Epistrophe

April 20, 2023

First Live-Action Daredevil

This excerpt from Road to Infinity: Marvel’s Multimedia Journey focuses on the first live-action appearance of Daredevil, fourteen years before his motion picture debut and twenty-six years prior to Charlie Cox taking on the role in the Netflix series. The following is slightly modified from what appears in the book to accommodate context and continuity.

     For the TV movie The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, which aired on NBC May 7, 1989, Daredevil was a featured character. Directed by Bill Bixby, who played protagonist David Banner, the movie was written by Gerald DiPego, whose credentials included scripting theatrical films and TV shows not associated with superheroes. As the writer told Back Issue in 2014, “It was fun for me, because I had never done that kind of writing. It’s a kind of tricky line. You don’t in any way want to spoof it. At the same time, you want humor and some lightness in there, you don’t want to take it too seriously. Once I found the line, I had a good time with it.”

     What DiPego came up with did not exactly resemble the Daredevil appearing in 1980s comic books. Like the Hell’s Kitchen setting that served as his backdrop, the character had been reconstituted into a darker, grittier, more noirish version of himself by Frank Miller, whose 1986 work on the comics pushed the Man Without Fear to the edge both physically and mentally. The final version of the script for The Trial of the Incredible Hulk was completed by the end of 1988, a year in which writer Ann Nocenti had extended the boundaries of violence in Daredevil comics even further with the villain Typhoid Mary.  

     DiPego’s script concentrated on transferring attention from the movie’s title character to Matt Murdock/Daredevil (played by Rex Smith). Banner and his alter ego are still crucial to the plot, befriending and mentoring a fellow superhero after setting into motion the events that lead to the two characters meeting, but the ninety-five minutes are clearly a pilot for a Daredevil TV series, one that effectively establishes his character and parallels him to the Hulk’s origins through radiation exposure and dueling identities. As such, the telemovie is a rare live-action network TV adaptation of a Marvel superhero during the 20^th century to include an original comic book villain, in this case Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. Kingpin (played by John Rhys-Davies).

     Banner’s arrival in the unnamed city where Daredevil and Fisk are at war plunges him into an encounter with the Kingpin’s henchmen, landing him in jail and in the legal hands of Murdock. The two soon need to save a witness kidnapped by Fisk and avoid the traps set for them. The team-up is more focused on Banner and Murdock, and the characters work well together, as does Bixby’s directing and DiPego’s script.

     The Trial of the Incredible Hulk took full advantage of the lifted restrictions on television violence. The Kingpin’s henchmen are treated to an array of beatings and electrocutions by the Hulk, Daredevil is more than roughed up by Fisk’s underlings, who are treated to the same in the finale. Early in the film, someone is actually killed by the Kingpin’s men. The use of more violence, while still subdued compared to theatrical movies of the time, allowed telemovies to catch up to the comic books and provided more than a meager threat to the heroes.

    What is most astonishing about The Trial of the Incredible Hulk is its adherence to many of the comic book’s details. In the telemovie, Murdock’s father was a boxer murdered by the “wrong people,” Daredevil’s origin story and abilities are the same as in the comics, he carries a club as a weapon, and he faces a Fisk as menacing as his comic book counterpart in his early appearances. Even Turk Barrett, the small-time criminal who first appeared in Daredevil #69 in 1970, makes several appearances, one in which he is questioned by Daredevil after a brief but effectively rendered fight scene which concludes with an upward shot of the hero handling Turk’s knife expertly before throwing it so that it lodges in a piece of wood.

     Although Daredevil’s appearance in The Trial of the Incredible Hulk might be the most faithful Marvel TV adaptation of the 1970s and 1980s, it does take several liberties with the Daredevil comic. Instead of Foggy Nelson and Karen Page, the movie features Christa Klein, female partner with Murdock in the firm of Murdock and Klein, and assistant Al Pettiman. The addition of Captain Albert G. Tendenelli of the local police gives Murdock the idea to become Daredevil when the law enforcement official discusses with the press the need for an independent law enforcer free from the corruption plaguing the police force.

     Most notable, however, is the change from Daredevil’s red costume to a black outfit with cloth masking the upper half of the head, a significant alteration that caught the attention and criticism of the character’s co-creator. In 1990, Stan Lee commented on The Trial of the Incredible Hulk in Marvel Age, remarking that, compared to the previous telemovie’s rendering of Thor, Daredevil was “depicted somewhat more accurately” but noted that “whoever designed his nowhere costume should be stranded on a desert island with nothing to read but DC mags until he begs for mercy!”

     In Science Fiction Television Series, he was more specific, explaining that he felt the costume changes tended to “alienate a lot of the comic book fans who watched the show. It would be like doing Superman in a green polka dot cape! But I thought the acting was rather good, and it was well-written, and it was a good show.”

     Comic book fans at the time may not have accepted a Daredevil in black, but four years later, Miller retconned the idea into his Daredevil comic book story arc The Man Without Fear which, in turn, provided the inspiration for the character’s look in the first and third seasons of the Netflix series that began its run in 2015.

     Despite how audiences responded to Daredevil’s costume change, Glenn Greenberg reports that ratings were strong for The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, enough so to merit serious consideration of a spin-off series. According to Arnold T. Blumberg, “Smith was temporarily on track to have his own series with Bixby serving as producer and director of multiple episodes.” A draft of a pilot script was completed by Sterling Silliphant, the film and television writer whose work ran the gamut from Academy Award dramas like In the Heat of the Night to 1970s trendy disaster movies, but a series never materialized at the time.  

Blumberg conjectures that the release of Tim Burton’s Batman film in theaters shortly after the broadcast of The Trial of the Incredible Hulk may have decided the fate of a Daredevil TV series. “Where Batman embraced some of the most comic-like aspects of its main character and took moviegoers to school, training them to appreciate everything comic book heroes had to offer, Trial was still of an era where superheroes were watered down to near unrecognizability in order to appeal to an audience unfamiliar with their exploits.”

Notes

Blumberg, Arnold T. “The Death of the First Marvel Television Universe” in Marvel Comics Into Film, edited by McEniry, Matthew J., Robert Moses Peaslee and Robert G. Weiner, Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, Inc., 2016.

Greenberg, Glenn. “The Televised Hulk.” Back Issue #70, February 2014: 19-26.

Lee, Stan. “Stan’s Soapbox.” Marvel Age #87, April 1990: 15.

Phillips, Mark and Frank Garcia. Science Fiction Television Series. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2006.

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