This is a quote from @jriddle73 who is a regular over at the Daredevil forums.
As Frank Miller discovered, there's a certain tone--call it "pulp noir"--that, overall, is by far the best fit for the Daredevil material. He didn't introduce this so mach as he recognized it as what had worked best and made it the book's status quo.
Over at manwithoutfear a few days ago, the question was raised, what is noir? Writers on film have argued that question for ages; I put together a little montage about it (or, if one prefers, a rant):
"Noir - 'A genre of crime film or fiction characterized by cynicism, fatalism, and moral ambiguity.' American Cinema's oft-quoted rundown: 'stories about life on the streets, shady characters, crooked cops, twisted love, and bad luck. About a darker side of human nature.' Dark romances about omnipresent corruption, dishonesty, sadism, nihilism, evil; full of violence, brooding, existential themes, intense psychological themes, the idea of malevolent fate, crushed idealism, the best intentions often coming to little or naught, and the only good coming at a high price. Urban expressionist fantasies full of gangsters, killers, hoods, racketeers, femme fatales, first-person narratives, crime-ridden back alleys, smoke-filled backrooms, and light filtering through venetian blinds. Tales wherein love is mostly hopeless and often expressed as obsession and aberrant sexuality."
And so on.
Now consider Daredevil from a conceptual standpoint (and here, I'm going to freely paraphrase myself a bit): From his youth, Matt Murdock has lived in a world of constant darkness. He comes from poverty, from a liberal tradition that says you give back to your community if you succeed, and from a community that badly needs him but whose problems he's ultimately helpless to solve. Consider the singleminded will it took for Matt to rise from his circumstances to become both a top-shelf lawyer and, even more extreme, a costumed vigilante who, in entirely mortal flesh, throws himself into the MU. From whence he came is branded on his soul, fused with his DNA--he never forgets. He is his father's son. His father is the guy with too much pride, the tough pug who wanted his boy to be more than just some bum, the fighter who would never quit, the good man who was destroyed by the slimy, sweaty hoods who lurk in the shadows and the business-suited big-shots behind them who profit from corrupting everything. Matt has dedicated his life to a war he can never win against an enemy he can never defeat--his cause was doomed to failure before it even started, and yet he persists. He's the man without fear who challenges those who would make the world a place of fear. The vigilante sworn to serve the law; the angel in the garb of a devil. Ironic and iconic.
That "pulp noir" tone is an obvious, even unavoidable, fit. And it had been there at DD's birth; it's there in the concept and in his origin story, from it's milieu to its wonderfully rendered Bill Everett hoods to the black irony of Matt going through so much to avenge his father only to have the murderer drop dead of a heart attack while almost in reach. The corrupt boxing milieu is a constant feature of the first era of film noir in the 1940s and '50s. If you want to see the story of Battlin' Jack Murdock 15 years before it had appeared in Daredevil, pick up a great Robert Wise noir called THE SET-UP (if you haven't seen it, watch it--you will thank me for the recommendation). Some of Stan's early scripts tap the same vein, particularly his first Owl story (in, I believe, #3--Stan's strongest DD noir excursion) and, to a somewhat lesser extent, his first Purple Man tale (can't remember the exact issue). Unfortunately, Stan quickly came to treat DD as primarily an opportunity to goof off, and this sort of tone would only turn up sporadically in the rest of his work on the book.
Gene Colan, who was a huge movie buff and noir fan, took over the book's art chores with issue #20 and immediately introduced a particularly strong noir tone into the artwork, many years before it would come to be regularly reflected in the writing. His DD was one of wild expressionistic flair, dutch angles and darkness, even while the scripts were mostly just poor man's Spider-Man stuff.
With subsequent writers they weren't always b-list Spidey tales either--the noir themes and elements recurred from time to time. Roy Thomas' Brother Brimstone (DD #65-66) was a sort of horror movie killer come to life. Steve Gerber and Bob Brown rework an old villain into the Deathstalker (DD #113), who has a wonderfully sinister image and can literally kill with a touch. Marv Wolfman, during his run, had a particularly choice idea for a tale (DD #127) in which DD ends up in an extended fight with the Torpedo (later of Rom: Spaceknight fame), and, while kicking one another's teeth in and doing the standard Spider-Man banter between themselves, they completely destroy a family's home. The horrified family matriarch blows up at them and they're shamed to a standstill. I've always thought that was a great end to a comic story, certainly one that fits with later DD. A comic growing up. It's unfortunate that Marv's follow-up--a non-follow-up, really--involved rehashing some material from "Spider-Man No More" then basically just forgetting the whole thing.
It was Frank Miller who recognized this as the ideal tone for the book and, as I said, made it the status quo. Miller was a marvel in those days and brought a great deal of depth and literacy to the table, and a much more mature approach to storytelling. Along the way, he brought in all sorts of other influences--samurai cinema, manga, Greek tragedy, etc.--but always filtered them through that same "pulp noir" lens. In the process, he made Daredevil A-list for the first time in the character's history and established the tone that would, generally speaking, be followed by DD's creators, from the excellent to the godawful, right up until Waid. It isn't a set-in-stone approach and the book would sometimes deviate from it, but never for long and it would always return. Not in mere emulation of Miller (as has sometimes been alleged since I began writing about the book again), but in recognition that this is the feel that works best for this character and his world, an important part of what separates Daredevil from his poor-man's-Spider-Man past--part of his unique voice.
Even Mark Waid has, in effect, conceded this. His effort to devolve DD back to those lighthearted, juvenile, poor-man's-Spider-Man days were a radical break with the book as it had existed for more than three decades before he'd taken it over. It eventually led him to initiate a series of even more radical changes that ripped at the conceptual fabric of the character and the book, rendering both utterly unrecognizable. His grinning, silly Matt has publicly fessed up to being Daredevil, abandoned not only Hell's Kitchen but New York itself (and nearly all of the locations and supporting cast that had filtered through the book over the years), moved to an alien town on the opposite coast, and become a wisecracking celebrity.
Call it whatever else you like, it ain't Daredevil.
And that's sort of the point.
Waid himself says the book's best creators over the years have been a murderer's row of top-shelf comic-book talent. Daredevil is a book that brings out the best in a lot of them. It has, over those years, had a lot of really high high-points, and all of them, all of its finest moments, have been deeply immersed in that "pulp noir" tone. The answer to the original question is that, theoretically, Daredevil doesn't have to be "pulp noir" in tone to be great, but it probably has to be "pulp noir" in tone to be great Daredevil.
I would like to add a few of my own reasons to this as well. First off ever since Waid took over Daredevil it actually has been selling the least any Daredevil book has sold in decades. Even the polarizing Shadowland sold better. The numbers have spiked at times because of artificials prop-ups like new number ones (there have been three) and annuals\specials but by in large for a Daredevil book Waid's run has been a poor seller.
In changing the tone and style of the comic to be more happy-go-lucky Waid is trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator. He even admitted himself that since he took over the book it has become a lot less unique. Waid's Daredevil is a pretty average superhero book that fits in along with a lot of others like Spider-Man, Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, Mighty Avengers, Deadpool ect. But how many books does Marvel put out that are anything like that crime noir book Daredevil used to be? None. There isn't any. The closest would be Moon Knight but even it's not the same.
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