No longer was Daredevil just a city-based superhero: he was Hell's Kitchen's superhero. Upping the ante on pulpy urban grit, Miller turned the title into a fannish must-have for the first time in its history. He killed Karen, then made it appear as if Murdock's first love, Elektra, was also dead. In so doing, Miller both toughened & further isolated his blind hero. For better or worse, this darker version has informed the character ever since.

Marvel's newest hardcover Miller reprint has been definitely designed to hook movie-come-latelies: Daredevil/Elektra: Love & War has a cover displaying both characters blended into the same scene, though in reality it collects two stories featuring the duo in separate adventures. Both tales are from the eighties, scripted by Miller to water-color imagery by Bill Sienkiewicz. First is a short graphic novel starring the Man Without Fear & longstanding nemesis Kingpin (white in the comics; black in the movie - physically imposing in both versions); second is an eight-part mini-series featuring hard-assed assassin Elektra. The latter is the book's showpiece: a bravura showcase for Sienkiewicz's blend of Impressionism & Ralph Steadman cartoonery that is incomprehensible story-wise (Miller cavalierly utilizes the phrase "ninja tricks" whenever the bewildering events become too much) but still fun to read if you don't try to think too much or get worked up over the writer's progressively self-conscious attempts at harshness. Don't know what a new reader, coming to this book after seeing Jennifer Garner's movie ninja babe, is gonna make of it all, though.

Marvel's second recent Daredevil collection should be easier to digest. Inexplicably labeled Volume Two (no Volume One has been released), this reprints the character's more recent run (#26-37) on the so-called Marvel Knights line. The Knights books are one of Marvel's attempts at revitalizing characters that've otherwise lost commercial steam in the comics shoppe marketplace (other attempts include the creation of an "adult" comics line called MAX, which has reworked other longstanding Marvel characters like Nick Fury and Rawhide Kid, plus the Ultimates series, which retooled classic Marvel figures for the CGI generation). Of all the books to come out of the MK imprint, the most arguably successful has been Daredevil. The strip's current run, scripted by Brian Michael Bendis & rendered with heavily darkened ink-&-computer-generated-water-color by Alex Maleev & Matt Hollingsworth, may lack the gonzo energy of Miller's groundbreaking series, but it's more tightly constructed.

The book opens w./ a mob plot, an internecine attempt to assassinate New York mob boss, The Kingpin, (who has, apparently, recently been blinded - perhaps we'll get to see this in Volume One?), then builds around that unsuccessful act. Daredevil nemesis Wilson Fisk is too established an adversary to kill off, so we know soon as it's initiated that the whole thing is doomed to fail. What drives the story are the aftershocks of this failed coup.