Daredevil: The Man Without Fear

by Greg Cox

Matt Murdock, a lawyer who has been accidentally blinded, devotes his professional life to fighting for the people of New York, but at night he uses his heightened senses to become Daredevil, who brings his own brand of justice to Hell's Kitchen.

Genres: Marvel, Fantasy, Fiction, Superheroes, Comics, Media Tie In, Action

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Dave]

Great novelization of a movie that gets more crap than it deserves. Plenty of comic book Easter eggs in this novelization.

[JoeK]

Good writing, very competent. I'm sure it was better than the movie, which I will never see because my friends all said the film was garbage.

I can see that Greg Cox did his research and this read like a Daredevil comic from the 80s. That is perhaps the only complaint I have. Since this was base on the classic Frank Miller term on the Daredevil series, there was nothing new for me. While entertaining, it couldn't match up with the original, and you can't put that at the author's feet. He did the best he could with what he was given.

A little bonus for comic book fans of that era is that Cox named all the tertiary characters after artists of the silver age of Marvel comics.

Late edit: Also a big thing for me, again, probably dictated by the movie script and not the author's choice, but Daredevil straight-up kills two people. Bullseye lives by a stroke of luck (sequel?) but Daredevil's intent to kill is very clear. This is not the original character, and definitely Hollywood's need for revenge coming out.

[Nicholas]

It reads like a comic book. While easy reading, the characters are two-dimensional, and it is really just one long fight scene, with revenge as the main motive all around.

[Dwayne Keller]

eh- at least its a novel of Daredevil. Not bad writing, but would have been nice to have the true story of Daredevil and Elektra's beginnings, not the Hollywood version.

[Sean Randall]

Of course, it was cheesy, and of course it captured the movie quite well (Greg's a dab hand). Expect nothing more than that - Wrath of Khan this is not. Fun to read, fun to revisit the movie.

[Bonnie]

I didn't expect much from a novelization of a not-so-good movie, but I like picking up weird books sometimes. Cox does a similar thing that Peter David did with the Spider-Man novelizations, which is throwing in names for unnamed extras that are explicit references to comic book authors or creators. It's tacky and throws you out of the scene.

Additionally, this guy's descriptive writing was insane. I know that to write these novelizations they usually have only a script to go off of, and you can tell here. He'll set up a scene like it would be described in a script. When he does describe a scene in more depth he seems to whip out a thesaurus and write the most insane sentence to pull readers out of the scene. We're in the middle of a fight scene at one point and he describes some pigeons flying away as a "raucous avian exodus." My guy, the scene is moving too quickly for that. Also, the final fight scene had some inconsistencies, like Elektra kneeling over Matt then him immediately feeling the "yards between us." Huh? Other inconsistencies like what characters are able to do at what moment may be due to the script (I'd have to rewatch the movie to tell).

I also forgot that Daredevil kills people in this movie/book?! You get more description and detail in the book, and this man definitely kills 2+ people over the course of this story. Not Cox's fault. Bad script.

Overall, it's a novelization of a movie that's kinda gone down in history for being bad. What do you expect? Criminal lack of Foggy, but having scenes written from the POV of blind Matt is something you don't always see in a book.

[Kostantin]

I'm in loveeeee

Przecież ta książka to cudo
.
.
.
.
I śmierć Elektry, kuźwa mać. No czemu ;(

[Kent Clark]

Kind of bland as far as novelizations go but still based on comic books so my bias gives it 3 stars.

[Griffin Honthy]

Good daredevil story. Pretty easy read and interesting villains. For a blind superhero tho i’d want better writing. Seems like an easy win for a good author but not that strong

[Don]

Better than the movie

['Nathan Burgoine]

There's a good characterization of Matt Murdock (Daredevil), and the plot is nicely shared between he, Fisk, Elektra and Bullseye. I was surprised the plot moved as quickly as it did (they crammed a lot of events into one movie that might have played better with a bit more elongated movie experiences - like making a duet, not a one-off). Ironically, I think I enjoyed this tie-in (which I read before I went to see the movie) more than the movie itself.

[Gregg Epstein]

Even though the Daredevil movie was not as good as the Spider-man or X-men movies, I thought the novelization was a little better than the film.

[Indah Threez Lestari]

The story and dialogues aren't too different from the movie, that could be mean there aren't many dialogue improvisation like Iron Man's 2008 movie. Nice reading anyway.

[Victor Orozco]

Wasn't that great. I would have preferred the movie to the book. C

[Draven]

The book was great. Way better than the movie.

[Eliana]

Me voló la peluca: se lee rápido y los dibujos son geniales. Primer cómic de superhéroes que agarro.

[Love of Hopeless Causes]

Well done, true to source material, nice structure and edits.

[Lydia]

meh.