61 Years Later, Daredevil’s Classic Villain Officially Returns With a Terrifying New Look

Whenever it comes to Daredevil’s villains, most fans will immediately think of all the hell Wilson Fisk and Bullseye have put Matt Murdock through, or even the collective threat posed by The Hand. The Man Without Fear has foes whose history with him runs even deeper, though. It wasn’t until Frank Miller‘s defining run with the character that Matt and Kingpin became true archenemies who would transcend the page and continue their fight on-screen. Others have been tormenting him since the very beginning and have even managed to turn his own identity and resolve against them.

One particularly long-enduring antagonist of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen has been Mister Fear, who first appeared in Daredevil back in 1965. Since his inception, he’s weaponized fear itself against Matt, his loved ones, innocent people, and even other villains to get them under his control, using a dangerous chemical to induce fear in his victims. Four different men have taken up the mantle over the years, though the most notable has been Larry Cranston, a law school peer of Matt’s who has been haunting him and the Marvel Comics universe for some time. Although his last appearance was in 2024’s Spider-Gwen: The Ghost Spider, he’s about to turn his attention back to his old enemy with a terrifying new look and a scheme that flips his usual methods on their head.

‘Daredevil’ Is About to Face the Consequences of a City Without Fear

• Image via Marvel Comics

• Image via Marvel Comics

• Image via Marvel Comics

• Image via Marvel Comics

Issue of Stephanie Phillips‘ Daredevil run wastes no time teasing the new look for Larry on the cover, showing him with a stitched-together mask that lets him show off his downright terrifying grin. It certainly evokes more fear than his typical black cloak and skull mask attire, but this time, he’s not here to make people afraid. As indicated by the title of this new storyline, “City Without Fear,” Mister Fear is actively attempting to rid the people of New York of their fear entirely. He reveals his wicked scheme to Matt and Detective Dominick Forte while they investigate his handiwork, confirming that he’s already started mass-distributing pills that remove a human’s fear responses entirely across the city, and especially at the E.S.U. campus where Matt works as a professor, under the marketing of “Valor.”

Four villains, and four arguments the films were honest enough to
actually let them make. Here is the one you lean towards, the part of it that holds up, and the
exact point where it stops holding up.

You align with the one who was right about the problem and wrong
about the solution. Killmonger is the most persuasive villain Marvel has produced because
the film never pretends his anger came from nowhere.

• You notice who was abandoned and you cannot let it go, which is a moral instinct before
  it is anything else.
• His argument lands because Wakanda really did watch and do nothing, and the film makes
  T’Challa admit it out loud.
• Where it breaks is the method, since a man who was failed by power decided the answer
  was to hold more of it.
• Michael B. Jordan plays him as somebody performing certainty over grief, which is why
  the last scene of that film still works.

You align with the protector, which is the most understandable
and most dangerous position on this list. Namor is not chasing power or revenge, he is doing
whatever keeps his people hidden, and he has been doing it for centuries.

• Your loyalty has a hard border around it, and everything inside that border matters far
  more to you than anything outside it.
• Talokan is the best realised world Marvel has built since Wakanda, and the film makes
  you understand exactly what he is guarding.
• His logic is airtight right up until it requires somebody else’s people to pay for his
  people’s safety.
• He would rather be feared by the surface world forever than trust it once, and history
  has given him reasons.

You align with the patient one, the only man on this list with no
powers, no army and no hurry. Zemo lost his family in Sokovia and then spent years working
out that you do not fight the Avengers, you introduce them to each other’s secrets.

• You go quiet when you are hurt, and the quiet is where the thinking happens.
• Zemo is the only MCU villain who completely won, and he did it with a notebook, a plan
  and a great deal of self control.
• His grief is real, and the film is careful never to let you forget that he started as an
  ordinary man with a family.
• Where it fails is the cost, since taking apart the people who hurt him meant hurting a
  great many people who did not.

You align with the one who decided the answer was arithmetic.
Thanos is not angry and not grieving in any way he will admit to, he simply reached a
conclusion and never once revisited it, which is precisely what makes him frightening.

• You are capable of holding a position that costs you everything, and you would call that
  conviction rather than stubbornness.
• Infinity War works because it is structured as his film, with a goal, a journey and a
  sacrifice, and the heroes are the obstacle.
• The flaw in the plan is not the cruelty, it is that he never seriously considered a
  single alternative to it.
• Josh Brolin plays him tired rather than triumphant, which is the choice that turned a
  purple giant into a real character.

This isn’t necessarily the first time Mister Fear has attempted this kind of scheme. In Ed Brubaker‘s storyline “Without Fear” from 2007, the villain created a similar drug that removed fear from other villains and made them even more aggressive, but he never distributed such a drug to the populace in an effort to cause chaos. What makes this scheme more interesting, however, is his motivation. He explains he has no need to create fear anymore because the news, social media, smart devices, politicians, and other fixtures of modern society are already way ahead of him. In a world already gripped by fear, he decides to unshackle humanity from it, removing the anxieties that hold them back from greatness, but creating more disastrous consequences that Daredevil will have to wrestle with as the arc unfolds.

Daredevil is now available on store shelves. Stay tuned here at Collider for more on all the latest developments from Marvel Comics every week. Explore more comics and books with a free trial of Audible.

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