“Cop-aganda:” A Writer’s Recap of Why Daredevil Hits Different in the BLM Era

As a writer, I’ve always believed in the escapism aspect of comics. Social commentary is terrific and necessary but fiction is also important for mental breaks from the stresses of everyday life. With that in mind, I’ll admit I grew up with an affinity for cop dramas. I read endless novels about the laconic, lone wolf modern-day cowboys who didn’t take crap from anyone or the brainy Sherlock Holmes types that “see everything” but rarely draw a gun to win the day. And it never took away from the fact that in the real world, to quote Flavor Flav, “911 is a joke.” Maybe it was a matter of needing a time out from the constant bombardment of news about law enforcement harming people that look like me. Perhaps it was a matter of denial in the midst of this war of attrition black people seem to be in against law enforcement. It’s hard to say. But I swore I was able to separate art from real life and just enjoy some old fashioned good guys vs. bad guys from time to time. And it even worked out for a time. The first show I binged through when this quarantine stuff happened was Longmire, a Netflix show about an old school cowboy sheriff dispensing justice in Wyoming. There were almost no modern day politics to resolve here for me because there were virtually no black people in this version of Wyoming with the exception of the incomparable Charles S. Dutton (even his first line in the show was “Where are all the black people?”). Two weeks and five seasons later, I was fine. Then, I dov…