Foggy Nelson

FIRST APPEARANCE: Daredevil Vol. 1 #1 (April 1964)

Franklin "Foggy" Nelson was born and raised in New York City. He was the son of Rosalind "Razor" Sharpe, a ruthless attorney who deserted her husband not long after their son was born. Foggy rarely saw his mother during his youth, instead being raised by his father Edward Nelson and stepmother Anna. In High School Foggy met and fell in love with Debbie Harris. But the two broke up when they graduated.

Foggy excelled in school being accepted in to Columbia Law School. He became roommates with Matt Murdock. Matt protected Foggy against bullies and helped him study. For the first six months of their rooming together Foggy snored very loudly, with Matt comparing him to a human foghorn. It was from then the nickname stuck. When Matt began dating Elektra Natchios, Foggy disapproved, because he thought she was dangerous (which turned out to be extremely true). After Elektra left the university, Matt and Foggy transferred to Harvard Law School.

After graduating, Matt and Foggy opened up a private law practice Nelson and Murdock. They hired a secretary named Karen Page who Foggy developed a crush on. Unbeknownst to Foggy Matt decided to avenge his father by taken up the costumed identity of "Daredevil". He worried about his friend during this tough time. One of their earliest clients was the Fantastic Four, Foggy helped regarding the lease on the Baxter Building. Leland Owlsley was taken to court over tax fraud, and so he hired Nelson & Murdock to represent him. But after some investigation they learn of his true nature and had him arrested.[9] Their next client was Zebediah Killgrave who kidnapped Karen. Foggy and his friends went to a wax museum to see the new Daredevil exhibit. But they notice Ox and the Eel he tried to investigate but was injured in a fight between Daredevil and the villains. In hospital Matt protected his friend from the Fellowship. He avenged Foggy, just in time to witness him come to. Another client was Namor who came for legal aid to stop the surface world from harming the sea. Foggy next client was Wilbur Day, a former employee of Kaxton Laboratories, where he invented hydraulic lifts which his boss Carl Kaxton had stolen the patents. Foggy met with a former exchange student from their post-secondary days named Klaus Kruger who is the Duke of Lichtenbad. Who recommended an Eye clinic in his own country to Matt, to which he visited, but was revealed to be a trap. Foggy never found out what happened and assumed that Matt chickened out at the last moment.

Matt was outed as Daredevil by the media and was eventually arrested. After Foggy went to visit Matt in prison with private investigator Dakota North, he was stabbed and seriously injured by several inmates. Matt heard his friend's heartbeat slowly cease, and Foggy was declared dead sometime after the ambulance took him away. Murdock later attended Foggy's funeral only for Foggy's grieving mother Rosalind Sharpe to blame him for what happened to her son.

Later it was revealed that Foggy Nelson had not actually died at all, but was rather placed in the FBI's witness protection program where he was recovering from his wounds and beginning to assume a new identity. He attempted to escape in an effort to reunite with Matt, only to be captured by the mafia, who in turn were slaughtered by ninjas of the Hand under order from their current mistress Elektra. They returned him to his former captors, after informing him that they would be watching him.

After Vanessa Marianna's role in this was revealed Foggy was released and reunited with Matt, where they agreed to move their law offices to a new location where they would take referrals only to avoid drawing attention from Daredevil's enemies with Becky Blake joining them as a law partner.

Later, the Kingpin used a judge on his payroll to have Foggy disbarred. When the judge overturned a jury's verdict of not punishing the surviving victims from the protest against Oscorp, Foggy stood up in protest since they were the only surviving protesters who were not killed when Bullseye had destroyed their building. Working with Dakota North, who had recently lost her private investigators license, he discovered that the Kingpin was trying to frame Norman Osborn to get to Matt and manipulate his actions with the Hand.

Years later, Foggy was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a type of cancer which formed in his hip. Matt sought help of Hank Pym to combat the disease by shrinking down and going inside Foggy's body to combat stray tumor cells. While the treatment wasn't successful and only helped stop the spread, Matt intended for it to lift Foggy's spirits. After Matt Murdock revealed his identity of Daredevil to the world, he determined that Foggy's life would be in danger, and tried to convince him to fake his own death. When a new Leap-Frog tried to capture Foggy, Matt took advantage of the villain deciding to self-destruct his armor to fake Foggy's death. Matt convinced him to jump into the armor and leap as high up as possible before it set off. The armor exploded, but Foggy was rescued by Pym shrinking him down. After successfully having his death faked, Foggy moved to San Francisco to accompany Matt's own relocation, but lived under the radar. When Matt got a deal to write an autobiography for Kirsten McDuffie's father Wendell, Foggy agreed to ghostwrite the book for him.

Foggy's survival became public not long afterwards when the deranged vigilante the Shroud broadcast malefic footage of Matt's personal and professional life. Later on, Daredevil rescued the Purple Children from their father, the Purple Man, who attempted to use them to power a machine capable of taking his mind-controlling abilities to a global scale. After the Purple Man's defeat, the Purple Children decided to repay Daredevil by using the machine to erase from the mind of everybody in the world the knowledge that Daredevil was Matt Murdock. Foggy was also affected by the Purple Children's actions, but he quickly re-learned Matt's secret and became his only confidant. Despite the fact that the Purple Children acted without Matt's permission, Foggy became aggrieved and distanced himself from Matt.

Without Daredevil, and after having beaten cancer, Foggy managed to rebuild his life. However, Matt pulled Foggy back into his life not long afterwards, seeking his help to take a case to the Supreme Court. Despite Foggy's initial reluctance, they worked together and even started patching up their friendship. Soon after Matt accepted the position of deputy mayor of New York under Wilson Fisk's administration, the city fell victim to a siege from The Hand, and Fisk was fatally injured.[66] Matt became the mayor for the duration of the crisis and until Fisk recovered. During his brief tenure, Matt appointed Foggy as chief of staff. After stepping down from the role, Matt quit working for Fisk altogether.