8 Creators Who Secretly Defined Your Favourite Heroes

7. Frank Miller - Daredevil

Daredevil was created by Stan Lee and Bill Everett at the zenith of the Marvel bullpen era. The Man Without Fear joined fellow legendary figures like the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and the X-Men, but it wouldn't be until years later where Matthew Murdock would gain prominence as a seminal Marvel character.

While the initial concept created by Lee and Everett was solid enough, many of Daredevil's trademark elements wouldn't come into play until much later. The red suit, for instance, didn't come along until Daredevil #7, courtesy of artist Wally Wood, and that's twice as recognisable as the yellow outfit the character sported beforehand.

Of course, the most important aspects of the Man Without Fear go way beyond visuals alone. Today, the character is seen as a dark, conflicted crime-fighter who works at a street-level, occasionally battling wits with supernatural forces like The Hand. Writers have occasionally returned to the swashbuckling motif championed by Lee, but for years now, most have found themselves working from Frank Miller's blueprint.

During the seventies, Daredevil had been undergoing a bit of a change. Dennis O'Neil was laying the groundwork for what would come later, at which point Miller came on as artist and then as the series' main writer. During his stint, Miller oversaw the creation and death of Elektra, the transformation of Bullseye into a menacing foe, and reimagined the character's origin in The Man Without Fear. Going further, Miller also collaborated with artist David Mazzucchelli on Born Again - to many Daredevil's defining tale, and one of the greatest comics of all time.

Ann Nocenti would also carve out a bunch of Daredevil's defining traits after Miller, but it was the Born Again scribe who really made the character in the eighties and nineties.