1 story gave Kingpin a true villain and inspired Daredevil: Born Again

In Disney Plus’ double drop of Daredevil: Born Again episodes this week, the first one, “With Interest,” stands out as a great one-and-done superhero adventure that displays the pros of an interconnected setting and none of the cons. But episode 6, “Excessive Force,” deserves a nod, too, for introducing one of my favorite subplots of modern Marvel Comics: The hyper-rich running rings around Wilson Fisk.

Through its season, Born Again has built a steady drumbeat out of Wilson Fisk clashing with the usual mayoral way of doing things — but this week’s episode is the first one where he doesn’t manage to bulldoze over the hurdles within the same scene that they’re introduced. Hobnobbing around at a high-class event, the Kingpin finds that there’s nothing in his reputation, his pocketbook, or even his imposing physical presence that can earn him the respect of the truly wealthy.

The realization leaves him flustered, backfooted, and impotent in a way that we’ve rarely seen from Vincent D’Onofrio’s version of the character, and it rings true to one of Born Again’s primary influences, Chip Zdarsky and Marco Checchetto’s 2019 run on Daredevil. Their story gave the Marvel Universe the Stromwyns, a villain to oppose Daredevil’s worst villain, who gave Wilson Fisk a test of character in more ways than one.

There’s no reason to get into the nitty-gritty for the purposes of this article, but suffice to say there comes a time in Zdarsky’s Daredevil when the world at large believes Daredevil is dead or finally broken and retired. And with his nemesis off the board, Wilson Fisk goes looking for other lands to conquer.

What’s next for the untouchable criminal mastermind who seized the mayor’s seat in one of the most influential cities in the world? Why, it’s to become an untouchable mastermind in the world of perfectly legal business (or, at most, lightly white-collar crime). And while in pursuit of that goal, Fisk puts himself into the orbit of the Stromwyns, a pair of billionaire siblings, looking to impress them with his scheme to quietly seize control of all production of legal marijuana in New York state.

The problem is that the Stromwyns are a much more modern imagining of the multibillionaire than most superheroes or villains. They’re richer than Tony Stark and Norman Osborn, so rich their names are only really known by the rich — so rich they don’t need to be famous. They have the kind of wealth that buys newspapers and media companies and funds the pet projects of social media CEOs in order to keep a slant on public knowledge of their businesses. The kind of wealth that makes and breaks political campaigns and sets the talking points of elections.

The first emphatic sign Zdarsky and Checchetto give that this Kingpin story is going to be different comes when Fisk becomes so outraged at the Stromwyns’ disrespect that he beats one of their dinner guests to death with his bare hands in a bathroom. But then… he panics.

With this display of ferocity that has always served him in the past, the Kingpin knows that he has changed from an amusing curiosity in the Stromwyns’ eyes to a pretender who must be brought to heel, and it becomes clear how badly they outclass him. The ill-gotten money Fisk wields is miniscule compared to their own wealth. He can’t murder them and take over their operation by intimidation or force, because their operation is perfectly legal and its succession is in legal terms. His methods don’t apply because their power does not exist outside the law — it is created by the law. The only way he can join them on their level is with their permission, and beating someone to death with your own hands? How low-class.

The question becomes, now that Fisk has caught the patronizing ire of the Stromwyns, can he evolve fast enough to escape them — or will he accept that he was wrong about being able to play at their level and submit to being their pawn? As Daredevil: Born Again illustrates just this week, it’s novel to see the biggest fish in the tank get dwarfed by the fish in the pond, and it’s fascinating to see Wilson Fisk put in a situation where his usual methods do not apply.

It’s in this way that Zdarsky and his artist collaborators make Fisk an additional main character of their Daredevil series. Just like Matt, he’s someone with wants, and hurdles between him and those wants, and fundamental choices to make about who he wants to be in the face of struggle. And all that is in addition to how he remains a formidable antagonistic force to the comic’s heroes.

Daredevil: Born Again gives just a quick scene to this realization, but spells it out in unmistakable terms. Vanessa, well experienced with the hyper-rich from her past as a fine art dealer, warns Fisk: “They want influence but they don’t need it. […] By simply being there and asking them for money you’re giving them all they care about: reassurance of their supremacy.” One socialite straight-up warns him that he could subvert the electoral process and put someone else in Gracie Mansion if Fisk goes too far with his vigilante ban. “You may have a seat at the table now,” another tells him, “[…] but the people in this room still decide who gets to eat.”

It speaks to the depth of Kingpin as a villain that he has the capacity to be a main character, something that 2015’s Daredevil series, from which Born Again springs, never forgot. D’Onofrio’s Kingpin has always been a guy that, even though you weren’t exactly rooting for him to win, you could maybe root for him to get some part of what he wanted. Born Again shows that there’s still plenty for Wilson Fisk to aspire to, and some entertaining hurdles to put in his way.

New episodes of Daredevil: Born Again are released every Tuesday at 6 p.m. PDT/9 p.m. EDT.