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Marvel’s Daredevil won’t come out until Friday, April 10th at 3 AM EST, but I am already getting into fights about it.

As a diehard Marvel comics fan, I need very little convincing to get on board with the idea of Netflix doing a Daredevil series. Anytime I get to see another live action take on one of the Marvel universe’s superheroes, I’m there. But I have many friends, colleagues, and acquaintances who just don’t get why we need yet another “gritty reboot” of a superhero tale. They think comic book movies are all the same. They feel exhausted by Marvel’s current ubiquity.

I’m not wholly unsympathetic to their arguments. It’s true a lot of superhero films follow similar formulas. You’re either watching an origin story, a high-stakes tale involving a mystical MacGuffin, or a crime thriller, or you’re seeing something that’s all three. At this point, it does look like Marvel’s ultimate plan for the MCU (aka Marvel Cinematic Universe) is to keep upping the ante and adding more characters until they can set up “The Infinity War.” That’s when all the heroes and heroines we’ve met so far have to team up to take on the most powerful threat in the universe to save, uh, everyone. There’s a gauntlet. And some stones. It makes sense when its put in context.

So what’s different about Daredevil? And why is it so great that Netflix is tackling “The Man Without Fear?” This isn’t about the character of Daredevil getting a “gritty reboot;” this is about Daredevil finally getting a fair adaptation.

Daredevil started off as a lower-tier superhero. He wasn’t ever super popular and he never quite caught on when he was being written and drawn in the standard, pulpy “Stan Lee” fashion. Daredevil just wasn’t one of the cool superheroes. It wasn’t until Marvel handed the book over to artist Frank Miller in the 1980s that Daredevil was reborn as a morally ambiguous antihero. The stories stopped being about a blind lawyer moonlighting as a hero who battled a goofy rogue’s gallery of villains. Now, Daredevil featured sparse, tense, and macabre crime stories. Miller rewrote the hero’s backstory to include an alcoholic father and ninja training. He introduced a new villain: Kingpin, a physically terrifying man at the center of an insidious crime ring. He gave the Daredevil comics an edgy new voice and it fit like nothing before.

Since then, Daredevil has worked best when given to a creative (and sometimes twisted) visionary. Its dark tone and Hell’s Kitchen setting meant that it could go places that titles like Captain America or Hulk couldn’t. Daredevil isn’t about a superhuman saving humanity from an evil plan; it’s about a dude wrestling with his moral integrity to save the neighborhood he loves. He gets in over his head. He gets the shit kicked out of him. He sometimes fails.

Netflix’s style of letting showrunners have free reign over their projects gels perfectly with the spirit of the comics. Even Netflix’s style of dropping a 13-episode season all in one day perfectly compliments Daredevil. Since the 1980s, the comic book industry has seen the rise of “graphic novels.” This is a pretentious way of saying that rather than being written in single issue episodic form, comic books were plotted over six and twelve issue arcs that were then collected, bound and sold as volumes. These stories were plotted like a 13-episode season of a drama. So, when you binge-watch Marvel’s Daredevil, you’re going to get the television equivalent of tearing through two volumes of Daredevil comics. It’s cool if you’re nerdy like me and care about that kind of thing. It also means that it will be a cohesive story that takes 13 episodes to pay off.

Netflix’s take on Daredevil shouldn’t be called a “gritty reboot.” This isn’t some dark reimagining of a hero known for being earnest, honest, or all-American. Daredevil’s story is not being reimagined in some new, edgy way. Rather, this is Daredevil finally getting the on-screen treatment he deserves.

Daredevil’s place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is about to become just like his place in the comic book universe. Yeah, he started off as sort of a failed traditional superhero — *cough* the Ben Affleck movie version *cough* — but he found his place as an anti-hero. He’s not an Avenger and that’s a good thing.

You can stream Marvel’s Daredevil here on Netflix on April 10, 2015.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdNK8L3ZdmE&list=PLK5HARgNfgj9rfpw86U8QzP_zvZMLbMT2&index=4]

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[Photos: Netflix]