BIOGRAPHY -- Page 6
The Gladiator and Masked Marauder made their next move against Daredevil by constructing the Tri-Man, an android empowered with the strengths of three criminals named Mangler, Dancer and Brain. The Tri-Android interrupted a match at Madison Square Garden and announced to the world that Daredevil must meet him in the ring or else the audience died. Stuck in the office with Karen, Matt convinced her he needed to put on Foggy’s Daredevil costume and go to the Garden in disguise, just in case the “real” Daredevil didn’t show before the Tri-Man’s time limit expired. 
Karen incredulously was dragged along with Matt’s ploy, but her suspicions had already been aroused about his true identity. Matt “lost” her in the crowd and proceeded to the ring as Daredevil. He was on the verge of beating the android when the Masked Marauder, on a hunch, overrode the loudspeaker and threatened to kill Foggy and Karen if the hero didn’t surrender. [Daredevil (1st series) #22]
The Masked Marauder didn’t actually have Matt’s friends in his power, but he was suspicious of their connection to Daredevil already. Daredevil was distracted long enough for the Marauder to capture him using a levitator ray. The Gladiator and Marauder wanted to kill Daredevil as a try-out for becoming the heads of the Maggia crime family, but he refused to say die. During the fight between Gladiator and Daredevil, the Masked Marauder turned on his cohort and teleported both 
of them to Europe, where the Maggia dons were meeting. Daredevil still beat his opponent but found himself trapped in Europe. [Daredevil (1st series) #23] He made his way to England, where he successfully defended Ka-Zar from a plot by his escaped brother, the Plunderer, and received a ticket home thanks to Lord Plunder. [Daredevil (1st series) #24]
Back in New York, Matt struggled to explain his sudden disappearance at the Garden to Foggy and Karen. To make matters worse, Spider-Man had apparently concluded Matt Murdock and Daredevil were the same man and sent a telegram promising to keep his secret… which Karen had then opened. Up against the wall and with very little room to maneuver, Matt spontaneously decided to invent a twin brother named Mike Murdock. He claimed all the coincidences connecting him to Daredevil were actually because his brother Mike was really Daredevil! Mike had been practicing to be an adventurer for years before debuting as Daredevil, which is why Foggy had never met him or heard about him in all their years of friendship. The lie was so absurd, Karen and Foggy had trouble wrapping their heads around it, and Matt promised they would meet Mike soon.
Acting like a hipster, Matt put on loud, brazen clothes, a pair of sunglasses and a gregarious attitude to reinvent himself as Mike Murdock. To keep Foggy and Karen from realizing “Mike” was 
as blind as Matt, he became a fast-talking jokester with a disarming style. Mike Murdock was everything the stiff, closed-off Matt was not, poking fun at Foggy and making a pass at Karen. He interrupted their introduction to hunt down Leap-Frog, a jewel thief announced on the radio, allowing his friends to see Mike Murdock swing into action as Daredevil. He defeated the Leap-Frog at Central Park’s lake and turned him over to the police. Ironically, Leap-Frog dialed Nelson & Murdock to be his defense attorneys in court and Matt, at least for now, had convinced Foggy and Karen that he was two (or three) different men. [Daredevil (1st series) #25]
Matt began leaning more into his Mike Murdock identity, using it as an excuse to let loose and be more expressive, especially when it came to flirting with Karen. He even pawned off Matt’s appearance at Leap-Frog’s hearing to Foggy, so that Mike Murdock could sit in the gallery observing with Karen. The prosecutor foolishly allowed Leap-Frog to try on his spring boots to prove they fit, allowing the criminal to make a getaway. He injured himself when the boots failed to 
clasp properly, falling outside the courthouse. As it happened, Stilt-Man had returned from subatomic space and was nearby intending to spring Leap-Frog and begin a criminal partnership. Matt/Mike changed into Daredevil, only to discover Stilt-Man on the streets instead of Leap-Frog. The two old foes grappled with each other briefly before Stilt-Man toppled to the streets below and somehow disappeared before Daredevil could apprehend him. [Daredevil (1st series) #26]
Stilt-Man had been rescued by Frank Farnum, building manager for Nelson & Murdock’s office and secretly the Masked Marauder. Farnum could not dismiss all the coincidences surrounding the lawyers’ relationship with Daredevil and arranged with Stilt-Man to kidnap the three employees of the law firm for interrogation. After a gas attack, Stilt-Man loaded Murdock, Nelson and Page aboard the Marauder’s helicopter, leaving behind a ransom note for Daredevil. Aboard the chopper, the villains got suspicious when hours passed without a response. Matt pretended to suffer a crisis of nerves and told the duo his twin brother Mike was Daredevil, leaving Karen furious at Matt’s betrayal. Stilt-Man left to hunt for the mythical Mike, and Matt tricked Farnum into throwing him out of the helicopter, allowing him to change into Daredevil while a furious Karen attacked Matt’s “murderer.” Daredevil told Karen that Matt was fine, and the Masked Marauder seemingly fell to his death while grappling with Daredevil. [Daredevil (1st series) #27]
Matt’s private life remained complicated thanks to his many lies. Karen was still hurt by Matt’s betrayal of Mike’s secret, yet she was also becoming more and more suspicious about “Mike.” Matt was on the verge of proposing to Karen, yet couldn’t decide which identity to do it in. A crimelord known as the Boss wanted to take over the Marauder’s mob, and kidnapped Karen after the Masked Marauder’s men found his notes tying Daredevil to Nelson & Murdock. Matt responded to the address left behind by the Marauder’s men, but he confused them by pretending 
to be “blind Matt Murdock” pretending to be Daredevil, unable to find the real hero. The mobsters underestimated the blind and foolish lawyer, while Karen was touched by Matt’s selfless heroism to “make up for revealing his brother’s secret.” Once inside the house’s defenses, Matt pretended to replace himself with the real Daredevil and overwhelmed the gangsters. The whole outing convinced Matt that Karen’s life was already in enough danger simply by knowing him, and it would be selfish to make her his wife. [Daredevil (1st series) #28-29]
Daredevil’s multiple identities started to seriously affect his thinking. On one occasion, he deduced that a wave of burglaries were being performed by Thor’s old foes, Cobra and Mr. Hyde. Matt decided that the best way to catch these villains was to wear a Thor costume over his Daredevil costume in order to draw them out into conflict with their nemesis. He even rigged up a manner of firing his billy-club from concealment behind a fake Mjolnir, to seem like he was flying. This was Matthew going out of his way to get involved in a criminal situation not for justice, but for the most novel and entertaining use of his own time. He even thought about how, to Foggy and Karen, he was Matt, pretending to be Mike, dressed as Daredevil, pretending to be Thor! The absurdity of this idea actually drew the attention of the real Thor, who let Matt off with a warning about not impersonating his godly personage. Daredevil did find Cobra and Hyde, but they lured him to one of Hyde’s chemical laboratories. Mr. Hyde splashed Daredevil with a chemical designed to remove his sight. Somehow, the chemical interacted with Matt’s other enhanced senses and negated them instead.
Cobra and Hyde abandoned Daredevil to his fate so they could continue their crime spree. Matt made contact with Karen and Foggy as Mike Murdock, telling them his troubles. He met with them as Mike, so he could complain about being blind, which Matt already was. However, a compulsive liar at this point, “Mike” for some reason refused to tell Foggy and Karen HOW he was blinded, and instead presented it as a degenerative condition he contracted. When Cobra and Mr. Hyde attacked again, “Mike” changed into Daredevil and had Foggy aid him 
in pretending to have his sight back to infuriate the villains. However, a suspicious Cobra circled back and caught Daredevil admitting to be blind. He brushed aside Foggy and captured Daredevil. Hyde and Cobra brought Daredevil back to their lighthouse lair to properly dispose of him. Matt went along with them, hoping that Hyde had an antidote to his blindness toxin at the lab. By knocking out the lights, Daredevil bluffed Hyde into going to secure the antidote, and managed to snag the potion and restore his super-senses. Mr. Hyde got away, but Daredevil apprehended the Cobra and turned him over to the police. [Daredevil (1st series) #30-32]
For his next caper, Daredevil encountered the criminal Beetle, but was unable to capture the flying fiend when he raided an armored truck. Daredevil predicted the Beetle’s next target for robbery would be the famous Regina necklace being transported by train to the Expo in Montreal. As Mike Murdock, he convinced Karen and Foggy to go on vacation with him to the Expo, “leaving” Matt to mind the business (thanks to a call to a pre-recorded message attached to Matt’s phone). When Beetle attacked the train in a tunnel, Daredevil grew tired pursuing him through the mountains. The Beetle’s confederates had occupied a deserted town and captured Daredevil when he came looking for aid. The Beetle concocted an elaborate plan to transport Daredevil to the Expo and 
unmask him in public to earn points with the underworld. Matt used the long van ride to rest up, and started fighting back before Beetle and his goons could follow through on their plot. Even Two-Fisted Foggy Nelson got in on the act, attacking the Beetle in defense of Daredevil, despite how obnoxious he found “Mike.” The Beetle, his gang and the recovered necklace were turned over to the authorities, and the three friends enjoyed their time at the Expo (although Karen continued to wish that Matt had been there). [Daredevil (1st series) #33-34]
Early in his career, Matt took considerable steps to conceal his training regiment. He rented the apartment beneath his under an assumed name, renovating it as a soundproofed private gym, accessible by a secretly installed staircase. Eventually, however, Nelson & Murdock did well enough for Matt to buy an entire brownstone large enough to support both his public and private lives. Sometime after moving into his new place, Matt came across his old enemies plotting his demise. Electro was assembling a group of former foes called the Emissaries of Evil to seek 
revenge on Daredevil. Matt confronted Electro and the Matador, but they managed to escape. Over the next several hours, he found himself in conflict with Stilt-Man, Leap-Frog and the Gladiator in an escalating gauntlet. Independently or finally together as a unit, though, the Emissaries proved unable to defeat the Scarlet Swashbuckler. Eventually, Daredevil wrapped up his foes and left them for the police to deal with. [Daredevil (1st series) Annual #1]