(Pictured (blurrily): Ann Nocenti, Gerry Duggan, and their panel moderator at NYCC 2025.)
Last weekend, I had a tiring but fun time at New York Comic Con. I've been attending this con for a while now and I always seem to get something new out of it. One of the highlights this year was a panel featuring Ann Nocenti (with a surprise appearance by Gerry Duggan) talking about her run on Daredevil. I've read and heard interviews with Nocenti before, but this was my first time seeing her in person, and it was a treat to spend a whole hour listening to her discuss her experience working on the comic.
A few takeaways from the panel: While Nocenti grew to love Matt Murdock, she started out not knowing much about him (unlike many of Marvel's writers at the time, she hadn't grown up reading superhero comics), and so she instead focused on creating new villains like Rotgut and the Caviar Killer to anchor her early issues. (This apparently led her editor, Denny O'Neil, to prompt her on several occasions to remember to write about Matt too.) O'Neil's core advice for her was to tell stories about things that were on her mind and draw from the world she knew--and living in New York City in the 80s, she had a lot to draw from. The grimy, impoverished, personality-rich Hell's Kitchen she brought to life in her run was true to the experience of living there at the time. Many of her characters, like Bullet and Shotgun, were based on people she saw on the street, and others were pulled from the headlines. Typhoid Mary's iconic look came from an outfit that John Romita Jr.'s girlfriend once wore to go clubbing. She said she wasn't too intimidated to be following Frank Miller's beloved run, and that the attitude among the Marvel writers was that of having toys in a sandbox: you would pick up a toy, play with it, try not to break it, and then put it back so the next person could have a turn.
While Nocenti was allowed to push the envelope, she hit some barriers in the topics she was able to cover. She had wanted to delve more deeply into Karen Page's PTSD (something that superhero comics at the time didn't tend to address) and the ways in which Matt's violence triggered it, but she wasn't allowed to, which is why that plotline ended up being relatively short and surface-level. She also thinks her run was ultimately cancelled because of Nyla Skin; she had wanted, through Nyla, to explore the culture of street protest and activism that was emerging in the city at the time, but the powers-that-be at Marvel didn't feel comfortable going there and so they pulled the plug--really, really interesting information that put those story arcs into a new context for me.
A few other small highlights from the con:
Javier Rodriguez and Joe Caramagna attended this year, so my copy of Daredevil volume 3 #1 is now signed by basically everyone who worked on it except for Mark Waid (Mr. Waid, please come to New York, I'm begging). In a remarkable bit of universal balance, though, I found a copy of volume 4 #1 on the show floor with what appears to be his signature on it. Cons are magic sometimes:
Some fun stuff at the Marvel booth:
Having the opportunity, as always, to wear my Mike costume:
(From the issue where he breaks into the Baxter Building to raid the Fantastic Four's fridge and seduce their robot.)
