In Meta-Messages, I explore the context behind (using reader danjack's term) "meta-messages." A meta-message is where a comic book creator comments on/references the work of another comic book/comic book creator (or sometimes even themselves) in their comic. Each time around, I'll give you the context behind one such "meta-message." This time around, we take a look at an alien that pokes fun at the silliness of Daredevil's fake twin brother.

Daredevil's fake twin brother was a hilariously bizarre storyline concocted by Stan Lee in the early years of Daredevil. Naturally, as you might imagine, when you're blind and there's a blind superhero who is always hanging around your friends (even if the knowledge of Daredevil's blindness wasn't made public, there is always the risk that his blindness might become evident during a fight, like someone might blast him with a ton of bright light and it won't affect him) then it could be a bit difficult to keep your identity a secret.

Things got even crazier when Spider-Man figured out Daredevil's secret identity and then wrote Matt Murdock a letter basically telling him, "Don't worry, dude, it's okay, I won't tell anyone." I assume Spider-Man figured that Murdock was faking the whole blind angle, as Spider-Man wrote him a letter, but that's never made clear. It might just be that Spider-Man is a either A. a moron or B. confident that Daredevil's extra senses can allow him to read the letter (which is true, but still).

Karen Page and Foggy Murdock, Matt's secretary and law partner, naturally open the letter addressed to Murdock (which actually is pretty normal that a secretary would open hir or her boss's correspondence). So now they're like, "Damn, Matt's Daredevil! There were only a million clues as to this information! How could we have missed it?"

Matt, though, figures out a brilliant solution to their questions of him - reveal that he has a twin brother that he has somehow never mentioned before, not even to Foggy, who he has known for YEARS at this point, a twin brother who didn't show up for Matt's law school graduation or anything else, but that this twin brother, Mike Murdock, is ACTUALLY Daredevil.

While they sometimes don't seem too bright, this is too much for even Foggy and Karen to believe, so Matt has to work out some brilliant disguise magic and invent Mike Murdock!

Now that that has somehow worked out, Matt really decides to get into the whole Mike role and just go nuts with it. Taking some really bizarre stylistic and dialogue chances with the character...

This went on for WAY longer than it logically should have. I did a piece about how they finally wrote Mike out of the book (while still managing to keep Daredevil's identity a secret - here's a surprise - a new Daredevil shows up that looks just like the old Daredevil but is somehow not Mike Murdock). It's some trippy stuff. At one point, Mike ostensibly loses his eyesight and they STILL don't figure out that he's actually Matt.

Okay, so that's the story of Mike Murdock. Read on to see how it was made fun of in a recent issue of Rocket!

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Rocket was a fun miniseries by Al Ewing, Adam Gorham and Michael Garland that put Rocket into the middle of a heist story based on the old Richard Stark Parker novels.

At one point, Rocket is arrested on an alien planet and given a familiar lawyer (their planet is named after Daredevil co-creator, Bill Everett) who has a problem with his law partner...

What a hilarious send-up of the Foggy/Matt dynamic. You really feel for Froggy when Murd inexplicably walks out of another case out of nowhere! I love how their people can't see words, so the Elektra character can just hold up a sign and Froggy can't see it. Very clever stuff by Ewing, Gorham and Garland.

Okay, that's it for this installment! If anyone else has a suggestion for a future Meta-Message, please drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!