Daredevil is one of those comic characters who only has a handful of good villains: Kingpin, Bullseye, Lady Bullseye, The Hand, maybe even The Gladiator. But despite his pitiful amount of entertaining foes, Daredevil has earned what every successful hero acquires after proving their worth; an evil twin. The personification of fury is our newest Z-Lister, this is Ikari!
Ikari first appeared in "Daredevil Vol. 3 #25" in 2011. His origin is tightly sown with the likes of Bullseye and Lady Bullseye, two of Daredevil's deadliest foes. After a savage beating by the hands of Daredevil, Bullseye was confined to a coffin-shaped life-support system and could do nothing more than think and speak, he depended on his admiring ally Lady Bullseye to get around. In order to get his revenge, Bullseye asked for Lady Bullseye's help to create the perfect assassin to kill Daredevil. It was during this period in Daredevil lore than Bullseye knew Daredevil was actually Defense Attorney Matt Murdock and knew how he got his extrasensory powers. The Bullseye Duo go to a prison and kidnap a heap of convicted criminals, they then recreate Murdock's accident-going so far as to drive a truck full of acid and dump it on the men-in order to get some results. The first thing to note about Bullseye is that he is off-the-wall bonkers and Lady Bullseye follows his every order, so this plan goes off without a hitch despite its ridiculousness. Only one criminal survived the acid bath and emerged not only with Daredevil's extrasensory powers, but also keeping his sight. You'd think being blind would stack your other senses above someone who can see, but this story implies the acid enhanced Daredevil's other senses, rather than simply blinding him. This nameless criminal dons a costume, is tutored under Lady Bullseye and becomes Daredevil's strongest opponent, Ikari (which is Japanese for "Fury" and the Kanji he wears).
From within his iron tomb, Bullseye commands Ikari to randomly attack Daredevil until he's driven mad, and with every appearance Ikari gets closer to killing Daredevil. His enhanced senses are just as-if not sharper-than Daredevil's and rather than carrying Eskrima (fighting sticks) like DD, Ikari wields Kama (hand-held scythes). His costume is also an obvious homage to the costumes Daredevil has worn over the years: the yellow indicative of his retro costume, black from his training costume, and red from his modern costume. Glad they didn't include his lame 90's costume. It had hubcaps on it, it was lame. Anyway, Daredevil can't manage to defeat Ikari, so he tracks down the assassin's employer instead and is led to Bullseye and Lady Bullseye. Well aware Ikari could defeat him, Daredevil threatens to kill the immobile Bullseye unless Ikari leaves New York. While everyone knows Daredevil is a vigilante, he has killed Bullseye before. Technically he was possessed by a demon at the time, but that's a story for another day. Ikari agrees to leave, but only because he wanted to send Daredevil a reminder of how he could have easily killed him if he wanted. As Ikari leaves, Daredevil is successful in apprehending Lady Bullseye and-unsurpisingly-Bullseye himself. I guess he just grabs a forklift and wheels him out?
When I first saw Ikari, I thought he was Daredevil in a kick-ass new costume. Seriously, why have I never seen this guy!? I know he's pretty much just a faceless frankenstein's assassin, but his look, his style, the fact that he's the only villain to actually defeat Daredevil is very interesting for me. I get a lot of dark mirror vibes from him, a little 6th Ranger too. I can only hope he appears in more comic books, regardless of his lack of origin he makes for a cool villain. And again, his costume is such a good mixture while also being a great way to mock his enemy. I'd love to see a new Venom try something like this. With Spider-Man's red, and Venom's black, and cyan for Scarlet Spider, and-what? Venom is in space? Huh. Can Ikari got to space too!? Ikari: Space Killer! Thanks for reading!
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