INTERVIEW BY STEVE RAMOS

Elektra (Jennifer Garner) holds her own in a rooftop duel with the blind superhero, Daredevil (Ben Affleck), in the action film Daredevil, based on the comic.

The most thrilling moment in director Mark Steven Johnson's action blockbuster, Daredevil, occurs early in the film. Matt Murdock (Ben Affleck), a blind lawyer, leaves his coffee shop hangout to follow a pretty woman (Jennifer Garner) whom he's just met for the first time. He wants to know her name -- it's Elektra -- and her phone number. When he catches up with her at a nearby playground, he discovers that this mysterious beauty is every bit the martial arts expert that he is. They twist, spin and flip past each other on teeter-totters, monkey bars and swing sets. Their blurring figures create a musical backdrop. The impact is exciting and flirtatious, and it's all courtesy of Bromley, Ky., comic artist David Mack.

Daredevil, the Marvel Comics superhero who's a blind lawyer by day and a vigilante superhero by night, thanks to his enhanced senses, has been around since the 1960s. Yet Mack's recent stories make the biggest impact on the heavily anticipated movie. Midway through the Daredevil comic titled "Parts of a Hole," Mack writes of Daredevil's playground tussle with a deaf female assassin, Echo. Across a series of comic pages, Daredevil and Echo flip and fight across the playground equipment. It's just like the movie because Johnson appropriated Mack's comic sequence for the film. Mack says Johnson also borrowed Echo's black skintight costume for Elektra's movie wardrobe.

"When you work for a Marvel comic, you're working in the spirit of collaboration," Mack said, speaking recently at his home studio in Bromwell. "They (Marvel) own the work and can put it on T-shirts, posters or in movies.

"I like that my ideas made it into the movie. I also hear that my name is mentioned as a way of saying thanks."

Mack isn't sure what to make of Johnson's Daredevil movie, but he talks constantly on the phone with comic artist friends of his who caught an advance screening of the film in Los Angeles.

Like the rest of the fans, Mack will decide for himself when the film opens Friday. Whether the Daredevil movie is good or bad, Mack might have the last laugh. He can take silent credit for its best bits and avoid blame for its setbacks. If the film is a hit, Mack's adaptation of his own comic creation, Kabuki, could receive a sizable boost. If Daredevil fails to attract sizable audiences, Mack will continue to do what he's been doing all along -- telling stories, drawing pictures, creating fantastic worlds and the otherworldly people who inhabit them -- from his Bromwell studio. It's a wonderful, creative life, one that movies can't do justice. ©

E-mail Steve Ramos

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