Mike Murdock's Sunglasses: On Character Design and Autonomy
I've written a little in the past about character design in regards to the translation of zany alter ago 1960s Mike Murdock into slightly-more-grounded, at least 85% more real 21st century Mike Murdock. Specifically, I talked with artist Phil Noto about Mike's outfits in Daredevil #606-612, and analyzed the clothing choices made by the creative team in the 2020 Annual. However, one specific detail that I find interesting in Mike's transformation from Matt's hyperactive id to his own autonomous person that I haven't really written about yet is his sunglasses-- when he wears them, when he stops, and how this shift may or may not align with his journey.
Matt: "Let's see now-- I'll just muss up the mop, to give myself that carefree tousled look! A fella like Mike wouldn't be caught dead with a simple Ivy-League hair comb! And, I'll have to give my specs a coffee break for a while, as I cover my sightless eyes in a more colorful way-- If the attorney-at-law business ever gets slow, I might just decide to open a school of method acting! Yessir! Stanislavsky had nothing on me! Now, all I've gotta do is change my personality! I figure a clown like Mike Murdock is sure to be on all the time!"
Daredevil vol. 1 #26 by Stan Lee, Gene Colan, Frank Giacoia, and Artie Simek
Matt and his dark glasses were inseparable in the 60s-- literally, to the point that he even apparently wore them under his Daredevil mask (fortunately, he doesn't do that anymore). The clear hesitance of DD artists in this period to draw their blind protagonist's uncovered eyes is likely one of the reasons that when it came time for Matt to invent himself a fake sighted twin, the sunglasses stayed on. This has not always been the case. In the years since, Matt has taken on several sighted identities in which he does not wear glasses at all-- notably, con artist Jack Batlin in the 90s. Of the two approaches, the former makes slightly more in-universe sense. As someone with no vision at all, who was blinded in a physically damaging accident, logic suggests that Matt's eyes would look different from those of a sighted person-- most likely due to chemical burns/scarring, but at the very least from things like a lack of eye contact. Thus, the choice for Matt to simply switch up his style of shades for the Mike look, rather than taking the risk of foregoing them entirely, feels logical (even if it doesn't always match up with the way Matt's eyes are actually depicted, but that's a topic for another post).
As it turned out, the oversized, colorful shades ended up tying perfectly into the loudness of the rest of "Mike's" outfits, becoming a memorable staple of the look that Matt crafted for his fake twin-- a look that was as distant from the classic Matt Murdock suit and tie (and simple, dignified shades) as he could manage. These shades were iconically, undeniably Mike's. However, they were still born from the use of sunglasses as a visual shorthand for-- and Matt's in-character response to-- his blindness. A Daredevil reader in 1968 might have looked at ol' Loudmouth Mike and asked the question: If this guy were a real person, independent of Matt, with his own backstory and reasons for dressing the way he does-- would he still choose to wear dark glasses?
Mike: "Well, as I live and breathe! You're Daredevil, right? Friend of my brother, if I don't miss my guess. Real pleasure to meet you at last."
DaredevilĀ vol. 5 #606 by Charles Soule, Phil Noto, and Clayton Cowles
("As I live and breathe" is such a funny thing for him to say in this scene.)
Enter: Fragment-Boy Mike, and the beginnings of an answer.
When it came to transforming the concept of Mike Murdock into a fully realized character of his own -- not to mention pulling him out of the 1960s and into the 2010s-- some core Mike Murdock elements were dropped by the creative team, both for the sake of streamlining the narrative and in order to match the tone of the contemporary comic. Fragment Mike is no longer Daredevil's alter ego; in fact, he claims in his first appearance in Daredevil #606 that he has never even met DD before. Gone are the loud clothes, the primary colors, the waistcoats, the fedora with the feather in it. Curiously, all that remains of his original Look(TM)...is the sunglasses.
Foggy: "That is...correct. How did you...?"
Mike: "Because I ain't him. I'm me. And now, Foggy...you need to call my brother."
Daredevil vol. 5 #608 by Charles Soule, Phil Noto, and Clayton Cowles
Fragment Mike existed in a kind of limbo that neither he, nor Matt, nor even his "creator" Reader really understood-- a tortuous state of both being and non-being, in which he believed himself to be real and then had his worldview shattered by learning that no one else saw him that way. Mike claimed his autonomy and fought for his right to live throughout that story arc, but the simple truth was that he was born out of Matt-- specifically, out of Matt's case files, from which Reader accidentally spawned him-- and the memories he possessed of being anyone/anything else were false. He was nothing but a twisted, reanimated echo of an identity his brother had created, dark glasses included; Matt but not Matt, physically separate but still bound to his brother.
Mike: "I'm Matt Murdock's twin brother, but...but I'm not. I've got some fake memories. I'm like a shell of a thing...but inside...I can tell I didn't live through anything...and I think...I think it's driving me crazy."
DaredevilĀ vol. 6 Annual #1 by Chip Zdarsky, Manuel Garcia, Le Beau Underwood, Chris Mooneyham, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Clayton Cowles
But! Fragment Mike, just like Matt, maybe because of Matt, is a fighter. He does not take being fake lying down. Through some Norn Stone magic, our fragment became a Real Boy, with real memories of a real backstory. And if we take a look through that backstory, we finally receive an answer to that 1968 DD fan's hypothetical question, because...
DaredevilĀ vol. 6 Annual #1 by Chip Zdarsky, Manuel Garcia, Le Beau Underwood, Chris Mooneyham, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Clayton Cowles
The moment Mike Murdock becomes a real person, the sunglasses vanish.
Look back through Daredevil volume 6. Once he is officially, cosmically real, the only time we ever see Mike wearing dark glasses is when he is dressed up as Matt (ohhh, the poetry of it all!). He is wearing them, standing in Matt's apartment, when he dies in Matt's place-- fated, in the end, to never entirely escape his brother's gravitational pull-- but what matters is that the sunglasses tied Mike to his origins as his twin in a costume, and the loss of them indicates fully and utterly that Mike has broken away and become his own person. We even get this fascinating scene at the beginning of volume 7:
Matt: "...It was Matt. He came back from rehab, went to his apartment... I don't know what the #$@% Fisk was thinking, but I know they've got history and... Ah, Butch. He killed my brother."
DaredevilĀ vol. 7 #1 by Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto, Matthew Wilson, and Clayton Cowles
This is Matt Murdock, in the year 2022, once more pretending to be Mike...post-Norn Stone reality rewrite. And this time? No sunglasses. In fact, Matt claims that the key to a foolproof Mike Murdock disguise is in the eyes: "Not just making sure they faced the right direction...but that no matter what, he had kindness in them..."
Do I love Mike Murdock wearing smarmy shades? Of course I do. But I love a good piece-of-clothing-as-allegory just as much, and I love peeling back the layers of identity to discover who Mike really is when he is not his brother.
Crazy to think that my first piece of Mike fanart is from 2018! I miss that boy so much, and I miss the creativity he sparked in me. I really want to get back to a place where I can finish my Mike fic.
Not to be dramatic, but if youāve read my Mike fic and enjoyed it please tell me! I need motivation š
How do people with full-time jobs have the time to be creative?? I havenāt touched an art program or my fanfic in months, and I donāt even know where to begin at this point. I miss making things, and being passionate about media. I havenāt read a Daredevil comic in over a year, and I feel so disconnected from the fandom. :( I should try to make things again before I finish my Masters.
You inserted a reference to Matt kissing Mephusto in one of your stories... so you write fanfic? Can I ask your account?
I've written exactly three pieces of fanfic (and had a great time! I could hypothetically write more if the opportunity presented itself), and they were all for fan zines. I'm afraid the stories aren't on any of the fanfic websites, but both zines are available digitally for the low, low price of FREE! at the following links:
Daredevil: The Zine Without Fear
I have two stories in this:
Shadowland Remix - A reimagining of "Shadowland" (the little reference to Matt kissing Mephisto is at the end of this one).
Welcome Back, Matt - Some backstory for Earth-65's Matt "Murderdock", wherein he returns to NYC following his Hand training and starts doing what he does best (murdering).
Mikepocalypse: The Mike Murdock Zine
I have one story in this:
Man Without Fear (2019) #1.5 - Sister Maggie and Mike run into each other while visiting Matt in the hospital.
These zines also include stunning artwork by a whole bunch of very skilled and talented people. They were tremendous labors of love by everyone involved, and I highly recommend checking them out!
So I decided, after literal years of relying on places like the marvel wiki and comicvine to look for and double check Foggy Nelson's appearances throughout the marvel universe, to go and make a comprehensive list of his appearances outside of the main Daredevil title, counting Daredevil limited series and one off stories, along with cameos and alternate universes. The intention was to streamline the process for myself so i dont have to scour through pages and pages every time I wanna remember which comic that one thing happened, but hey, why not make the process of finding comics easier for people who aren't as deranged as I am? So here I made this post, from a real Fog-head to other Fog-heads out there, listing every issue outside of the Daredevil title (as it is more straightforward to find him, and extremely long to type on this list) he appears in, from barely there cameos to central roles, sorted by whether they are set in Earth 616 or not, and in no particular order. This is simply a list to serve as a guide to find him, it is not a curated list so the quality varies wildly, but I hope you're all as curious as I was to find all the most obscure and niche Foggies out there. Enjoy :)
616:
Daredevil (1964) Annuals: #1, #2, #3, #4, #8, #9
Daredevil (1998) Annuals: #1
Daredevil: Yellow: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6
Daredevil: Redemption: #1, #6
Marvel Graphic Novel: #24 (Daredevil: Love and war)
As something that personally interests me a lot, i decided to go through the Maleev issues of Daredevil vol. 2, to identify and list as many pieces of artwork that appear inside Nelson & Murdockās law offices as i could. I love this as fun easter eggs that add visual interest to the pages, and also as material to headcanon Foggy as an art appreciator. So hereās the Nelson & Murdock art print catalogue, in order:
Fishblood (1898), by Gustav KlimtĀ
Title page illustration for the book Clio (1900), by Alphonse Mucha
Theseus and the Minotaur (1898), by Gustav Klimt
Biographies of the Loyal Retainers: Oribe Yahei Kanamaru (c. 1847), by Utagawa Kuniyoshi
Suprematist Painting (with Black Trapezium and Red Square) (1915), by Kazimir Malevich
[Video description: A fancam of Mike Murdock using different panels cropped from the comic. Each beats uses a different frames, following this order:
- Mike impersonating Matt, brown coat over black suit, holding out a photo and grinning. The frame uses glittering effects and holds for about 2 seconds. Speech bubble reads āI say we take advantage of my current situation.ā
- Mike meeting Daredevil for the first time. Heās holding out his hand, wearing blue shirt and a cap
- Mike is sitting on a chair, seemingly unconscious. His hair is messy and long, covering his face
- Mikeās impersonating Matt again, this time in a different suit. Heās not wearing any glasses and is spreading out his arms, looking annoyed as he says āAnd canāt you blame me for wanting a good, normal life for once?ā
- Mike as Matt. Heās wearing glasses now, expression unreadable, if a bit considerative? The camera is angled so that we are looking down at him. His hair is still all over the place
- The panel is cut into two frames. The first frame shows his text bubble, saying: āEx DA. Just call me Matt, okay? And I know this seems unusual, but-ā The 2nd frame moving down shows Mike ruffling up his hair smugly.
- Mikeās wearing Matt suits and heās lying on the ground. His glasses is pulled down like itās about to fall out. Despite that, he seems to be grinning.
- Mike is wearing a blue shirt, red tinted glasses and smiling excitedly. He is doing a boxer pose that resembles his dad
- A shoulder-up panel of Mike looking down at the camera, that smug expression apparent as he pulls off his glasses. Speech bubble reads āNobody wanted my memoirā
- Mike is in fighting, defensive stand. Heās aiming his gun at Matt and The Reader (who are off camera) saying āI donāt get it. I really donāt.ā
- Shoulder-up panel of Mike wearing Mattās suits and glasses. Heās frowning a bit.
- Close up to his face when he pulls off his glasses, revealing his sharp, blue, determined eyes. Heās pointing a gun at the camera, saying āI need you to call my brother.ā
- Screeechhh! The trucks pulls to a halt as Mike lets himself fall down right in front of it, cane flying out as well. Heās wearing ruffled long blue coat and grey sweatpants
- Two men uniformed men went out from the truck. One of them aims a gun at him, saying āYou want to call it in or should-ā before cutting off by a second man who said āWhoa whoa, wait a second, isnāt that-ā
was thinking abt baseball playing matt in late vol. 4 and the public identity suit, how he looked so smug all the time, and immediately this idea takes my brain hostage forcing me to doodle it
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Daredevil (Comics)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Mike Murdock, Franklin āFoggyā Nelson
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Issue #608, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Mike is a shameless flirt, light humour
Summary:
Running out of options, Mike turns his attention back towards Foggyās business card. While Foggyās connection to Daredevil is far from ideal, Mike thinks, it appears that he has been left with no other choice.
-
With nowhere else to turn, Mike Murdock seeks out the help of one Foggy Nelson.
Chapter 3Ā of Unreal has now been posted! Iām super proud of this, and while it is updating at a glacial pace I promise that it is still being worked on!!!
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