Daredevil Week: How do you adapt Daredevil's Rogues?

[Stu]

Hey,

To celebrate the release of Marvel's Daredevil coming to Netflix this Friday, both the Comic Book Culture and Marvel Animation Forums will be started special Daredevil themed threads up until it's release on Friday.

Every hero needs a good villain. There are many superheroes who are surrounded with fascinating cast of villains, frenemies and other heroes who they just don't get along with.

With the exception of the mighty Kingpin of Crime, so few of Daredevil's rouges have ever been animated. Given how all of the current Marvel shows are sorely lacking good bad guys, which of Daredevil's rouges would you like to see animated, either with out without The Man Without Fear?

 

[Antiyonder]

For reference sakes, how much of Daredevil's rogues been in animation anyway? What I'm aware of is:
- Purple Man: X-Men episode "No Mutant is an Island" and Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes "Emperor Stark"
- Stilt-Man: A cameo in Iron Man "Armor Wars, Part 1"
- Owl: Spider-Man The Animated Series "Neogenic Nightmares Chaper One: The Insidious Six" (cameo)

 

[Frontier]

Well...Bullseye would be tough to do because of what he does best, but you could probably get away with it if you only made allusions to his successes as an assassin without outright confirming it while he constantly fails against Daredevil and thus never actually kills someone. Except maybe Elektra, though I'm not sure if you could ever get away with that in a comic-book cartoon now...

Actually, now that I think about it, Elektra has never been in animation either! It would be cool if she popped up leading The Hand during their appearance in a cartoon, since the Hand also hasn't really been used in animation yet. Of course, she couldn't kill anyone either .

 

[Freddy]

Bullseye - I think they could do what Bruce Timm and co. did with The Joker, i.e. leave a lot to viewers imagination. Use a lot of shadows, cut away in just the right moment and have other characters talk a lot about how deadly Bullseye is.

Owl/Silvermane/Tombstone/Hammerhead - Let's say that you just ended a huge Daredevil vs. Kingpin story arc with Kingpin's criminal empire destroyed and him being sent to jail. What next? Well, now that Kingpin is out of the picture there is going to be a huge power vacuum in the organized crime of New York. You would have a huge gang war, where these guys would nuke it out with each other with Daredevil and tons of civilians caught in the middle.

Bullet- In my opinion Bullet is the most underrated Daredevil villain. You have ruthless mercenary who still loves his son and is trying to balance his violent lifestyle with responsibilities of single parent. You could have amazing stories with this set-up and make all of the viewers feel for this character.

Gladiator- There are two ways to adapt this character. Either make him comic relief villain ("Oh, look at the silly man who thinks that he is ancient Roman!") or sympathetic guy who is honestly trying to get over his mental disorder.

 

[RoryWilliams]

Bullseye is kind of tough because his entire power is basically being a really adept murderer. And unlike Hawkeye he doesn't really have an excuse for using trick weapons or non-lethal projectiles.

The Owl could actually be cool to see.

 

[Stu]

I think Bullseye would the trickiest, without neutering him. An assassin who can't kill and a man who never misses but misses would make for a difficult villain to translate. I imagine giving him knockout darts or something along those lines would be as much as we get from him. Bullseye is not a villain who belongs on Saturday morning, you can't really alter his gimmick without butchering him.

I think there's potential in a lot of Daredevil's rouges, but his best ones are all mob related. It would be very interesting to see Ikari animated though, I thought he was a great villain with a fascinating gimmick.

 

[RoyalRubble]

I think Bullseye could work, though only with poisonous darts or something. It's not exactly true to his comic book roots but it would probably be the best way we'd see him in a cartoon. Elektra would be easier I guess; an expert in martial arts though similar to Wolverine she can't really slash anyone. And making her fight robots all the time would be just too weird.

The easiest villains would be Kingpin and the Owl, and between these two I'd prefer to see Owl since he's had only one cameo in animation so far, whereas Kingpin has had many chances to shine.

I'm not really familiar with too many of his rogues from the comics, but another villain I'd like to see more of would be the Purple Man, since I liked how he was used in Avengers: EMH. He could be a pretty great enemy if used right.