About to be rebooted as a Netflix miniseries, the original Daredevil movie directed by Mark Steven Johnson is generally regarded as an early mis-step during the time when comic book movies were first establishing themselves as a major blockbuster genre. Despite this the movie, which is a much superior beast in Johnson's director's cut, has a number of strong points, not least its villains. As corpulent cigar chomping crime boss Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin, The Green Mile star Michael Clarke Duncan looked about as close to the character on the page as you could get whilst still being a completely different race. The Kingpin's massive suit would be difficult for any actor to fill with sufficient size, presence and menace, but the late Duncan pulled it off with style. The film (and its less redeemable spin-off Elektra) flopped too hard for Duncan to make a mooted return in a sequel, but he made a sufficient impact in the role to return to it as a Spider-Man villain. In 2003, Duncan voiced a version of The Kingpin clearly styled to look like him for two episodes of Spider-Man: The New Animated Series. When the actor died of a heart attack at the age of just 54, the Kingpin was one of the roles for which he was fondly remembered.
