6. His Relationship with His Father
I think that, bar none, there is no greater father/son relationship in comics than Jack and Matt Murdock's. Which says a lot, because Jack is hardly ever in any considering his passing at the beginning of the Daredevil mythos. But it's what he stands for, the kind of man he is, and just what he embodies that makes him so fantastically interesting and appealing. First, the man's a boxer, which is about a thousand times cooler than any other comic dad I can think of off the top of my head. And he's an incredibly simple man. He's not well-versed or well-learned; he's a man who does what he believes a father should do. He provides. But he's also an alcoholic. And a single father, whose wife left him to join a convent. This is a man who beats people up and takes rockets of punches to his body to provide for a son who is now handicapped. And he gets involved with the mob. He becomes the person that he fears Matt will turn into if Matt doesn't get into a good school and make something of himself. He literally becomes everything he despises, thinking that it will keep Matt away from that life. If he can just get the money, if he can just keep getting the good fights, then Matt will be okay. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but Jack isn't a character that's in constant deep thought about these things. He's by no means this philosophical entity or shining knight of armor as a parent; he's just trying to do what he thinks is best for his son. And when Matt finds out, it's the most crippling thing to ever happen to him. And his redemption comes at the highest price and goes unsaid. See, what a lot of people don't realize is that when Jack Murdock refuses to throw the fight that he's killed because of,
Matt never knew that he was supposed to throw the fight. And Jack never got the chance to tell him. When Jack wins, Matt "sees" it as a victory in a title fight. But he never knows that it's so much more. That moment where he's blasting away at the ring, giving all he's got, is an unspoken prayer that Matt will know the truth about him. That he tried and that he loved and that he couldn't be more proud of his son, no matter his faults or flaws. That he's spent his entire life fighting for Matt and he doesn't have any plans to stop. It's one of the most beautiful moments in comics and it goes so often overlooked that it just breaks my heart.