Set Description:
Synopsis: In terms of the CGC Census, and not the value of the books, this is probably our best Marvel set, as 74 of our 81 books are 9.8s, and 75 are highest graded examples. All of our books are graded at least 9.6 and no worse than second highest graded, and seven issues, down from ten a couple of years ago, are single highest graded examples.
Background: Daredevil was created by Stan Lee and artist Bill Everett, with an unspecified amount of input from Jack Kirby. He first appeared April 1964 in Daredevil #1 after the 1963 Marvel entrants of Avengers and X-Men. Writer/artist Frank Miller's influential tenure on the title in the early 1980s cemented the character as a popular and influential part of the Marvel Universe.
Daredevil is the alias of Matthew Michael "Matt" Murdock, a blind lawyer. While growing up in Hell's Kitchen in New York City, Matt is blinded by a radioactive substance that falls from an out-of-control truck after he pushes a man out of the path of the oncoming vehicle. While he loses his sight in the accident, his exposure to the radioactive material heightens his remaining senses beyond normal human ability, and gives him a "radar sense." His father, a boxer named Jack Murdock, is a single man raising his now blind son, who despite his rough upbringing, unconditionally loves his son and tries to teach him to form a better life for himself. Jack is later killed by gangsters after refusing to throw a fight, leaving Matt an orphan. To protect himself, Matt began training to hone his physical abilities and superhuman senses under the tutelage of a mysterious blind stranger named Stick, eventually becoming a highly skilled and expert martial artist.
Some years later, after graduating from law school with high grades, Matt seeks out the criminal element in Hell's Kitchen and starts his crime-fighting activities. Matt targets the local gangsters who murdered his father and succeeds in bringing them to justice. Eventually, donning a costumed attire modeled after a devil, Matt took up a dual life of fighting against the criminal underworld in New York City as the masked vigilante Daredevil, which put him in conflict with many super-villains, including his arch-enemies Bullseye and the Kingpin. He also becomes a skilled and respected lawyer after graduating from Columbia Law School with his best friend and roommate, Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, with whom he becomes law partners, forming the law firm Nelson & Murdock.
Daredevil has appeared in various forms of media, including several animated series, video games and merchandise. The character was first portrayed in live action by Rex Smith in the 1989 television film The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, and then by Ben Affleck in the 2003 film Daredevil. Charlie Cox portrays the character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) media franchise, appearing thus far in the Marvel Television series Daredevil (2015–2018), the miniseries The Defenders (2017), the Marvel Studios film Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) and the Disney Plus television series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, while being set to appear in the upcoming series Echo (2023), and Daredevil: Born Again (2024).
Our Collection: These are books that I collected as a kid and I can still remember buying my first copy of Daredevil #1 at the local drugstore in Oxford, MS. While the books in this set do not represent the entirety of our DD collection, I think that, if I had it to do over again, I would probably have stopped our DD collection at Issue #80, as even that stretches beyond how far I collected these books as a kid. When I first started accumulating CGC books around 2000, I focused on 12 titles and took them from #1-100, or just collected the superhero portions of titles like Strange Tales, Journey Into Mystery, Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense. But when I decided to register our books as a means to organize our collections over 10 years ago, which were then stored in CGC boxes, I first registered our DDs in the #1-157 set, which picked up our issues #81-#100.
While I would love to acquire one of the three #2 9.8s if one ever becomes available at a reasonable price, this set is basically done and upgrades are not a high priority. All 81 books are pictured and described below.
Current Stats:
81/81 Books
74 9.8s-All Highest Graded
7 9.6s-2 Highest Graded
49 WP
29 OW/W
3 OW
7 Single Highest Graded
75 Highest Graded
6 Second Highest Graded
31 Pedigrees
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