The Scott Summers Awards for Top 5 Doomed Superhero Romances: #2

#2: Daredevil and Karen Page
Began Courtship in Daredevil #1, 1964
Written by: Stan Lee

Summary:
Karen Page was introduced in the first issue of Daredevil as Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson’s secretary at their law firm. Foggy had just recently hired her, and she immediately started to swoon for Matt.

After some time, she also found herself falling for a different man, Matt’s alter ego, the crimefighter Daredevil. It’s only natural, I suppose. During a storyline that was well before my time, Karen’s father became the villain Death’s-Head, who, according to the Internet, “dressed in a glowing radioactive costume, riding a horse whose flesh was made transparent, and wielding fireballs and scimitars of radioactive cobalt.” Man, comics used to be so imaginative.

Anyway, after fighting her father, Daredevil revealed to Karen that he was, in fact, Matt Murdock, and the two started up a big ol’ romance. Alongside Elektra, Karen is widely regarded as Matt’s greatest love.

What Doomed It:
Frank Miller, basically. When he took over writing duties for Daredevil in the 1980s, he took the book and did what he’s famous for. He made it darker and “fleshed out” all the characters. For Karen, she was basically a product of the 60s, and Miller wanted to give her some personal problems to “modernize” her.

Thus, she moved to LA, got into pornography, became addicted to heroin, and sold Daredevil’s secret for a fix. If that doesn’t spell doom for the relationship, I’m not sure what would.

She eventually cleaned herself up, started an anti-pornography crusade, thought she was HIV positive, blah blah blah. You know how comics were in those days.

Eventually, toward the end of the 90s, Kevin Smith took over, and that’s when Karen and Matt finally split up, rather tragically. Bullseye killed Karen by throwing Daredevil’s billy club at her, striking her in the heart.

As you can see, she died in his arms.