typhoid-moi

[typhoid-moi]

Oh yeah, I remember this happy-go-lucky Matt!

Now is it a song you'll be wanting? To see the dawn in?

Trying out some new watercolor markers and a friend asked for Matt from 1602- this was a lot of fun and I really like how it came out!

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Daredevil: vol 1 #181, #220, #340, vol 2 #5, vol 3 #18, vol 4 #12

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Daredevil volume 7 #2 by Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto, Matthew Wilson, Clayton Cowles, Chris Samnee, et al.

To celebrate this being the 650th issue of Daredevil, several guest artists were brought in to contribute pages— including Chris Samnee, who reunited with colorist Matthew Wilson to pay a little tribute to his and Mark Waid's run. Here is Samnee's commentary on his page:

"Chip's script called for DD, Kirsten, and a villain of my choosing. I went with Ikari (my favorite of Mark and I's contributions to DD's rogues), Hand ninja (since [it seemed] crazy how we never had any in our run) and good ol' Foggy Nelson."

He also posted some process sketches and inks.

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a (criminally quick) sketch of milla in red for today's milla appreciation day!!!

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Couldn’t let Milla Appreciation Day go by without more headcanons:

-Again, I headcanon her as a double social worker and theater major in undergrad (probably MSW degree also but that’s beside the point), and that she stays involved in community theater as a hobby.

-At some point this leads to a great conversation about bodies as weapons, as art, as…just bodies. Stuff. Things.

-I think in general Milla welcomes Matt’s philosophical and aesthetic side in a way others haven’t before. I think their relationship would be one of intellectual equals to lovers, so to speak. She pulls him out of the immensely practical of all his problems and issues and into the theoretical. It’s a sanctuary and it scratches an itch that has been there since his law school days with Foggy.

-Matt, in turn, welcomes Milla’s company. It’s refreshing. She’s been told all her life, directly or indirectly, that she’s a bit “too much”. Too extroverted, too intense, too curious, etc. He listens to her, really listens, and welcomes her passions, her thoughts on art, music, culture, social justice, even stupid tv shows. She finds her mask slipping. She hasn’t felt that in years.

-I have more thoughts but I’m real tired. Please talk to me about MattMilla anytime lol.

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I'm so mad they fridged Milla in the comics. She's a badass and I think it's really interesting to see Matt interact with a non-powered blind person. I wish they'd used Milla in the Netflix show, so I put her in the fic I wrote about Matt as a young teenager, which is mostly about him figuring out his shit and making friends and hooking up with people (but not Milla.)

Am I selling this? Probably not. But if you're curious, you can read it here:

Peoplewatching

Matt is laughing a little at his own punchline, but Milla doesn't seem to find it funny. “OK, OK, wait,” he explains. “He was blind, too. Born blind. I probably should have mentioned that.”

“What was he doing teaching a blind kid martial arts, one-on-one, unsupervised?”

"I don't know. It was, like, occupational therapy. The nuns set it up."

Milla lowers her voice. “Was this guy a pervert?”

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Charlie Cox in tight shirts that emphasizes his arms - remember your assignment Daredevil Born Again!

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Foggy Nelson Headcanon no one cares about

So I’ve been thinking about religion and Daredevil and Foggy Nelson, mostly Foggy and religion. And I have three possible headcanons for his religion.

One is that he’s Unitarian. Like all love and God and whatever and he goes sometimes because you ought to go to some sort of church on sunday. Plus he gets free cookies from the little old ladies there because he does. 

On the other hand, Franklin P (probably for Patrick) Nelson as Irish Catholic. Who goes to church and does, I dunno, his taxes or takes a nap or anything that does not actually involve listening to priest (sorry Father) or singing. And he suffers, oh boy does he suffer, come Easter and Christmas when the whole Nelson clan goes to Church and he has to Pay Attention Franklin. But sometimes he goes with Matt, first service early in the morning, and Matt is so serious and so earnest in praying and singing and listening. Foggy almost gets it. Almost. And he misses that sense of grace in his life. 

But I love, I absolutely love, the idea of Jewish Foggy. Who doesn’t eat pork but loves bacon and pork rinds. Who wears a yarmulke every Friday to the synagogue even though he think he looks stupid in it. Who could’ve been a butcher, but a kosher butcher and really his mom had hopes that he’d become a rabbi. And Foggy liked religion and maybe wanted to be a rabbi or an astronaut or police officer. His grandfather, with ugly numbers on his arm that he only showed up when it was so blistering hot that they had to go the swimming pool, who would not talk about the Shoah. And one year, Foggy takes a trip down to Washington DC to visit the Holocaust Museum. And he spends his time asking what happened to those that survived. Did they get their houses back? Their possessions? And it’s just so unfair. And he sees all the unfairness around him and wants to change it. And who makes matzo ball soup for Matt. Who doesn’t exactly tell Matt he’s Jewish immediately, although when he let’s out a string of Yiddish swearwords, because he knows three good Yiddish words and the rest are things his grandmother would whap him with a spoon for, it comes out, cautiously. And he’s hesitant because Jews and Catholics have a bad history. Matt just cocks his head and dryly asks why he doesn’t have cloven feet and could he make latkes? And there was much latkes. Jewish Foggy guys. 

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They ate (literally)

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This is the Punisher sht talking Daredevil.

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[ID: Two panels from Waid’s Daredevil run, showing Matt Murdock as a kid. In the first, Matt is standing on a table in the middle of his crowded school lunchroom.]

Matt: “Yeah, my dad’s pretty famous. He was in Ring Magazine and the Daily News. I’d call him a big shot. I bet he could beat up your dad. I bet he could beat up all your dads.”

[ID: Matt is walking down the steps of his school, flanked by two admiring classmates.]

Matt: “When I’m a lawyer, I’ll probably go into patents, which is pretty lucrative. That means ‘good money’. Maybe that, or criminal defense, but only the really high-profile cases. Like, millionaires and stuff.”

Daredevil vol. 3 #28 by Mark Waid and Javier Rodriguez

    Partway through Waid’s run, Matt encounters one of his childhood bullies. This has happened before, and the outcome is always compelling, both plot-wise and for what it reveals about Matt’s mindset regarding his past. Bullying is a major theme in Daredevil. As a child, Matt suffered emotional and physical abuse at the hands of his peers. Several writers have told stories about Matt protecting Foggy from bullies in college. The mobsters who tried to force Jack to throw his last fight are frequently depicted as nothing more than overgrown bullies with guns. The idea of Matt standing up to people like this is a key element of his superhero career, and this means the flashbacks we are shown of young Matt’s bullying hold huge significance.

    What I love about the above scene, presented to us by the bully who returns in Waid’s run, is that it adds a new element to the picture we have of Matt as a kid. It certainly doesn’t justify the torment he received, and it doesn’t negate anything other DD writers have told us about his childhood, but it does add more depth to his character, which is something I always appreciate. We already know young Matt was very smart, disobedient, lonely, somewhat hyperactive… and now we’re told that he was also a bit of a self-aggrandizing know-it-all, and hey, I completely believe it. It fits his behavior as an adult, and it matches what we know of how Jack raised him. It also further enhances the idea of Matt as a flawed person– a characterization that has long been true of his adult self, but which hasn’t been as quite as prominent in depictions of his childhood.

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mm i miss agent nadeem

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this is so sad i would never let a broccoli go bad

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I went to a convention dressed as Foggy Nelson and I took selfies with as many Matts as I could.

This guy was also there but he wasn’t in costume so whatever. 🤷

[typhoid-moi]

Peoplewatching

Chapter 1/3

(Gen, teenage Matt Murdock)

In O & M, Ms. Lucero taught Matt to hold his cane like a pencil, directing it with his index finger to give him control. He swings the cane to the right when he steps forward with his left foot, then swings it left when he steps with his right foot. The counterintuitive rhythm took a while to master. But he mastered it.

There’s no one else to take care of him, not unless you count Stick. And Matt’s not sure if he does.

He pulls open the heavy bodega door and carefully finds his way to the deli counter and grill at the back. Today is the first day of the month. The church gets to keep Matt’s Social Security Disability payments, but Sister Mary Ignacia always slips him some cash; he has four fives folded lengthwise in his pocket and he plans to spend one on a sandwich and a Snapple from the cold case.

The bodega is crowded. Whoever is on the grill today is talking loudly in Spanish with some other guys. Matt hears a clutter of overlapping heartbeats and starts to get overwhelmed. Who’s on line to order and who is waiting for their food and who is just here hanging out? Where should he stand? Do they see him already?

Stick gave him a breathing exercise to calm him down at times like this, but Matt can’t remember it. There is no reason for him to be here; they’ve got peanut butter back at St. Agnes’s. He turns around, reorients himself to the aisle, and taps himself back to the front of the store.

“Hey, kid,” a voice calls. “Blind kid. Hold up. I got you next!” But Matt is already pushing his way out the jangling door like a weirdo. Right foot, tap. Left foot, tap. Half-running. He trips over something he should have found with his cane, and goes sprawling. His palms sting.

No matter how fast he is, he can’t get away from himself.

::::

When he first got discharged from the hospital, different neighbors would take turns coming to sit with him while his dad was at work. “What do my eyes look like?” Matt asked Trang from 4D. One year older than him, raspberry-scented body wash, playing her GameBoy Pocket on the other end of the couch.

“They’re brown,” she said without pausing her game.

“Yeah, duh. But do they look weird? Or normal.

“Normal.”

“Do they look different at all? If you didn’t know me, would you think I could see?”

“I guess.” Trang’s breathing maintained its steady in and out. Link’s ocarina played a song. “Maybe if I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“What if you were paying attention?”

“Then I’d probably know. Because you don’t really look at things, do you?”

“Oh. Right,” Matt said.

::::

His life should feel so different now from what it used to be. But a lot of things are still the same. He still goes to City Knoll Middle School in the P.S. 111 building on West 53rd. He confesses his sins to the same priests and attends catechism class with the same kids from the neighborhood. He's known Nico Persiani by sight for years – he's the kid with the white cane and the extra-thick but mostly useless glasses. But the two of them never really talked until Matt moved to St. Agnes’s.

Now that they live in the same dorm, Nico wants to be friends. And he never shuts up. He tells Matt all kinds of personal stuff. That he’s twelve, too, and his corrected vision is 20/300 in his better eye. That his dead mom was from St. Thomas, in the Caribbean, that his white dad surrendered parental rights, but sends guilty letters when he’s drunk that the nuns love to read out loud. That the new Star Wars movie sucked, but Ewan MacGregor is actually a better Obi-Wan than Sir Alec Guiness was. That his favorite food is sushi and his favorite color is yellow.

Then, he stops himself. “Oh, man. Sorry. I’m not trying to be a jerk about it.”

“It’s cool. You’re allowed to have a favorite color.”

Matt listens to Nico’s heartbeat and the squeak of thin-soled sneakers on the linoleum as the other boy awkwardly shifts his weight. It is garbage day and the smell drifting in through the cracked window is terrible. The ceiling fan stirs the hot air, but the pressure tells Matt it’ll rain tonight. The A uptown express is passing through the tunnel under their feet and some of the older girls are in the rectory, playing Janet Jackson’s “Together Again” on repeat while they practice their routine for the dance team.

Matt’s head hurts, like it always does now, and every inch of his skin hurts. His heart hurts, too, a pain that feels real and grounded in the body. And Nico feels bad for him because he can’t see colors.

“I heard what happened to you,” says Nico.

“I know,” says Matt. Everyone has.

::::

He used to get comped tickets for Battlin’ Jack Murdock’s boxing matches. He’d sit alone in the front row and watch the fight, but in between rounds, he’d turn around and watch the crowd. Old people. Young people. Mostly men, but some women mixed in. Rich and poor, shoulder to shoulder. He’d watch their faces and body language, notice the clothes they wore, make up stories about them. Who was from out of town. Who didn’t like violence. Who had bet on the loser.

He can’t do that anymore. Now, people watch him.

::::

He notices the different ways Stick uses his cane against different surfaces. One minute, his teacher might let it skim delicately over the sidewalk, then the next, he’ll slam it against the side of a newspaper box or drag it skittering over a subway grate. Sometimes there’s a long, long wait between taps, as if Stick has actually forgotten this tool that Ms. Lucero says should function as an extension of the arm. Other times, Stick holds the cane in his fist, perpendicular to the concrete, and he brings the tip down with a hard rap, like he’s trying to poke a hole in the street. BANG. It makes Matt jump.

Maybe Stick is listening for the echoes. Maybe he’s just trying to get people’s attention so they’ll get out of his way. Matt’s not stupid enough to think that Stick doesn’t always know exactly what he’s doing. But he can’t help thinking about how it must look to anyone watching. He remembers how he used to stare at Nico, before. He knows that when he and Stick are out in public, eyes are always on them. And Stick doesn’t look very respectable. Yes, that’s why the unusual cane technique bothers him so much. Because it seems sloppy. Inconsistent.

"You get around so good,” Matt says, clothing his concern in a compliment. “Do people ever think you’re faking it?”

“Nope,” Stick says shortly. “My eyes look funny. Cataracts. You know what that is?”

“Um. Not really.”

Stick grunts. That’s his version of a shrug, a noise Matt knows means that he’s not interested in explaining further.

He grunts a lot.

::::

Matt is still painfully slow at Grade 2 contracted Braille. It takes him a long time to get through anything, so he also checks out textbooks on tape from the National Library for the Blind – each book is dozens of cassette tapes – and stays up late with his headphones, reading them both ways, over and over. His fingers tingle and his muscles are sore from training, but he is slowly getting better at everything, even if there is no one to notice or care. Matt’s IEP specifies that he should always be seated in the front of the classroom. So he can hear the teacher better? So he can find his seat easier? So someone in charge can always be watching him? He’s not really sure what the rationale is. He feels exposed.

Today, when he gets to pre-algebra, someone is sitting in his reserved seat. Matt knows it’s Brett Mahoney, one of the popular kids. He can smell the wintergreen Altoids Brett is always chewing on. He lets his cane knock into Brett’s foot and the other boy jumps up quickly.

“Oh! Sorry, man. I honestly forgot.” Then, after a pause, “Um, you know you have, like, a nasty cut? On your face?”

“Yeah,” Matt says. “Believe it or not, you are not the first person who has mentioned it. Also, I can feel it. I’m not stupid.”

“OK,” says Brett. “You know it’s bleeding, though, right?”

“It’s bleeding now?” Matt lifts his hand to his brow to check and to his surprise, his fingers come away sticky.

So that’s how Brett ends up escorting him to the nurse’s office.

“What happened, anyway?” Brett asks on the way back. Matt hates having to depend on another middle school boy for sighted lead. He doesn’t want anyone to tease Brett, so he keeps as much space between them as possible, his fingers barely touching Brett’s bicep, but Brett doesn't seem too worried about it. And it’s nice that he isn’t assuming Matt walked into something or fell down, the way the nurse just did.

Obviously he can’t explain about Stick, though. “I was fighting,” he says. It is true.

“Did you win?”

No.”

::::

Is Stick good-looking? It's really hard to guess. He’s old and crotchety, but he could be handsome in a rugged way, Matt thinks. Anything is possible. Clearly some women like him, like Sister Dora, whose pulse picks up when Stick comes to fetch him.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Matt asks him.

Stick ignores the question. “Time for you to get outta here, kid. I got another student coming in 10 minutes.”

Matt feels obscurely jealous. “He’s blind, too?”

“She,” Stick corrects. “No.”

“Huh.” Matt puts the escrima sticks back in their case. “Can she do all the things I can do?”

“She’s much better than you.”

“Does she work harder than me?”

“No. No one does. She’s just better.” He knocks his hand into Matt’s shoulder, a soft blow or a rough pat. “Haven’t I taught you yet that life isn’t fair?”

He didn’t need Stick for that lesson.

::::

Sometimes Matt just walks. He walks east into the anonymous scrum of Times Square and finds his way to Broadway, following it down through Midtown, through Union Square, into the Village and Soho and then Chinatown. It feels good to stretch his legs and the smell of the egg doughnuts from the famous cart makes his mouth water, but all the knockoff perfume shops on Canal exacerbate his perpetual headache. He passes by the arch he remembers and begins to cross the Manhattan Bridge on the footpath. Trains pass on the left with a metal rattle so deep he can feel it in the roots of his teeth.

He doesn’t have a watch, but a subtle drop in temperature tells him that the sun is going down now, the river far below darkening in a way he remembers from outings with his dad when he was a little kid. Halfway across the bridge, he pulls up his hood and stows his folded cane in his backpack. No one here will know he’s supposed to need it.

Downtown Brooklyn roars around him. Cars are getting on and off the BQE. Matt finds his way to the steps that wind down to street level, but he is afraid to stray too far; he doesn’t know these streets at all, and he has no way to reorient himself if he screws up. The river and Manhattan are behind him, he remembers, at his 6:00.

Matt promises he’ll just walk to the next block, recite the Nicene Creed, then turn around, retrace his steps, go back across the bridge the way he came. Return to the orphanage, his neighborhood, his whole life. His blood is beating in his ears. Strangers shove past, taking no notice of him. He’s just a white kid in a hoodie, wearing sunglasses at night. His footsteps are silent without the echoing tap he’s gotten used to.

Turn around, he tells himself. Turn around.

But he keeps walking. He could disappear completely.

Notes:

It's strongly suggested in that Season 3 flashback that that Sister Dora teaches at St. Agnes's and Matt goes to school there, but I think it makes more sense for him and Nico to go to public school, given their accessibility needs.

I love Father Lantom, but I am confused about whether he was around when Matt was a kid, or if they just meet in Season 1, so I left him out.

I'm visually impaired/low vision. If anyone blind reads this, please please please tell me what you think.

[typhoid-moi]

daredevil (2016) #9