I can agree with a lot of the stories on that fan-site list (particularly Ann Nocenti's Daredevil/Bullseye story in #284-290 with the kookiest DD/Bullseye confrontation ever in #290).  I also agree with Mike O'Brien on #159-291, although I'd back it up to the first Shooter issue (#145 or so?) and have to say that the issues from #234-249 can be pretty scattershot storywise.  The back half of the Stan Lee/Gene Colan run (#22-50) has a certain demented craziness, with all the Mike Murdock stuff.  Oddly enough, though I liked a lot of the creative teams involved and the Daredevil/Black Widow dynamic, I can't think of anything particularly recommendable from that period.  The less said about Chichester the better, but at least it led to a very enjoyable JM DeMatteis four parter (#345-348 + prologues in #343 (by Warren Ellis) and #344) and the sadly abbreviated Karl Kesel run (#353-360ish).  Joe Kelly's run that followed was decent but didn't leave much of an impression.  The rotating writer period was decent enough, I guess.  Bendis is... well, Bendis.  If you like him, you'll probably like his Daredevil.  Ed Brubaker came out solid, but ended anticlimactically.  I haven't read any of the Diggle stuff.

Peter Myhr Ness wrote: Miller's run is not only the finest run on DAREDEVIL ever, but also the best work Miller ever did.

The best work he ever did was 30 years ago?  That's like saying "your old stuff was better."  For me, I've enjoyed some of his later work as much or more than his run on DD.  For all it's detractors, I enjoyed THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and certainly enjoyed his work with his own SIN CITY characters.  We could start an entirely new thread (don't) about where we think Miller went off the rails, but I hardly think his career started going downhill after his first run on DD.

I've been spending the last few years going over my old comics, getting them ready for binding, collecting them into groups, filling in missiing issues, etc, and I put a lot of focus on Daredevil.

I like Daredevil as a crime book, not a super-hero book. Yes, the main character is a costumed crime-fighter, but the book seems to fit really easily with tales of urban crime. The first issue of Daredevil is almost pure crime story - full of tough guys and organized crime. So I enjoy what Miller emphasized in the book; some themes and characters that were already part of the series, but were fleshed out and made more authentically criminal. Under Miller, the series was dark and dirty, took place in the gutters and back alleys, covered in the blood of the innocent.

Side note: For my money, Miller never did anything worthwhile after this. His other crime book was a parody of crime, complete with Miller's indulgences, like ninjas and dinosaurs. Oddly, the film, which mirrored the comic, was as brilliant as the comic was awful, but that's just me. I do, taking a VERY unpopular stand here, very much enjoy his new Batman work - he's doing to Batman what he did to Daredevil, and it works for me. It's not as great as DD, but he's headed in the right direction. If he keeps ninjas out of it, he'll be onto something great.

After Miller's first departure, you had a decent O'Neil run where DD was less involved with street level crime and more of organized crime, which is less interesting, but still tied to the street level, and the story was REALLY interesting, and towards the end, featured David Mazzuchelli's introduction to the character.

The Miller fill-in issue wasn't much of a DD story, but was a rural crime story, so fit in with the book. Brilliant issue in retrospect.

Miller's return to the book could be my favorite comic book story of all-time (excluding JB's work). But... you know, it's the exact thing that popular opinion on this board stands against. So... understand what you're getting into. Let's set this story up - not giving any real spoilers here, since what I am about to describe happens on LITERALLY page one of the first issue, but... check this out: Page 1: We discover that Karen Page, DD's old flame/secretary (ahh, the Mad Man days when you could bang the staff!) who left DD, knowing his secret identity, to go to Hollywood to be a star, is now doing porn in Mexico, and is selling DD's secret identity for ONE fix of heroin.

Right there? that ONE PAGE? Is my favorite gut punch in the history of comics. Brilliant. Miller at his best, reaching the ranks of Jim Thompson in ONE PAGE.

I wipe away tears of respect thinking about that page.

The series goes from there. I won't get into spoilers, except to say that it shifts the tone of Daredevil; no longer a rich lawyer dealing with crime, he's now borderline homeless, dealing with crime, so it's put him in a much more interesting position. And took him to hell and back, in a sense, so very fitting.

What followed was two Steve Ditko illustrated fill-in issues, (one of which featuring one of Marvel's most awesome characters, the great Gruenwald-created Madcap) and then about a year of various writers and artists and frankly so-so super-hero type stories, though some involve a serial killer, so those are passible. But then Nocenti hits her stride, and the book, with JR Jr on art, really gets moving. DD establishes himself a criminal advocate for the poor and homeless, and fights street crime AND a series of kind of super-villians, yet ones that fit in the context of street crime and all that goes with it.

Which leads to the politics. I get the observation that Francesco made, and respect it, but I found the issues fit the situations, and I never found them too heavy-handed, or at least more than they needed to be to serve the story. In the case of Brandy and her father, the point of the hyperboyle on both their parts was to make dramatic the partisan fighting in America (if only she was writing the book now, eh??).

She had some interesting stories, but best of all, she managed to seque a stupid X-Men crossover into a new brilliant chapter in DD's character arch, where he finds himself dealing with demons and devils and ultimately confronting Satan (erm, Mephisto, I mean) himself, first in a bar (brilliant for a crime book!) and then as a regular foe, and finally in hell. DD in hell? Perfect. He comes back from hell, and we wind down with some more awesome crime stories, and then, in the end? Nocenti cleans up the toys, puts them back together, and all is wrapped up. The book has come full circle, which I say to kind of tip-toe around spoilers.

A hell of a read, for fans of crime fiction. Brilliant stuff.