DEVIL IN THE DETAILS -
(or) Accumulated Facts of the Man Without Fear
POWERS
Hearing – Daredevil’s hearing has been increased across various metrics. He can hear sounds over a greater distance, those softer than the human ear can normally detect, and his hearing extends outside the range of frequencies typically audible to humans. Matt can hear through walls and traditional “soundproof” glass. Without his sight, Daredevil often identifies people by a combination of factors, including their own unique heartbeat pattern. Matt has learned to recognize slight jumps and variations in heart rate, enabling him to detect signs of stress, identify when someone is lying, or when they are tensing to attack.
Smell – Matt is capable of recognizing people by their individual scent. Early stories suggested he was identifying them by a particular perfume, hair tonic, cigar type, etc. Only later would it be confirmed he could recognize individual body odors. Slight changes in bio-chemistry through scent also help Daredevil to detect nervousness, anticipate opponents who are about to strike, and weave into his hearing to improve his lie-detection abilities. Residual scent and spoor contribute to Matt’s tracking abilities – he can tell when someone has been in a room or near a particular person or object recently by the traces they leave behind.
Taste – Matt’s sense of taste is not called upon as often as his other senses. The sensitivity of his tongue is acute enough for him to count the grains of salt on a pretzel. He can also parse and identify individual ingredients in food or drink far better than the average person. So, if someone has poisoned his drink, he recognizes that fact… as he’s drinking the poison.
Touch – The sense of touch has various aspects which are enhanced by Matt’s mutation. First is his sensitivity to temperature changes. Matt can sense the heat of a single match from some distance away and knows when he’s changing into his costume in shadows versus open sunlight. He can feel the laser sight of a sniper rifle tickling his skin, and his teeth vibrate when a directional microphone resonates off of the window of his office. Matt can read raised ink with his fingertips or identify the number of bullets in a gun based on weight. His sense of touch helped him disarm a bomb by detecting which wires were carrying a current. Matt’s sense of direction is also flawless, for he can detect magnetic north at all times. Daredevil’s spatial awareness and proprioception compensate for his blindness and even improve upon a normal man’s equilibrium. His agility and acrobatic prowess are informed by this, as well as his ability to estimate the ricochets and flight path of his billy club truncheons when thrown. Matt’s coordination allows him to flip a coin with the precision necessary to control the outcome.
Radar – Daredevil’s “radar sense” has changed considerably over the years, with many writers not understanding or not agreeing upon its parameters. It is generally accepted that this perception is not an actual radar pulse, nor is it the sonar or echolocation used by animals like 
bats or dolphins. Rare sources even argue that the radar sense doesn’t exist at all as a separate sense, or rather it’s merely a description for the culmination of sensory input from Matt’s four other enhanced senses. There is also debate over whether the radar has to be activated (again, whether Matt is consciously sending out radar pulses or “ping”s) or if it is a constant form of sensory awareness like sight or hearing.
The radar sense generally provides him with a 360-degree awareness of shapes in his vicinity. This allows him to detect the contours of a room, identify the presence of objects and avoid contact with them. The radar sense reads shapes such that colors, flat projections (photographs or screens) and vivid details are indiscernible to him. His radar sense can aid him in recognizing an individual based on familiar body dimensions (combined with other identifiers like scent and heartbeat pattern), but his radar cannot differentiate facial features. Detailed and complicated shapes have disoriented Matt’s radar over the years. When faced with smooth, uniform surfaces like walls, Daredevil can sometimes even probe through them with his radar to “sense” rooms beyond or inside a safe. And yet, bushes and shrubbery can confound his radar enough to leave him vulnerable to surprise. Flames, rain, snow and radar chaff can also interfere with his probing.
Together – Daredevil’s senses are individually effective, but he does not use them in a vacuum from one another, just as a sighted person will turn their head towards the direction of a sound. As mentioned above, Matt Murdock typically recognizes people from a combination of their radar profile and identifying biometrics detectable to his hearing and sense of smell. His training with Stick gives Matt an advanced ability to expand or contract his senses’ field of awareness. This can be to his benefit or his detriment. By stretching the limits of his senses, Daredevil can comb a city 
for signs of a particular scent or voice… but doing so will leave him incredibly vulnerable to a sudden noise or scent close by that he’s unprepared for. On the other hand, he can focus his senses with great intensity on a single subject. Daredevil uses scent and heartbeat fluctuations to anticipate his foes’ next move, but highly trained fighters like Elektra or Bullseye exert less and can control their biorhythms in ways that might escape his senses if he isn’t focusing enough. By narrowing his senses’ focus like this, however, the Man Without Fear can be surprised from behind with a minimal amount of stealth by a third party.
BILLY CLUB
Daredevil’s billy club is a tool of his own design, assembled by hand and with Matt’s superhuman sense of touch aiding his talent as an amateur engineer. It is a special, but not unique item and has frequently been replaced over the years after being destroyed or lost in battle. Sometimes an ordeal is made of his billy club being destroyed, showing Daredevil employing a simple grappling hook for an issue or two before Matt engineers a new club (#82) or is gifted one by an ally (#117). Often times, though, he’s merely deprived of his club for a single fight and has a new one ready by the next issue (#153-155).
For many years, the billy club was a converted version of a blind man’s cane. Its most basic design is one perfectly weighted truncheon and one segment with a grappling line, usually the end with the cane’s handle. In his early years, Daredevil stored a variety of items in his billy club’s hollow compartments like recording devices, smoke pellets, even MTS subway tokens (#119). The novelty of these features wore off, however, and could throw off the balance of the club to Daredevil’s sensitive fingers. Consequently, Daredevil acknowledged in #138 that he had removed all the extraneous gadgets from his billy club. The color of the billy club is inconsistent over the years – sometimes it’s red (fitting the motif of his Daredevil costume) while other times it’s white (fitting the standardized color scheme identifying a blind man’s cane).
Over the years since then, the billy club has undergone small upgrades. While wearing his 
armored costume and operating as Jack Batlin, Matt pretended to be sighted in his civilian identity, leaving no need for a cane. During this period, his billy club had new features, allowing the truncheons to link together as a quarterstaff or a nunchaku set of chained rods. These features were discontinued when he returned to his classic attire. After Shadowland, Daredevil’s billy club and cane resumed the telescopic feature, letting it act as a staff or pole. With the Fist, the billy club added collapsible blades on each end, turning it into a two-bladed pole staff.