain that Hasbro put zero thought into these things. Matt gets Man Without Fear #1, which is a very nice cover, but it again presents us with the same problem Adam Warlock had: namely, that comic does not have anything to do with this toy. Matt wore these clothes (but not the mask) for the first time in issue #2, and the events described on the back of the packaging took place in issues #4 and #5. Man Without Fear was the book that started making me care about Daredevil as a character, and while it was nice to see its influence on the TV show, I certainly never thought there'd be a Marvel Legend based on it. But still, this action figure is not worth $27.99, no matter how much I personally love the source material. I managed to snag a preorder on Walmart's website before the price increased (weirdly, he was the only one still at the lower price), but you shouldn't have to be lucky with perfect timing to not get ripped off by the biggest toy company in the country. -- 01/19/26 What superhero has the best "pre-final" costume? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.