You like those brand new Daredevil images?  How about some footage descriptions to go along with them?  Marvel’s Head of Television, Jeph Loeb, hit the main stage podium again today to bring Daredevil to New York Comic-Con.  Not only did we get the chance to see four clips from the upcoming Netflix series, but Loeb also brought out the cast of the show including Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock/Daredevil), Vincent D’Onofrio (Wilson Fisk/Kingpin), Deborah Ann Woll (Karen Page), Elden Henson (Foggy Nelson), Toby Moore (Wesley), Bob Gunton (Leland Owlsley), Ayelet Zurer (Vanessa) and Vondie Curtis-Hall (Ben Urich), marking their very first public appearance together.

Hit the jump for some Q&A highlights and a description of the clips shown in my Daredevil Comic-Con panel recap.

Similar to the Agents of S.H.I.E.D. panel, Loeb began by recognizing the importance of New York City to Marvel TV after which he decided it was an appropriate time to clear up a rumor.  He reiterated that there will be five Marvel/Netflix shows, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, Luke Cage and The Defenders, but insisted that, despite some recent reports, they’ve yet to cast Jessica Jones or Luke Cage.  After that was done, Loeb and co. got into the meat of the event.

Q&A Highlights 

  • Loeb recalled casting Cox as Matt Murdock and explained that over two years ago he got a phone call; “My phone rings and the man on the other line is Joe Quesada and he says to me, ‘I found Matt Murdock,’ and I go, ‘What?’”  Loeb had no clue what Quesada meant.  Was he drawing Matt Murdock?  Did he see someone who looked like him?  Nope.  Quesada clarified that he was referring to an actor.  However, the thing is, at the time, the Daredevil TV show wasn’t even on the table.  Loeb continued, “I go, ‘Joe, we don’t have Daredevil.  It’s across the street.  We hope some day that it will come back to us so that we can do exactly what we’re doing right now.  And he goes, ‘Yeah, I know, but it will.  It’ll happen.  I know it will and when it does, I found a guy who’s gonna play Matt Murdock.’”  That guy was Charlie Cox and, sure enough, he’s playing Matt Murdock today.
  • Loeb confirmed that Rosario Dawson is playing Claire Temple, “a nurse who works at night and when she does that, she runs into a certain gentleman.”
  • Gunton noted that he took to the show because it involves “light and dark, and secrets and broken people trying to find their way through life.”  He added, “As a teenager I felt like there was something broken in me and for all of these people, it’s not so much the external things that they’re fighting as much as what’s inside them.”
  • Gunton also offered this description of his character, Leland Owlsley: “My character, one of his armaments is a sardonic wit, which I really responded to.”
  • Curtis-Hall jumped in to add a little something about his character, journalist Ben Urich.  “It’s Ben’s drive that really drew me to this character and playing this part.  His obsession for the truth and his passion for the city and Hell’s Kitchen, I think he’s got the same passion as Daredevil has in terms of really wanting a better New York, and specifically a better Hell’s Kitchen.”
  • Here’s what Zurer had to add about Vanessa, Wilson Fisk’s love interest: “I think she’s a person who, if there’s a locked door and someone says to her, ‘Don’t go in there,’ she will.  In that sense, that’s what opened the channel for me.”
  • Here’s D’Onofrio on Wilson Fisk: “Our Fisk, he’s a child and he’s a monster.  Every move that he makes and everything that he does in our story comes from his foundation of morality inside himself.  And meeting Vanessa, the one thing that she does for him so far is bring him out of the shadows, so we’ve been able to do, like they’ve done with Charlie as well, you have a feeling of the origin of Wilson and how he becomes this iconic character that everyone seems to dig.  We’re playing it real.  We’re playing it emotional and moment to moment.”
  • Loeb pointed out that there are times when you’ll be rooting for Matt and other times when you’ll be rooting for Fisk.  Daredevil showrunner Steven S. DeKnight further explained, “I always approach it that there are no heroes or villains.  It’s just people making different choices.  And what I love about this show is the moral grey area that is inherent in Daredevil.  He’s a lawyer by day and vigilante by night.  Those two things do not mesh and it’s a constant struggle for Matt Murdock and often times, he crosses the line.”  DeKnight added, “How far will he go?  He’s one bad day away from becoming Frank Castle instead of Matt Murdock.”
  • Here’s what Cox had to say about his character: “It’s been a real challenge.  There are so many aspects to Matt, the blindness, the physicality, the action sequences.”  He called Daredevil a show about human emotion and added, “I think the thing I loved about Matt Murdock on the page, both in the comics but particularly in our scripts is that we’re meeting a man who is a lawyer by day and believes in law and justice, and at night he’s taking the law into his own hands and then deciding what justice should be for himself, and all the time in between is spent battling with that concept.”
  • DeKnight also had this to say about Fisk: “With Wilson Fisk, on the flip side, when you hear the explanation of what he’s doing and why he’s doing it, I think you’re gonna say, ‘You know what?  That’s not a bad idea.  That’s pretty good.’  So there will be times on the show where you’re not quite sure who to root for.”

Audience Q&A Highlights 

  • While addressing a question regarding making the move from HBO to Netflix, Cox noted, “Because there isn’t a week in between, you have to spend less time reminding audiences of what happened.  And also, ending an episode with a cliffhanger is kind of fruitless … which is great because it means we get to spend more time on the real story.”  Cox said that Daredevil will feel like a 13-hour movie.
  • Per usual, Loeb wouldn’t say a thing about a possible Daredevil/Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. crossover.  “I have two answers for that; one, that’s a level 7 question and two, I think you know it’s all connected, man.”

Clip #1 

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The very first piece of material shown had a horror vibe to it.  We’re in a dark apartment as a door opens.  Karen Page steps in and apprehensively looks around.  Some blood on the ground raises some concern, but she continues doing what she came to do, hops up on a piece of furniture and grabs what looks to be a tape recorder that’s been hidden in the ceiling.  (The footage was fairly dark, so it was a bit tough to make out the details.)

She comes down and starts making her way out, but that’s when we see a shadowy figure right behind her.  He grabs her and gives her head a few nasty bashes against a wall.  He then whips out a knife, presumably to finish her off, and that’s when Daredevil steps in, dressed much like he is in that new image revealed today.  The two get into a pretty intense scuffle with some especially visceral hand-to-hand combat.  Again, it’s dark, so it can be a bit tough to figure out who is who, but ultimately, both men go crashing through a window.  The first time they screened this clip, it concluded with Daredevil laying on the ground in the rain, but before the panel wrapped up, Loeb showed us what happens next. 

After Daredevil hits the ground, the footage cuts to a flashback, young Matt Murdock in a kitchen with his father.  Matt’s sitting at the table when his father comes in to grab something from the freezer.  Dad is pretty beaten up, so puts what looks to be a bag of frozen food on his head.  Matt blindly feels his father’s wounds after which his father tells him, “Come on Matty.  Get to work.”  That’s when present day Daredevil wakes up.

After, we get an especially stunning shot of the blood dribbling from Daredevil’s mouth against a blue-lit backdrop.  He gets up and gets back into it with the man from the apartment.  There’s more kicking, punching and some somewhat indiscernible combat until Daredevil hears a chain rattle and then moves to grab it.  He wraps it around his enemy’s neck, hangs it from a nearby fire escape and beats him up some more until he’s the official winner.  That’s when Karen comes back out.  He takes out her tape recorder and tells her that he’ll get it into the right hands, but she replies, “No, you can’t.  You can’t take it to the police!  You can’t trust anyone!”

Clip #2

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Because Dawson couldn’t make it out to New York for the event, Loeb and the Daredevil team shared a clip covering Matt’s first encounter with Claire Temple.  He comes to in her apartment and she tells him, “I’m the lucky girl who pulled you out of the garbage.”  She goes on to diagnose him with two or three broken ribs, probably a concussion and some kind of puncture wound.  She asks him, “Would you mind telling me how a blind man in a mask ends up beaten up and dumped in a dumpster?”  He plays coy and when she suggests going to the hospital, sure enough, he refuses.  She warns, “This is my night off.  I’m really not looking for some guy to die on my couch.”  He asks her if she’s a doctor and she tells him, “Something like that.”  He asks for her name and she tells him, but he refuses to tell her his in return, so she says, “I’ll call you Mike,” because she knew a Mike who was very good at keeping secrets as well.

Clip #3 

This next clip takes place in an art gallery.  We begin with Vanessa as she makes her way over to a bald man in a suit with his back to the camera while examining a seemingly all white painting.  She steps up right beside him and recalls a joke; “You hold up a white piece of paper and you ask, what’s this?  A rabbit in a snowstorm.”  He doesn’t reply, so she asks, “Are you interested or just looking?”  The man is revealed to be Fisk and he tells her that he’s interested.  She says, “People always ask me, ‘How can you charge so much for what amounts to gradations of white?”  She adds, “All that matters is, how does it make you feel?"  Fisk replies, "It makes me feel alone."

Clip #4

The final clip takes place in the Foggy and Murdock Law Office.  Matt and Foggy are having a meal with Karen that she cooked herself, her grandmother’s recipe.  As she serves them, Matt notes, “The job’s easier.  The client’s innocent.  All you did was tell the truth.”  After that, Foggy jumps in, “And don’t get us wrong; we’re still gonna bill you.”  Karen makes a comment about their office being messy and they joke about having her fix the place up.  She offers to do it for free and Foggy declares, “You’ve just been hired!”

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