Aluminum Christmas Trees: Surgeon General has been criticized by some reviewers for being unrealistic since she's a skilled surgeon and could supposedly earn more money practicing medicine. Unfortunately, organ trafficking is a very real thing, not to mention its practitioners don't have to worry about malpractice, ethics or any of the other rules legitimate doctors have to follow.
The tailend of the Silver Age is particularly hard to defend. Daredevil, a character known for being a more down-to-earth and grittier superhero, was the biggest quipster in the Marvel Universe behind Spidey during this period. The charmingly-cute irreverence of a teenager felt grossly inappropriate when coming from a grown man. The weakness of his Rogues Gallery and the recurrence of absurd plots (like Matt's impersonation of his swingin' hep cat brother Mike to conceal his secret identity) also made it difficult to respect the book.
The early '90's is another widely panned period. Matt gets a new ridiculously Darker and Edgier costume, complete with metal shoulder pads and arm spikes, grows a five-o'clock shadow, and generally acts like a jerk to everyone for little to no reason. Throw in some terrible story arcs, like "The Iron Devil", and you get a period that most Daredevil fans would rather forget.
Some fans were overjoyed at the announcement that in the new series Matt was reinstated as a lawyer in New York, Foggy's cancer was seemingly cured, and his civilian identity was a secret once more, but thanks to it being a consequence of Secret Wars, other fans felt it reeked a bit of the Reset Button being used.
There is a also a division among fans who prefer the return of the Darker and Edgier tone to the character during Charles Soule's run and those who felt that Mark Waid's relatively Lighter and Softer tone during his acclaimed run was a breath of fresh air for the character.
Originally Elektra was just a normal girl who ended up going down a very dark path after the tragedy of losing her father. In the Man Without Fear miniseries showing how Matt Murdock became Daredevil, she is portrayed as having always been a psychopath, hearing voices and intentionally going looking for trouble so she could murder her assailants. In an odd parallel to Selina Kyle's prostitute past from Batman: Year One, this is one part of an otherwise well-regarded series that a lot of fans would prefer to ignore.
A lot of fans would also like to pretend that Daredevil: Father never happened, mostly due to finding the revelation that the man Matt saved in the accident that blinded him was molesting his own daughter and said daughter growing up to become a killer going after those Matt helped to be too far, even for a series as rooted in darkness as Daredevil.
Ho Yay: Between Matt and Foggy on occasion. Matt is not generally comfortable with anyone touching him unless it is either a girlfriend, or Foggy.
Iron Woobie: Where to begin? His mother leaves when he is a baby, his father constantly pushes him to succeed so he can have a better life, he is blinded by chemicals and his father is murdered by the mob. Oh and the super senses? Matt can't turn them off and They make life nearly unbearable. In Born Again, his ex-girlfriend sells his identity to the mob, he loses his legal license, he has all his money taken away and is reduced to living on the streets. Then in Shadowland, he is demonically possessed and forced to do horrible things. Lets just say life sucks for Matt Murdock. And yet he never gives up and becomes a stronger person for it.
Also Stilt-Man, who is such a Butt-Monkey that it is impossible to not pity him.
Gladiator. No matter how hard he tries he just can't escape the supervillain lifestyle.
Typhoid is manipulative, psychotic, and bloodthirsty on par with Wolverine. However, her other personalities only emerged as a coping mechanism for her horrible upbringing; and as a way to protect herself from the seemingly endless abuse. Furthermore, she cannot control the actions of her Typhoid, or Blood Mary, personas; and is often forced to take responsibility for them. More than a few times "Mary" has reemerged to find herself covered in blood, or forcibly institutionalized.
Matt. He can have some seriously nasty bouts of "I Work Alone" Wangst, but after all the hell that has happened to anybody who so much as gives him the time of day, it's hard not to blame him.
Wilson "The Kingpin" Fisk is Marvel's greatest gangster and a consummate survivor. Having outfought, outwitted, and outlasted everyone who has ever tried to take his place, Fisk has secured his position as both New York's reigning mobster and a fixture in the supervillain community. With the capital to dominate the city and a reach that frequently spans continents, Fisk has developed the psychological torment of heroes like Matt Murdock and Peter Parker into an art form, and has left Matt's life in particular in ruins several times over. Always too stubborn to call it quits, Fisk rolls with or shrugs off everything that Marvel's heroes and villains can throw at him, while repeatedly demonstrating that only the most capable of opponents can do the same when he brings all his resources to bear on them. Having risen, fallen, and risen again, Fisk is never out of the game for long, and is always ready to show off the criminal skill and personal gravitas that made him Kingpin of Crime in the first place.
Carlos LaMuerto, "the Black Tarantula", is reimagined as a far less powerful, much more heroic character. Getting out of prison on good behavior, Carlos teams up with Daredevil to take down a variety of criminals before deciding to strike out on his own, his bloodthirsty, ruthless nature clashing with Daredevil's proclivity to spare criminals. Carlos kills dozens of crooks and hands their stolen fortunes over to local charities, survives being burned alive by his dangerous cousin and tortures the man to death, and teams up with Daredevil once more to take down the entirety of the Hand, Carlos faking brainwashing to subvert the Hand from the inside. Helping Daredevil take control of the Hand, Carlos played a major role in the Hand's crime-fighting operation in New York, and served as the sole member who refused to be corrupted or driven mad by the Hand's evil influence.
Erik Slaughter is one of the most intelligent crime lords Daredevil ever faced. A dangerous mobster for decades who uses hired guns to do his dirty work, Slaughter first faces Daredevil by luring him into a duel with Bullseye, only for Slaughter to then step back and let the two have a fair fight, rejecting Bullseye's treacherous attempts to cheat to win. Facing down Bullseye's wrath afterwards without breaking a sweat, Slaughter apparently goes legit for years, in truth having turned into a government ally who reports on terrorist activity in exchange for his small criminal outfit being left alone. Immensely honorable and successful for his entire run as a criminal genius, Slaughter ends his stories still completely scot-free of all consequences for his actions, continuing to run his profitable gang without issue.
Matt's crappy life. It is very well-known among the comic book community that Matt has the crappiest life ever. Ever. Even the writers know this, with Charles Soule noting that he wants to end his run with Matt's life as ruined as possible because that's tradition.
The "dating Matt" joke, which states that any woman who dates Matt not called Black Widow or Typhoid Mary will meet a horrible fate.
My Real Daddy: Stan Lee and Bill Everett (with some elements from Wally Wood) may have created Daredevil, but today, several creators have a very strong claim to being the definitive writer of the character.
Frank Miller's run in The '80s is still to this day a reference. It transformed Daredevil into the Noir-inspired Marvel version of Batman; gave him a religious identity as a conflicted Roman Catholic; made the Kingpin, previously a minor Silver Age Spider-Man villain, into Daredevil's Big Bad as well as one of the most influential villains in comics in The '80s (inspiring the post-Crisis version of Lex Luthor and post-resurrection Norman Osborn); introduced characters like Elektra, Bullseye and others; and, generally, elevated Daredevil from C-List to one of Marvel's most important characters.
The Brian Michael Bendis and Ed Brubaker runs are considered high points of American comics in the early 21st century (Bendis was even nominated in the prestigious Angoulême festival for best album). Mark Waid managed to bring back the character's light side, while being widely acclaimed by fans of earlier, darker takes on the character.
Newer Than They Think: Mister Fear is often compared to the Batman villain Scarecrow as both characters use fear-inducing chemicals as a weapon. However, while Scarecrow was created twenty-four years before Mister Fear, Mister Fear was using fear-inducing chemicals six years before Scarecrow started to.
Periphery Demographic: Stan Lee was concerned that the visually-impaired community would complain about a comic book with a blind superhero. However, he received letters from visually-handicapped support charities, who had read the comics to their clients, thanking him for his initiative for creating such a positive example of a blind person who has a successful and exciting life.
Stoic Woobie: Matt. As mentioned, his life is hell but he'll pretty much never wangst about it (publicly).
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The Marvel Universe prides itself on making its heroes' lives hell, but Matt Murdock's life goes above and beyond the call of duty in terms of Yank the Dog's Chain and Wangst. To make a long story short: there are very powerful people that wish for Matt and Kingpin to kill each other, and are willing to do anything to make it happen. The times when the series becomes Lighter and Softer are short-lived and marked with a very brutal return to "normal". It takes some die-hard fanaticism to keep reading after a while.
Denny O'Neil's run. O'Neil was Frank Miller's direct successor and he just didn't connect with readers the way Miller did. To be fair, Miller had, at that point, basically defined the book, so whoever followed him was probably going to come up short.
Ann Nocenti's run. She was the second person to succeed Miller and Miller had basically stripped Daredevil of many of his defining elements, such as his licence to practice law. Fortunately she was able to work wonders by pushing the book in a drastically different and unique direction with atypical villains for the series and exploring different themes. Her handling of Typhoid Mary in particular is seen as a highlight of the run.
DG Chichester's run, following Nocenti. While he wrote a good story in "The Fall of the Kingpin", after that the book sort of began to deteriorate, ultimately leading to the "Iron Devil" arc.
Matt's crappy life is memetic among comic fans. His mother abandoned him, his father was murdered by the mob, his life is a complete mess from his superheroics, he's had his identity exposed and his life destroyed by the Kingpin, the women he's loved always meet a brutal end if they don't betray him first, and if he ever does find happiness, it will almost certainly be taken away in the most vicious manner possible very quickly.
Milla Donovan, Matt's wife for a time. She was driven to insanity by Mister Fear just to spite Matt.
, not to mention its practitioners don't have to worry about malpractice, ethics or any of the other rules legitimate doctors have to follow.