This feature is called "I Tell You What If," and it is about all the times that an alternate reality storyline ended up becoming part of official continuity. Very often, if an idea being good enough to be used in an alternate timeline it will often end up being considered good enough to use in the REAL timeline.

Today, we look at how Daredevil became an agent of SHIELD for a brief period of time!

The initial story at hand came about when Mike W. Barr was still very early in his career in comics and kept coming up with ideas for What If...? stories. He eventually came up with a Daredevil one that superstar Daredevil creator, Frank Miller, was introduced in doing. So Barr and Miller worked on the story together and then Miller drew it with Klaus Janson.

The idea follows the basic origin of Daredevil, only now when Matt Murdock pushes an old man out of the way of a car and the ensuing accident involved Matt getting splashed in the face with chemicals, Tony Stark came across him and brought him to SHIELD. At the same time, however, Hydra saw the accident, as well (they were probably tailing Stark) and so they were interested in young Matt Murdock, also.

So Hydra goes to kidnap Matt Murdock's boxer father...

Meanwhile, SHIELD is training Matt Murdock in how to use all of these new abilities he gained in the accident that also blinded him...

When they won't let him go find out what happened to his father, he seemingly goes rogue, but in reality, he is just testing out the double agent to see if she will lead him to his father.

She does not, so Matt has to make a deal with Nick Fury. Matt will work for SHIELD if Fury will help save Matt's father...

In the end, Matt and SHIELD are able to rescue Matt's dad from Hydra and Matt gets ready for his new life as an Agent of SHIELD, using the codename "Daredevil."

This was a tight story (it was one-half of an issue of What If...?, although the book was extra-sized back in the day) and it was one of the rare What If...? stories with an actual happy ending. Getting THE Daredevil artist to draw a What If...? story was a huge achievement for Marvel (Miller, of course, would also do another What If...? story that will probably also be featured in this column eventually). It was one of the more memorable stories from the first volume of What If...?

Nearly twenty years later, though, the concept of the story actually worked its way into the pages of Daredevil...with a significant twist!

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Joe Kelly's strong run on Daredevil came to a close with Daredevil #375. Marvel planned to relaunch the series as part of the then-new Marvel Knights line of comics, but they needed some more time to kill, so Scott Lobdell was brought on to tell a four-part story to finish out the series. Amusingly, while Marvel knew that Daredevil WOULD be relaunched as part of Marvel Knights, when Lobdell began work on his story, no one knew who, exactly, was going to be the writer of the new Marvel Knights series. Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti were on board, but Kevin Smith had not yet agreed to write it and, in fact, Smith's initial story idea had to be dropped because it was part of what Lobdell came up with for HIS arc! You see, not only did Daredevil become an agent of SHIELD, but he regained his eyesight!

The story opened in Daredevil #376 (art by Cully Hamner and Jason Martin) with a seemingly French man with the apparent name of Laurent Levasseur in a French emergency room...

While he can see, Levasseur also has extra senses. He then springs into action...

Of course, Levasseur is actually Daredevil. As it turns out, he is on a mission for SHIELD in France. However, the man who wiped his mind, changed his appearance and gave him a new personality (and the ability to see) and is the only one to know about this operation, is killed at the end of the first issue!

Levasseur is attacked while visiting his doctor and in the next issue (drawn by Tom Morgan and Scott Hanna), we see him right in his element...

Later in the issue, he debuts his Hamner-designed SHIELD uniform...

Daredevil's assignment is to save a list of SHIELD agents being sold. Wilson Fisk is in Europe ready to buy them. Another SHIELD agent figures out what was going on and she comes to Foggy Nelson for help. Foggy has to struggle with the idea of the only way to bring Matt back would be to wipe his senses again...

In the final issue, Levasseur fights against Kingpin...

But one of Kingpin's agents (who can also mess with minds) inadvertently returns Daredevil's identity and DD wins the day and returns to his normal self...

"Flying Blind" was a fun arc. It would be interesting to see Lobdell take on Daredevil at some point in the future (not any time soon, of course, as Charles Soule is doing a very nice job on the current series).

Okay, so that's it for this installment! Feel free to send me ideas for future installments by dropping me a line at brianc@cbr.com!