She serves as the original love interest for Daredevil with first appearance occurring in 1964, under Matt Murdock's and Foggy Nelson employ as their office manager.

Her relationship with Murdock hits a downward spiral when he reveals his secret identity to her in Daredevil #57 (October 1969), setting off a long break-up which concluded with her departure from the series in issue #86 (April 1972).

After three years' absence from published stories, Karen returned for a considerable stint as a supporting character in Ghost Rider, starting with vol.

Writer Ann Nocenti gave considerably more development to their relationship, and even had Karen acting as a sidekick to Daredevil for the first time in issue #259, in which she goes undercover to help take down a child pornography ring.

When Matt introduces her to the adventuring, wisecracking aspect of his personality, in the guise of his "twin brother" Mike, she finds herself equally charmed by this side of Murdock.

Having rebuilt his life after surviving the Kingpin's machinations, Matt helps Karen beat her addiction, and they resume their relationship and begin sharing an apartment.

[12] She becomes an anti-pornography activist, [13] assists Daredevil and the Black Widow in fighting crime on separate occasions and reluctantly starts dating Matt again.

The supervillain Mysterio, as part of a plan to psychologically destroy Daredevil for one last scheme,[15] disguises himself as a doctor, performs the blood test, and tells her that she is HIV positive.

[17] After Mysterio's role in the scheme is revealed,[15] Matt attempts and fails to give Karen's eulogy, finding himself overwhelmed at the memory of her loss.

Initially bitter at Karen dying simply so that Mysterio could feel better about himself, a later conversation with Spider-Man helps Daredevil realize that the infant he's saved represents something positive that has come of the whole affair.

However, driven by his rage at the fear of losing her rather than his focused grief when he actually lost her, Matt beats the Kingpin to death for his part in Mysterio's scheme, and is subsequently arrested.

However, in the beginning of the comic book, it is revealed that the entire story is the speculation of the main Marvel Universe version of Brian Michael Bendis, the writer himself, who makes a cameo as narrator.

To cope with the stress and the fear that her father will drive the diner into bankruptcy without her around to do bookkeeping, she turns to drugs and hooks up with a dealer named Todd Neiman.

The local sheriff, Bernie Cohen, takes sympathy on the Page family and falsifies the accident report to say that Kevin was alone in the car, so that Karen does not face prison time.

In the first season of Daredevil, Karen discovers evidence that Union Allied's pension fund is being used by Wilson Fisk to launder criminal money.

In response, Fisk has her framed for fatally stabbing a coworker, Daniel Fisher, in her apartment, and intends to have a lawyer on his payroll approach Karen to extort her into giving up her copy of the pension file.

In the first attempt, Fisk's right hand man James Wesley approaches Clyde Farnum, a guard who is indebted to him, and coerces him into hanging Karen in her jail cell under the threat of having his daughter killed.

While she reluctantly signs the agreement, she is angered that the people who tried to have her killed have not been brought to justice, so she approaches Ben Urich, the New York Bulletin reporter who broke the Union Allied story, and works with him to follow the money trail.

On one occasion, two Westmeyer contractors attack Karen while she is paying a visit to Elena, though she is saved when Foggy turns up and beats the men unconscious with his softball bat.

After Fisk makes himself a public figure at the urging of his girlfriend Vanessa Marianna, Karen begins digging into his life looking for incriminating evidence against him.

She finds out that contrary to Fisk's public claims that his mother Marlene died in childhood, she is in fact alive and well, and living in a nursing home in upstate New York.

He takes her to a warehouse, and tries to intimidate her into backing down by threatening to have her friends and loved ones killed, emphasizing his threat by leaving a loaded gun (which he procured from the head of Fisk's security detail) on the table.

[24] She is deeply traumatized over committing murder, drinking heavily and having nightmares in which Fisk appears in her living room and strangles her to death with his bare hands.

[28][29][30] When Nelson & Murdock falls apart, New York Bulletin editor-in-chief Mitchell Ellison hires Karen to work for the paper so she can write an exposé on Frank's true story, setting her up in Ben's former office.

Matt is able to track the hostages down and rescue them with further aid from Frank after Karen convinces Turk Barrett to turn on his ankle bracelet to allow the police to find them, but Elektra is killed in the process.

[34][35][36] When Lewis Wilson (Daniel Webber) goes on a bombing spree, he delivers a manifesto to the Bulletin explicitly citing Karen's defense of Frank in her coverage.

To that end, she is hyperfixating on the Midland Circle collapse to a degree that Ellison begins to show concern and insists on paying the rent for his apartment even though she can barely afford her own.

Sometime later, Matt shows up at Karen's apartment asking for her help bringing in Jasper Evans, an inmate that Fisk paid to shank him as part of his plan to manipulate the FBI into letting him out of prison.

[22] They are forced to hide in the church's crypt afterwards as Dex and other corrupt FBI agents return to search the place for them, during which Karen confides in Matt about killing her brother and Wesley.

After Father Lantom's funeral, Matt and Foggy invite Karen to rejoin their firm, this time as a licensed private detective, and rename it "Nelson, Murdock, and Page".