Daredevil and Elektra Have A Conversation

Sam Wilkinson

According to a faithful reader, I'm Ordinary Times's "least thoughtful writer." So I've got that going for me, which is nice.

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11 Responses

  1. Jaybird says:

    New comic book series: The Scout.

    She goes where other heroes wouldn’t have! Sometimes she finds places they would have wanted to be if they had known about them! Then she tells them! THEN THEY GO THERE!

    Next week: she checks out the so-called “haunted” Whole Foods. As it turns out, it’s got a problem that Moon Knight will eventually resolve!

    (We made The Scout female. Is that problematic? Should we have added some ethnicity or would that be over the top? Would trans be equally problematic?)Report

  2. Oscar Gordon says:

    Just don’t think about it, any of it, too hard.Report

  3. Kolohe says:

    Everyone should note that DD and El didn’t talk about hitting Spiderman up on Snapchat.Report

  4. DavidTC says:

    I’m not quite sure why any of this requires the news not paying attention to Hell’s Kitchen.

    The actual question is: When have the Avengers *ever* fought crime in the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

    People keep making all sorts of weird assumptions based on comic book logic, whereupon all superheroes are somehow interchangeable. The Avengers are *not crime fighters*. They have never fought crime. Someone in the MCU calling them to have them come and fight crime is insane.

    The Avengers have fought off, respectively, two invasions of the planet (One by aliens, one by an AI). Individually, Iron Man has fought people trying to murder him, and terrorists who also tried to murder him(1)…and Captain America has fought Hydra. That’s it. (Or, at least, all anyone knows about.)

    It’s rather akin to asking why someone who saw a hit-and-run doesn’t call the National Guard. Or Chesley Sullenberger III. What the hell do those people have to do with anything?

    If you see Hydra, sure, you could call Captain America…or, actually, you call the US government, because Captain America is probably unlisted. If you see other terrorists…you call the police.

    If you see someone running around raising the dead in the MCU, the correct people to call would be SHIELD…who do not (officially) exist anymore. So, failing that, call the freaking police.

    That’s the real question, why the immediate response isn’t for Matt to get Foggy to call the FBI and/or the local police and say ‘I have recently become aware of someone who was trespassing inside that building and discovered a huge hold in the ground, which was weird enough he told me. He also said some very odd things seemed to be happening there. While I cannot name him for obvious reasons, he is usually reliable, and I believe him. My firm has checked building permits, and there appears to be no permit for anything like that. The entire situation seems extremely odd, odd enough that the person I am talking about is risking his freedom by having me contact you, so I would appreciate it if someone looked into it.’ (The implication being that it’s one of the firm’s *client*, not Matt, but legally, everything said there was true.)

    That said…the *last* time DD tried to involve the police in anything (The entire thing with the Kingpin), he got a large amount of them killed, so it’s possible he’s trying to not send them into a deadtrap.

    1) Come to think of it, the only battles we’ve seen Tony Stark in that *weren’t* him responding to a threat to himself were Avengers-related. And Bruce Banner, I guess, but he’s made it clear he doesn’t think he’s a hero at all. Thor’s fights tend to be ‘personal’, in the sense they’re to do wit his family, but they usually aren’t threats to *him*, and everyone else is connected-ish to SHIELD and trying to fix injustice.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

      You’d think that these vigilantes would have more faith in our institutions.Report

    • Sam Wilkinson in reply to DavidTC says:

      On the one hand, sure, whatever. Captain America isn’t available to throw his shields at ninjas because he’s throwing them at Nazis. Okay.

      On the other hand, no, because what Daredevil asks us as the audience to believe is that there is literally a world-threatening situation being undertaken several blocks away from some of the most powerful beings in the entire universe – literally, several blocks, and literally, entire universe – and that it doesn’t even occur on these characters to even mention the possibility of trying to get their attention with it.

      I get that the comic book’s fans are entirely cool with the idea that Daredevil fights street-level crime – although The Hand’s plot seems like something much, much bigger than street-level crime – but I’m not one of the comic book’s fans. I’m watching a show. And the show frequently asks me to simultaneously take it seriously without thinking too hard about it. That isn’t my jam.Report

      • DavidTC in reply to Sam Wilkinson says:

        On the one hand, sure, whatever. Captain America isn’t available to throw his shields at ninjas because he’s throwing them at Nazis. Okay.

        No, Captain America isn’t available to throw his shields at ninjas in the same way that NATO peacekeepers aren’t available to shoot their guns at ninjas. I.e., it’s *something they don’t do*. They have never done it. You cannot call them up and ask them do to do it.

        It’s the assumption that Captain America should be involved *at all* that is the weird one.

        Of course, there is some weird, hypothetical way that he should be involved: In the comics universe, the Hand originally caused the founding of Hydra, in Japan, during WWII, before the Nazis ran off with it. This is probably not what happened in the MCU, if only because, thanks to Agents of SHIELD, we know that Hydra there was founded by a *different* cult, the worshipers of Hive!

        The two groups still could have worked together over the years, like in the comics, but it seems somewhat less likely if Hydra didn’t start with a connection…and obviously DD has no idea if they did or not.

        Also…technically, Captain America lives in DC, not New York. Or, at least, he did.

        On the other hand, no, because what Daredevil asks us as the audience to believe is that there is literally a world-threatening situation

        Although the Hand generally doesn’t seem to be a good thing for the world at large, nothing they are actually *doing* seems to be world-threatening, or even hundreds-of-people-threatening.

        They’re an organized-crime/cult, with the ability to bring people back to life by draining blood from others. (Which is *magic*, and their access to magic should be rather worrying, but I think DD thinks it’s some purely technological thing.)

        They stab anyone who gets in their way, they kidnap children for their raising-the-dead machine, and then later on kidnap a bunch of people to set a trap for DD.

        That’s it. That’s all they do. I mean, they’re obviously *villains*, but they aren’t going to end the world. They don’t seem to have any capacity, nor does that seem to be their end goal. (And, assuming this is anything like the comics, it’s *not* their end goal, which is purely to amass power.)

        Oh, and they also dig giant holes in the middle of Manhattan for no obvious reason, which DD really needs to remember to call the police about! (We still don’t know the point of that, but it’s the entire reason they were in New York to start with, even back in season 1. Well, plus trying to grab Electra.)Report

  5. Boegiboe says:

    Reading this was way better than watching any of the Daredevil episodes I’ve seen.Report