Kingpin - Blog Posts

Fuck Marvel. They're not getting invited to my Daredevil themed birthday party.

Me when new Daredevil content

In the hero and villain swap au the prowler started his vigilante career after finding out his nephew was a criminal and he tried to convince miles to stop doing it but failed actually achieve his goal. Aaron davis was approached by Wilson Fisk a wealthy business man who is determined to fix up the city and he offers him gadgets and tools to be able to stop crime around the city, Aaron agrees and starts to take down some criminals. He eventually runs back across miles who's running around with the outher spiders and trys to get him to stop whilst also not giving himself away. He does not succeed and ends up stuck to a wall.

Born Again Put a Bullet in My Childhood

*Born Again Spoilers*

The return of the Man Without Fear not only broke my heart, it signifies the end of my childhood. The bullet fired by Benjamin Pointdexter went straight through its victim and into the last bit of nostalgia I held for my younger years. 

I was twelve years old in April of 2015. The concept of a streaming service was still new to me, and I expected the first Marvel/Netflix show to be reminiscent of a low-budget fan series. I was going through a lot at the time. My parents were getting divorced, my grandfather was sick with cancer, and my family was on the verge of being homeless. On April 10th, my father and I stayed at my grandad’s house. Grandad was at the hospital because his lung cancer had taken a turn for the worst, and I curled up on the worn couch as spring air filtered in from the open window and my Dad sat down with a grunt in the recliner. My Dad turned on the show and I was enthralled. 

I had never seen a superhero show that felt so adult, so real, so slick, and complicated and heavy. I related to Matt Murdock, someone who always seemed to have some sort of obstacle ahead of him. I related to Matt’s boyhood counterpart who was concerned about his father making the rent payments on time. I related to being small, consumed with the big mysterious world that can change at any moment with various levels of stability. I liked that Matt Murdock kept going, no matter how bad things got. 

Two days later, I was sitting in my bedroom late at night, watching the infamous episode “Nelson V. Murdock” on my Wii console, legs folded under me, chewing my nails as Charlie Cox and Elden Hensen cried on screen. I was still thinking about that episode the next morning as we drove to Grandad’s house. Later that day, the police called informing us that our house had been robbed. My TV and Wii console were both stolen along with all our other possessions. The drawers in my bedroom were pulled free and clothes were strewn about. Looking at my room, I felt naked. There were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle decals on my walls and I wondered if the thieves looked at them when they came into my room. I wonder if they felt bad about stealing from a child and I knew they probably didn’t. Two days after that, we were officially evicted. 

In 2018, I was an angry teenager. My mother was getting remarried and I didn’t like the guy. I didn’t like that we were moving or that I wouldn’t see my friends as much anymore, even though they didn’t feel like my friends at the time. Most of them treated me like shit because we were all young and unhappy about something. I was suicidal but I didn’t fully understand what I was feeling. I pretended to be happy all the time and that made it worse. The new season of Daredevil was the only good thing I had going on in my life. I coveted the episodes, watching one every other week, taking my time. When the series was canceled I was halfway through the season. I stopped watching it and I wouldn’t finish it until 2024. I didn’t want the story to be over. I didn’t want to say goodbye to Matt, Karen, and Foggy, my only real friends. 

Recently, I’ve been struggling with the concept of growing up. I’m twenty-two years old and I’m in a weird space where I’m not a kid but I also don’t feel like an adult. It feels like I stopped aging in 2020. I keep reminiscing, thinking to myself “Things used to be better,” even though I know that isn’t true. I’m in college, I’m in therapy, I’m on medication, and life is good. Yet, I can’t seem to move on from periods of my life that have passed. I find myself dreaming about my childhood home and places I lived in my teens. They’re always altered, mashed together like some fucked-up Winchester mystery house. 

For years I wanted Daredevil to return. The original series was the postmark of my adolescence. Matt, Foggy, and Karen did more for me during the worst parts of my life than most of my friends have. I wanted to see them again. It was so weird when I got my wish. Tuesday night, I assembled the best bar food I could find, spicy chicken wings, fries, mozzarella sticks, a big juicy burger, and three ice-cold bottles of Coors Light. I set my favorite Daredevil comics and Funko figurines around my television set and placed my fancy chair right in front of it. Seeing Matt, Foggy, and Karen together again was like a dream or a hallucination. And none of that compared to the shock of seeing Foggy gunned down in the street. Hand covering my mouth, food getting cold next to me, and my cousin crying on speakerphone, I watched one of my best friends bleed to death on screen. 

I’m a sensitive person and I tend to overthink. I like drawing connections, even if they don’t make complete sense sometimes. In the aftermath of the Born Again pilot episode, sitting on my chair and staring at the ceiling, I realized something: I can finally move on. In some odd, fucked up way, seeing my three favorite comfort characters together again, and seeing one of them die, has given me a sense of closure on my childhood. No TV show was meant to last forever. I’m glad the 2015 Daredevil series died a hero before it could become a villain, and I’m glad the new series is taking a different route.  Seeing a definitive end to the original series is permission for me to let go of my unhappy adolescent years and move on. I’m grateful for that, and I know that Born Again is going to make me cry more in the future. 

Tonight, I will drink to Nelson, Murdock, and Page and all they’ve done for a lonely kid.

Rick Stepp (irresponsibleink@gmail.com)