The following article contains spoilers from Spider-Punk #4, on sale now.
Spider-Punk’s continued adventures across his world have shown fans the coolest version of Daredevil. Spider-Punk #4 (by Cody Ziglar, Justin Mason, Jim Charalampidis and Travis Lanham) saw the debut of Mattea Murdock, a female Daredevil with similar abilities to her core reality counterpart, but with a real metal twist. While she is blind like Matt Murdock and possesses the same radar sense, Mattea has found a way to expand her radar through the acoustics of her drumsticks.
A lot of characters in this universe have a rock n’ roll theme to them, so this version of Daredevil is expected. But rather than just being a gimmick to make her look different, the theme was incorporated into her powers. It also doesn’t hurt that said drumsticks can be used as devastating weapons.
Mattea is a very different type of person. She isn’t a lawyer and unlike Matt, she doesn’t try to conceal the fact that she is very capable and powerful. Her drumsticks are the equivalent of Matt’s batons, but they’re not just mere crime fighting weapons for her. They’re also a means to increase the range of her echolocation.
By repeatedly drumming any surface with her drumsticks, her range can extend blocks past what would normally be allowed by her senses alone. This gives her a form of surveillance that is impossible to resist without specifically insulating an entire area against sound penetration, a costly and often too specific measure of protection.
It adds a new level of depth to the usual powers Daredevil employs. While Matt can sometimes sense things through or around walls with his enhanced hearing, Mattea’s utilization of her surroundings is far more advanced than her counterpart. This makes her more than just a heavy hitter, but also a highly effective scout for infiltration missions.
Adding to that, her drumsticks are unusually durable. She not only used them to smack solid concrete multiple times to figure out the layout of a building but also used them against this world’s version of the Kingpin. This suggests that her weapons of choice may be made of something more durable than the average wooden drumstick — making them even more unique.
What is clear is that this might be the coolest version of Daredevil to date, one that improved a decades-old model. While the Matt Murdock of Earth-616 is not a drummer, he can certainly apply some of what Mattea does to his own techniques. For example — banging his baton on a building to get a headcount of how many people he has to fight when infiltrating a criminal base. There’s a lot he could learn from his young counterpart.