Daredevil Message Board

[RedSunOfKrypton]

Does anyone else think DD should be able to discern colours? I mean each colour gives off a slightly different temperature that even normal humans can detect with some practice, even at slight distances from their skin, so for DD this should be no problem at all. Thoughts?

[Dimetre]

Stan Lee certainly thought so. Back in Daredevil Vol. 1 #1 on page 14, when Matt was first making the orginal yellow costume, Lee had Matt say, "I can even blend the colors, for each colored fabric has a different feel to me!"

I would think, though, for Matt to determine what colour something is, he would have to be pretty close to the object to detect what amount of light is being bounced off the object etc. More recently during Bendis' run some yahoo in a restaurant taunted Daredevil by asking him to tell him what colour his shirt was. Daredevil left without giving an answer, possibly because he didn't know.

[Marvel Knight]

[jumonji]

The Marvel character description (which is really pathetic in terms of scope, don't you think?) mentions an ability to discern between different colors, but I can't remeber seeing that before. It might be new. On the other hand, some of the "science" explaining why he should be able to do this is a little weird in my opinion. Or maybe taking too many physics classes in college ruined me?

There was that bit in the Guardian Devil arc where DD mentions having been in a white room that I reacted to, although I suppose he would notice if there was an unusual amount of light present.

In general, I sometimes get the feeling that writers are working a little harder than they need to to make up for Matt's blindness. His being a formidable fighter doesn't mean that he has to able to color coordinate his wardrobe. The occasional "blind moment" adds to the depth of the character, in my opinion, and makes all the really neat stuff he actually can do even cooler.

UPDATE: Okay, I'm a nerd. I had to check out the science on the whole color thing because I knew there was something not quite right about it. So here's the deal: At normal room temperature, different colors do NOT have different temperatures and cannot be distinguished by the amount of heat they radiate. People often get confused on this point, partly because we often casually refer to colors as being "warm" or "cold" (photographers are well familiar with the concept) and because some objects begin to glow when heated to particular temperatures. The colors of stars are related to the amount of heat they give off, but you would have to heat an object to very high temperatures to get this effect though. The only "radiation" bouncing off objects is visible light, so unless DD has also developed photoreceptors, he can't "see" color. But who am I to argue with Marvel?

UPDATE 2: The 2004 MUH says that DD can only guess at what color something is. So, there you go!

[Icarus]

There is another tiny bit to this rather fascinating conversation. While it's an established fact that colours in and of themselves so not give off heat, they can reflect and absorb heat. Just as a black t-shirt is much warmer to wear on a Summer day, a white one is cooler. The thing of this is that it is not in the "visible spectrum". That's the key to what is being discussed here. The Ultraviolet spectrum is heat; heat is transmitted in UV rays.

Now, Matt could certainly feel differences in temperature, even if minute. It would merely be a discernible presence or lack of heat. But, the thing is that it isn't in "colour". This is what artists refer to as "local value". In a world where everything is measured without colour, it is only shades that matter. A dark blue shirt, for example, may well reflect the same intensity of UV as a maroon shirt, for example. Or a tan one, as a pink one. So, while Matt might be able to tell - at best - if a colour is lighter or darker, he certainly isn't likely to be able to tell one colour from another based on it's hue.

While it is true that Matt often uses more than one sense to discern an object, in this case, (in my opinion) this light/dark perception (for which he would have to touch an object or be within inches of to perceive) would be little different or better than the other senses he has.