It’s a tough New York City world for Daredevil, Marvel’s beloved blind crimefighter. Created in 1964 by Stan Lee and artist Bill Everett, Daredevil deals with a cast of characters who seem to come out of New York hard-boiled detective stories: fighters, mobsters, thugs, even nuns.

If you’ve been following as we dig into our superhero origin stories, you know that human vulnerabilities go hand in hand with superpowers in the Marvel universe. Daredevil’s story is one of the most compelling.

It starts in Hell’s Kitchen, the gritty Irish-American neighborhood where young Matt Murdock lives with his single dad, boxer “Battling Jack” Murdock. As if it’s not hard enough being the son of a struggling fighter, young Matt is blinded by a radioactive substance that falls from a careening truck. (That’s the thanks Matt gets for pushing a helpless man out of the truck’s path.)

Although the radiation takes Matt’s sight, it also gives the young man super-acute hearing and a radar sense that lets him perceive the outlines of people and things. Matt learns to navigate so well that when he fights criminals later on, they don’t even know he’s blind.

Jack quits fighting for a time to care for his son, but once he returns to the ring, he’s killed by the local mob boss for refusing to throw a fight. Matt vows to punish his father’s killers and dedicates himself to training his body and mind to superhuman levels. (His sensei, a mysterious character named Stick, will turn up in many future storylines.) Now, with super-senses, brilliant mind, martial arts training, and a terrible injustice to right, Matt is ready to become Daredevil.

By day, Matt enrolls in law school, graduating with honors from Columbia and setting up a practice with his college roommate and best friend, Franklin “Foggy” Nelson. Like most of Matt’s relationships, the friendship has its conflicts. Foggy likes corporate law, Matt prefers criminal cases. The two friends are also rivals for the affection of their secretary, Karen Page. (Matt wins.)

As a crusading blind attorney by day, Matt always knows which criminal cases would fall between the cracks without the intervention of his superpowered alter ego. Daredevil’s storylines often take Matt into ambiguous moral territory that causes him to doubt his mission and sometimes his sanity.

In one story arc, Daredevil is convicted of a killing (done in the course of saving Hell’s Kitchen). Matt agrees to serve prison time on condition that Daredevil’s identity be kept secret. Once Matt experiences the reality of prison, he and Foggy shift their mission to working as consultants who advise those accused of crimes on how to defend themselves in court.

In his superhero costume — red with tiny horns on his hooded mask — Daredevil fights using his custom-designed baton as an all-purpose weapon and tool. It contains 30 feet of cable and a grappling hook, and can be thrown or used as a club. When Matt is lawyering, the baton folds up into a white cane of the type typically used by a blind person.

Daredevil’s enemies include the Owl, the Sub-mariner, and super-accurate assassin Bullseye.

But his arch-enemy is the Kingpin, aka Wilson Grant Fisk, New York City crime overlord. Fisk relentlessly plots to unmask and destroy Daredevil, at one point freezing Matt’s bank account and burning down his apartment. The feud becomes even more bitter when Fisk is elected mayor of New York and declares costumed crime fighters illegal.

When it comes to romance, Daredevil’s most long-lasting relationship is with “civilian” non-superhero Karen. He trusts her enough to reveal his secret identity to her, but she can’t handle the revelation and breaks things off.

Other women, like ally and sometime love interest Black Widow, are more in tune with Daredevil’s super-priorities. His most memorable romantic partner is Elektra, a Greek mercenary and assassin who happens to be the daughter of one of Daredevil’s mortal enemies. In keeping with the darkness of Daredevil’s universe, his love for Elektra is doomed.

Daredevil hasn’t had quite the visibility in movies and TV as some of his Marvel super allies. He was played by Ben Affleck on film, but the movie wasn’t well received, and a spin-off with Jennifer Garner as Elektra flopped. After appearing as a co-star in a Spider-Man animated series on TV, Daredevil took up residence at Netflix in a three-season series that premiered in 2015 and starred Charlie Cox in the title role. Considering the massive success of more recent Marvel movies, it seems like a good bet that Daredevil will be back for more film adventures in the Marvel Comic Universe.

In my books, I decided to create a wheelchair-bound character named Shailen Warrior at the suggestion of a boy named Shailen. He wanted a superhero who is in a wheelchair–like him (more on this story in a future blog post). I at first struggled with the task. I wondered if there had been superheroes with disabilities. A quick Google search reminded me that one of my favorite superheroes, Daredevil, is blind. Hawkeye is deaf; Captain Marvel had severe spinal injuries; Professor X and Oracle are both confined to a wheelchair; and Echo is also deaf. These are just a few of the superheroes who fight despite their disabilities. It seems the superhero universe was way ahead of American society generally in giving prominent roles to the disabled.

Shailen Warrior only makes a brief appearance in the second book, The Secrets of the Superhero’s Ring, but she’ll play a prominent role in the not-yet published third book.

For now, you can read the first two stories featuring Cockroach the Superhero: “Breakfast of Superheroes” and “The Secrets of the Superhero’s Ring.” Enjoy!