When Stan Lee and Bill Everett created Daredevil, the character was a more adventurous and upbeat superhero. However, when Frank Miller came onto the scene, he remolded the character into a gritty, darker hero that was more relevant to the more violent comic landscape of the 1980s.
It's similar to what he contributed to Batman in comics, and it culminated in what fans are used to after the Netflix Daredevil series brought the character more into the mainstream. While other writers such as Mark Waid managed to emphasize the character's "swashbuckling" characteristics, many of Daredevil's darkest stories are among the most memorable and entertaining.
10 Born Again
The entirety of Miller's Born Again during the 1980s was among the most visceral displays of the hatred and rivalry between Daredevil and Kingpin. Around the first half of this story puts Matt Murdock under some of the most grueling and punishing situations in his history in the comics.
After Karen Page sells Daredevil's identity, it eventually gets sold upward to Wilson Fisk, resulting in the Kingpin of Crime turning Matt's life into shambles. He's falsely framed and forced into homelessness. The story takes on heavy revenge themes, seeing Matt descend further into madness and palpable rage. It's a brutal premise, but it makes Daredevil's return and eventual triumph all the more satisfying, especially with the parallels of Fisk being the one falling into vitriolic obsession.
9 Hardcore
Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev's run has been commonly praised as perhaps the best Daredevil comic book series since Miller's tenure on the character, and the Hardcore story arc was a major climax of it. Matt is also known for having his life upended, but Bendis still managed to write a plot that still feels like the stakes are real despite the premise being similar territory.
Daredevil has his identity leaked to the FBI and faced murder charges, with Fisk trying to reestablish his dominance. It's like if Born Again went an even darker route with Daredevil after making his comeback. Having effectively lost all sense of morality, the Devil of Hell's Kitchen mercilessly beats Kingpin, exuding raw catharsis, and declares himself the new Kingpin of New York over his enemy's mangled body.
8 One More Day
While One More Day is infamously known as a critically maligned Spider-Man comic, Chip Zdarsky takes a spin on the title with his acclaimed, and current, run of Daredevil. The "twin brother" trope is certainly campy, but this execution in One More Day makes a genuinely compelling and heartbreaking one-shot story.
After Mike Murdock was created by accident as a result of one of the Inhuman's attempts to help Matt, he seeks a translation of Asgardian spells from Black Cat to make him into a full human. Mike rewrites history so that the fake backstory Matt created to help hide his Daredevil identity becomes reality, literally becoming the latter's twin brother. In doing so, he shares a tragic childhood and past with his brother, bearing the guilt of potentially having a hand in their father's murder.
7 Guardian Devil
Guardian Devil presented the character's mythos with a life-altering event that would affect the rest of his character development, and be considered one of the most emotional and sympathetic Daredevil comics as a result. While the use of Karen Page as a character was criticized, it stands as one of the Man Without Fear's most iconic comics, and her death at the hands of Bullseye has had ripple effects on the hero directly or indirectly in modern stories.
Bullseye murders Karen using one of Daredevil's signature billy clubs to add insult to injury, and she's been an important person and a love interest of Matt's for plenty of time at this point in the comics. It's also one of the seemingly few examples of comics and writers having the bravery to at least make a death be permanent and have emotional weight in mainline continuity.
6 What If... Karen Page Had Lived?
Even though Kevin Smith's Guardian Devil presented one of the grimmest stories in Daredevil comics, Bendis ended his acclaimed run on the character with a one-off alternate-timeline take that's outright bleak. What If... Karen Page Had Lived? explores a continuity where Karen survives Bullseye's attack, but Matt's life doesn't make a positive development from this.
Daredevil becomes furious and finds out Kingpin gave Bullseye the intel. Without a second thought, Daredevil murders Kingpin in his home, later shocked that he did so. He turns himself in and, despite powerful character witnesses, he's sentenced to 44 years in prison. While he gets out in 15 due to good behavior, Foggy is disbarred, Karen never visited him and presumably leaves town and falls further into addiction.
5 End Of Days
Another alternate-timeline story, Bendis and David Mack co-wrote End of Days with Klaus Janson and Bill Sienkiewicz handling the art. This story takes place in the near future where Daredevil and Bullseye battle resulting in the former's gruesome death. However, no one in Hell's Kitchen seems to care.
Ben Urich doesn't want to take up writing a piece on Matt Murdock since the audiences have typically responded ignorantly or indifferently to superhero pieces but ultimately does after a man who admired Daredevil gave him the footage of his death. It's revealed that, before Daredevil's demise, he viciously murdered Kingpin, which set him on a darker path. The mystery of his last word, "Mapone," unravels along with the identity of the new Daredevil.
4 The Man Without Fear
After Born Again, Miller gave Daredevil a similar treatment to the one he gave to Batman with Year One. Batman: Year One is among the best comic book origins, with the popular consensus citing it as the Dark Knight's definitive origin, and The Man Without Fear took a similar approach in retelling Daredevil's beginnings for a more modern setting.
Fans see Matt Murdock's life from his troubled childhood through the lens of gritty crime-noir, including the tragic death of his father by the hand of organized crime. It also sets up Kingpin and introduced the makeshift black suit, which Daredevil season 1 used as inspiration. For redefining a darker origin, it does end on a bright note with Daredevil in the classic red suit for the first time in his career.
3 Parts Of A Hole
Echo got her debut in the Daredevil arc Parts of a Hole. She was introduced as a parallel to Matt, as Maya Lopez grew up with as a person with deafness. Her father was murdered and then was taken in and raised by Wilson Fisk. Being trained as an assassin of his, Kingpin tells Echo that Daredevil is the man who killed her father.
Unsurprisingly, it's Kingpin who had him killed and is manipulating her trust and trauma to take further part in his blood feud with the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. It's a story with a great blend of tragedy and forbidden romance, using two characters with similar upbringings, and is potentially the general influence of Echo's upcoming Disney+ show.
2 The Death Of Elektra
Before the death in Guardian Devil, Miller wrote the death of a pivotal supporting character: Elektra. Elektra was an original creation by him and wasn't originally meant to be a mainstay. She featured mostly as a villain and met her death at the hands of Bullseye in issue #181.
This conclusion saw them in a deathmatch over the right to be Kingpin's assassin. Karen's death was clearly influenced by this, as Bullseye kills Elektra using one of her sai, then dragged herself to Matt's house and dying in his arms. Though she was brought back, this event certainly influenced the trajectory of her and Daredevil's lives.
1 Underboss
Richard Fisk meets an untimely end here, and at the hands of his own mother. Bendis and Maleev's tenure on Daredevil is characterized by several different agents making their own power-plays against each other, with them affecting the titular superhero directly or indirectly.
Richard eventually returns to Hell's Kitchen after already having a turbulent history with his parents and plots to kill his father. Once Vanessa Fisk found out about her son's scheme, she killed him after a tense conversation. Eventually, the guilt of killing her son led her to physical illness, resulting in terminal organ failure.
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