The war between Daredevil and Kingpin has been a long, brutal feud that extends throughout Hell’s Kitchen. One such individual who was deeply impacted was Maya Lopez, the girl who would become Echo.
A creation of writer David Mack and artist Joe Quesada, Maya was introduced 25 years ago in Daredevil #9 (December 1999). She is a Native American and one of the few deaf comic characters. Maya was a child when Kingpin/Wilson Fisk killed her father Willie “Crazy Horse” Lincoln. As Crazy Horse died, he left a bloody handprint on Maya’s face and asked Kingpin to make sure she would be raised well.
Kingpin honored that request by caring for Maya himself. She is eventually sent to a school for prodigies and develops a litany of skills, including enhanced athletic abilities, martial arts skills, acrobatics, photographic reflexes, concert level piano skills, and ballet dancing.
After she’s grown up, Fisk sends Maya to prove Matt Murdock’s weakness by telling her that Matt believes Fisk is a bad person and she is the only one who can prove him wrong. Since she believes Fisk, the conversation would not prove to be a lie when Matt uses his abilities to read her. Once they’ve met, Maya and Matt fall in love.
Maya takes on the persona of Echo and vows to find Daredevil to protect Fisk. As part of her Echo identity, she paints a white handprint on her face similar to the bloody print her father left there when he died. Having studied Daredevil’s skills, Echo proves to be a match for the Man without Fear. During their fights, Echo figures out what Daredevil’s weakness is and exploits it by leading him to a fight in a location where Daredevil’s heightened senses can’t be used. Echo wins the fight and nearly kills Daredevil until she learns that he is Matt. He then convinces her that Kingpin has been lying to her, promoting Maya to confront and shoot Fisk in the face, temporarily blinding him.
Wrestling with the ugliness and lies of her past, Echo leaves the country to deal with her changing identity. Once she returns to the US and learns that Kingpin is still alive, Maya visits him in prison who tells her that he doesn’t blame her for what she did and, in fact, still loves her like a daughter. Still in need of peace, she finds an old friend of her father’s, a Chief, who sends her on a vision quest to calm her upset soul. She eventually makes peace with her past and returns to performance art.
