Matt Murdock

## Background

### 1977 - 1990: Matt Murdock

Matthew "Matt" Murdock is the only son of Jack & Margaret Murdock, born in the New York borough of Hell's Kitchen. His father was a boxer who operated under the name of Battlin' Jack Murdock. When Matt was four, his mother left the family, leaving Jack to raise Matt all by himself.

Jack had many aspirations for Matt, wanting him to be more successful than he ever was. He instilled the need to constantly study instead of playing sports with other kids. His dream was for Matt to become a doctor or a lawyer instead of an "uneducated pug" like himself. Many of the neighborhood kids bullied Matt, labeling him as "Daredevil." To let out his frustrations, Matt began training in his father's gym.

When Matt was thirteen, he saw a blind man walking towards an oncoming truck. He pushed the man out of the way but the truck crashed & a radioactive isotope spilled out, striking Matt & blinding him.The last sight he had was of his father trying to comfort him. He screamed in pain & fear when he realized he would never see again. While recovering in the hospital, Matt discovered his hearing, smell, taste & touch were amplified to superhuman degrees. He also developed a "radar sense" that formed a mental picture of his surroundings.

### 1990 - 1998: Matt Murdock

With his only son now blind, his father fell even deeper into his depression. Matt still managed to take care of his father, who was spiraling further into alcoholism. Still, Matt continued to idolize his father & helped him train when he started getting new fights & tried cleaning up his act.

Matt also continued with both his studies & his own training regime. Recognizing his son might have a niche for fighting, he set up Matt to receive training from the ninja master Stick. From Stick, Matt learned how to control his new abilities & honed his skills in acrobatics & martial arts.

His hard work in school also paid off & he was accepted into Columbia University to study law. During this time, Jack Murdock was enjoying some success so Matt got tickets for himself & his roommate Foggy to go see the fight. However, Jack found out that all his matches were fixed. Not wanting to lose a match in front of his son, he went against his orders & won. The Fixer did not take this well & had his men kill Jack Murdock on his way home.

### 1998 - 2003: Matt Murdock

The now orphaned Matt searched for his father's killers & punished the Fixer's gang severely. He chased down & confronted the Fixer, who pulled a gun on Matt. Before he could fire it, the Fixer suffered from a heart attack & died. Matt then went searching for Stick but Stick had abandoned him because of his actions. Matt then returned to Columbia & eventually entered their renowned law school program that fall. Using his abilities, he beat up a group of guys harassing Foggy & even threatened them after. He eventually met with the mysterious Elektra Natchios, the daughter of a Greek diplomat who was studying political science. Like Matt, she too had a dark side she kept secret from most people. The two quickly fell in love but after her Elektra's father was assassinated, she left both Columbia & Matt.

Matt went on to graduate with his law degree & landed a job at a major law firm. He returned to Hell's Kitchen & began taking care of his father's old gym. After rescuing a kidnapped employee from the gym, Matt ended up missing a work appointment & was fired. Foggy then convinced Matt to open a law office with him, naming in Nelson & Murdock Law. In his free time, Matt began to take the law into his own hands, justifying that he could maintain his promise to his father by assuming a costumed identity. He modified his father's old fighting boxing gear into a costume & took his childhood nickname to make it his codename. As a weapon, Matt modified his walking stick into an adaptable billy club.

## Romantic Relationships

* Elektra Natchios: Girlfriend (2001 - 2003); Infrequent Lover (2003 - )
* Natasha Romanoff: Dated (2005)

## Personality

Daredevil is a morally righteous individual with a strong sense of law & justice. He objects to total violence & prefers to keep his enemies alive & thus defeated them rather than killed them. However, he does have a dark side & would not hesitate to badly injure foes under certain circumstances.

Matt is incredibly selfless which led to him performing many heroic deeds in his life, such as saving a blind man from an oncoming truck, which lead to Matt's blindness. In the early stages of his disability, Matt suffered increased frustration, feelings of helplessness & self-loathing. However, due to training under Stick, Matt managed to conquer the struggles which boosted his confidence & developed a fearless attitude.

As Daredevil, he has displayed a heavy sense of snarky remarks in various life-threatening situations, especially early in his career. Throughout his long tenure, his various trials have made Daredevil a grimmer & less light-hearted vigilante, Despite all his great virtues, Daredevil has shown extreme ruthlessness especially when those close to him have been threatened or targeted by his enemies. He also suffers from severe clinical depression, which has led him to indulge himself in self-destructive tendencies.

## Powers & Abilities

* **Enhanced Physiology:** Murdock's physiology was enhanced by the radioactive isotope which later blinded him. As a result, he possesses superhuman abilities & his nervous system has also increase some of his abilities at peak human level. At his early age, he did not know how to handle his powers until he met Stick, who became Matt's mentor & taught him to control them. A testament to the level of skill it requires Matt to even function is seen when Psylocke tried to read his mind & found herself experiencing all the information he received through his superhuman senses, demonstrating the scale of psychological training required for Murdock to operate on a normal human level.
	+ ***Superhuman Touch*:** Murdock's sense of touch is so acute that his finger can feel the faint impressions of ink on a printed page, allowing him to read by touch & thus reading the ink impressions at a much faster pace than a normal person would be able to read. The rest of his skin is equally sensitive, enabling him by concentration to feel minute temperature & pressure changes in the atmosphere around him. The sense of touch is not just external, but internal too, thereby giving him the ability to have total body control, increasing his physiology to peak human levels & giving him the ability to numb himself to pain.
	+ ***Peak Human Strength*:** Matt can increase his strength to peak human level. He is strong enough to tip over a limo without straining, easily break a man's leg with a single kick & throw his baton with enough force to break concrete.
	+ ***Peak Human Speed*:** Matt is capable of sprinting two city blocks in seconds, disappearing, hitting a sniper with his billy club & crosses a large distance while getting into costume in seconds
	+ ***Enhanced Reflexes*:** Matt's reflexes are borderline superhuman as he was able to catch a sai thrown by Bullseye & can easily dodge gunfire from multiple gunmen at point blank range.
	+ ***Enhanced Stamina*:** At peak capacity, he can physically exert himself for several hours before showing any signs of fatigue. Once, when laying outside with no medical assistance, he utilized his chi to supercharge his bodily healing.
	+ ***Enhanced Durability*:** Matt has an extremely high tolerance to pain. He has survived after slowing himself down during a multi-story fall and being hit by a car. On one occasion, he was able to continue functioning for five days without any sleep & on another, he continued to function despite having suffered a gunshot through both his hands that also grazed his head.
	+ ***Superhuman Smell*:** His sense of smell is so acute that he can distinguish between identical twins at twenty feet by minute differences in smell. He can detect odors of an atmospheric concentration of thirty parts per million. Furthermore, his ability to remember smells enables him to identify any person he has spent at least five minutes with by smell alone.
	+ ***Superhuman Hearing*:** His sense of hearing enables him to detect an acoustic pressure change of one decibel at a pressure level of seven decibels. He can hear a person's heartbeat at a distance of over 20 feet or people whispering on the other side of a standard soundproofed wall. He is able to mentally block out specific sounds like his own breathing & heartbeat.
	+ ***Sonar Sense*:** Very much like his radar sense, Matt can emit sonar waves that are actually "echoes" that bounce off objects in his surrounding environment & listen to the echoes that return from various objects near him. He then uses the echoes to locate & identify the objects. He once stated that his sonar sense is better than Spiderman's Spider-Sense.
	+ ***Telepathic Immunity*:** He is also skilled in being able to resist psychic intrusions to be able to prevent his mind from being read.
* **High Level Intellect:** Murdock's intelligence and brain functions have always been apparent; long before he was affected by radiation, his long term midnight training, A+ morning schooling and little need of sleep is a testament to that.
	+ ***Indomitable Will*:** Daredevil has tremendous determination, fearlessness & strength of will, which makes him an extremely formidable opponent. He is one of the extremely few individuals on Earth known to possess the willpower to resist the Purple Man's mind control.
	+ ***Interrogation*:** Murdock uses many different interrogation methods to extract information from criminals. His knowledge of criminology & torture is unerring & often overwhelming.
	+ ***Investigation*:** He has shown to be an expert self-taught detective, using his intellect to figure out complex problems & hyper-senses to find clues and evidence to crime scenes.
	+ ***Law*:** Murdock is a highly skilled & accomplished lawyer, specializing in criminal justice. His legal practice is considered the single greatest source of strength of both emotional stability & his successful war on crime. His law firm also does a lot of pro bono work as well as the full range of social justice issues from hate crimes, medical malpractice, abuse cases, automotive recalls to environmental issues.
	+ ***Multilingualism***: Murdock speaks fluent English & Spanish. As a blind person, he learned to read Braille. He also knows some French, Russian & Japanese but struggles with the two latters.
	+ ***Tracking*:** Matt can track others down easily via various means, ranging from scents to footprints. With enough experience, he can follow tracks that are days or even weeks old. He may hypothetically be able to reconstruct a prior event by sniffing around the area.
* **Acrobatics:** He is a superb athlete, gymnast, acrobat, aerialist & almost without peer due to the many years of constant training & exercise. Only a very small handful of other fellow superhero martial artists can possibly match him in acrobatics, such as Elektra, Psylocke, Black Panther, Captain America, Iron Fist & Spiderman.
* **Hand to Hand Combat/Martial Arts:** Murdock is a highly skilled, self-taught boxer both due to watching his father compete, helping him train & preparing for his fights. He has also been very heavily and extensively trained in the ninja arts by Stick, a senior grandmaster & leader of the Chaste. Nick Fury once commented that there are only a handful of individuals that know what Matt Murdock knows. He is well-educated in the functioning of the human body as well as martial arts techniques that target pressure points, enabling him to paralyze limbs or an individual's entire body altogether. His fighting style is a very balanced and harmonious fusion of Boxing with Ninjutsu, Jiu-jitsu, Aiki-Jujutsu, Savate, Taekwondo, Kung Fu, Judo, Krav Maga, Silat, Karate, Capoeira, Eskrima, Aikido & Greco-Roman Wrestling. Matt is easily one of the greatest martial artists, having bested or stalemated Black Panther, Taskmaster, Iron Fist, Captain America, Sabretooth, Winter Soldier, Deadpool & Wolverine.
* **Marksmanship:** He is very skilled marksman, which makes him capable of throwing his billy clubs with great accuracy. Murdock is also skilled with most projectile-like weaponry & has utilized military-grade weaponry such as sniper rifles in extreme situations.
* **Stick Fighting:** He is a masterful expert in wielding all types of stick weapons which include staffs, batons, nunchaku & paired short sticks.
* **Weaponry:** Murdock is highly proficient in wielding various martial art weapons through his ninjutsu training, such as swords, chain weapons, stick & staff weapons, combat knives of all types, both ancient & modern military style, shurikens, throwing knives, bows & even firearms.
* **Cane:** Matt sometimes wields a multi-purpose cane that has many different modes. Its initial form is two short sticks held together by an extendable cable. It can be configured into a nunchaku-like weapon, a staff, or a cable with a grappling hook.
* **Billy Club:** Daredevil's billy club is a multi-purpose weapon. It has a retractable microphone, a miniature tape recorder, chamber for firing projectiles & a wire cable which allows the club to be used as a grappling hook. It can also be used as either as a baton or a cable.

### Weaknesses

* **Blindness:** Daredevil is blind. While his superhuman senses help him overcome this, it becomes a problem for him to navigate & fight when his heightened senses are overwhelmed or scrambled.
* **Sense Precision:** Daredevil's extent to discern pictures or video images are limited & he can only guess at colors based on the amount of heat they are absorbing or reflecting. If nothing is being emitted that would trigger his heightened senses, Daredevil would not be able to detect it.
* **Superhuman Sense Disruption:** His senses render him extraordinarily vulnerable to odors & excessive noise, which can temporarily weaken his radar sense. Under extreme circumstances he can be easily immobilized, suffer great pain or be left disorientated.
* **Immersed In Water:** While being in a large body of water, his radar sense is rendered useless. He loses several senses while in the water & has a hard time telling which direction sound is coming from.
* **Depression**

### Ratings

* **Acumen:** 5 - High / Exceptional
* **Might:** 5 - High / Exceptional
* **Quickness:** 5 - High / Exceptional
* **Mysticism:** 1 - Nonexistent
* **Gadgets:** 6 - Expert / Advanced
* **Projection:** 5 - High / Exceptional
* **Tactics:** 5 - High / Exceptional
* **Battle:** 6 - Expert / Advanced
* **TOTAL:** 160 - Power Level 4 / Moderate Threat

## Trivia

* He has stated that he feels himself suffocating while wearing business suits. He considers Daredevil's suit to be his actual working clothes.
* Sometimes he feels that Daredevil is the real identity & Matthew Murdock is just an acting role.
* His three personas are conservative Matt Murdock, dazzling Daredevil & carefree Mike Murdock.
* His favorite spot in the city is the top of the Chrysler Building.
* He is left-handed.
* Though Matt has been afraid before, he has a detached ability to fear & emotions bordering on sociopathic through the years of training & experience. This ability extends to immunity from "fear toxins" & spells, as Daredevil seems to simply be "The Man Without Fear."
* He can play the piano very well.
* Him & Foggy had a coin toss on whose name would go first on their law office. Foggy won.
* His superhuman senses enable him to remain aware at all times of the true reality around him, allowing him to see through any optical or mental illusions.
* By listening, feeling & smelling, Murdock can tell whether a person is lying by sweat, changes in body temperature & heartbeats.
* As a devout Roman Catholic, Murdock has the mixed benefits & access to certain resources & allies through the Catholic parishes of Hell's Kitchen. As a lawyer, he can also access additional assets in the form of safe-houses & sanctuary of the Church for his clients. The Catholic clergy also give him vital information regarding the movements of various crimes which allow Matt to be more successful in battling the criminals of Hell's Kitchen.
* He has admitted to having several rendezvous with Elektra after their break up.
* Since him & Frank Castle often after the same targets, they have to work together. Murdock can't stand his disregard for life & Castle can't stand Daredevil's inability to finish the job.

## Notes

* The original character of Daredevil belongs to the Marvel Universe.