Miller’s work on both Daredevil and DKR were both so well conceived and executed that to this day all other versions of those characters follow what he established in the 1980s. DKR, along with Alan Moore’s Watchmen, helped reinvent comics as a medium the likes of which will never be surpassed. Gone were the days of Batman’s silly, lighthearted adventures, replaced with the brutal and brooding Dark Knight that we know today, beginning with the masterpiece The Dark Knight Returns. The bigger implication of Miller’s work on the industry is that his time on Daredevil gave him the recognition he needed to basically recreate Batman. While writers like Gerry Conway and Chris Claremont were helping to usher in a more serious tone, it wasn’t until Miller’s Daredevil run rose to stardom that the trend became more prominent. Of course, many of these issues were still being penned by the silver age writers, so it makes sense that there was still the ’60s campy flare that was a hallmark of the period. The industry was still in the bronze age, and the tropes of 1950s and 1960s comics were very much evident. What was it about the original Miller Daredevil run that was so great? The late 1970s and the early 1980s were a transitional period for comics. In these pages, he wrestled Kingpin away from the pages of Amazing Spider-Man and established Wilson Fisk as the unprecedented rival for Daredevil.

After being published bi-monthly due to poor sales, the series was returned to monthly status just three issues into Miller’s epic run. Once Miller took over the pencils and the scripts for Daredevil, the title went from being on the verge of death to full resurrection.

Daredevil by frank miller