Daredevil Part 3, The Romita Era

Originally posted January 30, 2009

John Romita fondly remembers working on Daredevil and he commented on a panel recently that he always wanted to draw more Daredevil, but never got to. These issues are a lot of fun and I wish he’d gotten to do more of them too.



Daredevil 12-14

I’m kind of confused as to what Jack Kirby did as layout man and what Romita did as illustrator. Does that mean that Kirby did a rough sketch of the whole comic and Romita polished it up?

Romita’s Matt Murdock looks great on the splash page as he walks away from his office at the start of what will become a crazy adventure. Then on page two we get a look at Romita’s Daredevil and boy is he freaking ripped. I don’t understand how Matt hides a Mr. Universe body under those suits! And I’m not even sure all those muscles exist.

Then there’s a cool shot on the bottom of page 2 of all of DDs past villains.

This whole storyline is kind of odd. Matt goes on a cruise and gets involved with a pirate called the Plunderer who takes him to the Savage Land in Antarctica in a submarine, where he meets Ka-zar. These issues are only Ka-zar’s second appearance.

Through a series of plot devices the Plunderer gets this magic rock that melts metal and the Plunderer makes a magic gun out of it that destroys other guns. Then the Plunderer and his gang start to take down armies. I was screaming at the comic book that they just needed to get some plastic guns, and of course Daredevil said something along those lines a few panels later. That made me happy.

Overall I thought this whole storyline was kind of ish.



Daredevil 15

“And Men Shall Call Him Ox!” This issue had me riveted from the cover to the end.

Ox and his cellmate a rat-faced scientist break out of jail. Rat-face then tells Ox he’s going to make him smarter, but what he does is put his brain in Ox’s body. However the process doesn’t work that well and the new Ox can’t control his savage rage.

In the end new Ox falls off a skyscraper while fighting Daredevil! I was surprised that there was an actual death.

Meanwhile “Ox” in the scientist’s body comments that he feels smarter and that maybe everything that happened was for the best.

I think Romita was really starting to click.



Daredevil 16 and 17

Romita meet Spider-Man, Spider-man meet Romita. Oh little did Romita know that he would be drawing our favorite wall-crawler for years to come, not soon after these issues.

I don’t have these in color but I think Peter Parker is wearing his classic blue coat and yellow shirt.

I love the Masked Marauder, you’ve got to love a villain whose answer to everything is to blind the guy. I can just picture him in Starbucks blinding the barista who forgot his soymilk.

The battles between Daredevil and Spider-Man are excellent. Just like in the Sub-mariner/Daredevil battle DD knows he’s outclassed, but he doesn’t give up without a fight. DD is like Little Mac from NES’s Punch-out, the eternal underdog with heart.

I don’t get how Spider-Man’s spider-sense tells him that Daredevil is in Nelson and Murdock’s office. The Spider-sense alerts him to danger and DD isn’t dangerous.



Daredevil 18-19

Foggy Nelson goes overboard trying to impress Karen Page by pretending to be DD. He goes to a shady costume shop and buys a Daredevil costume.

The owner turns out to be an aspiring super-villain called the Gladiator. The full-page pin-up shot of the villain on page 10 is priceless.

I love the shots of the chubby Foggy in the Daredevil costume. It is frustrating though that Foggy’s weight fluctuates from issue to issue. Sometimes he looks like he’s gotten into shape and then in the next issue it looks like he’s been eating too many Big Macs again.

The Gladiator and the Masked Marauder both end up thinking that Foggy is Daredevil but luckily they can’t stop fighting among themselves long even to actually threaten anyone, but they do run off together threatening to strike again another day.

Daredevil the Early Years Part 2

Daredevil 7

Originally posted January 20, 2009

Maybe it’s coincidence, but something very special happened in this the first issue in which Daredevil dons the red suit that he would wear from that point on, everything started to click!

The art by Wally Wood is Fantastic, Tremendous, Stupendous, and Spectacular. (I’m running out of adjectives.) This issue was hyped by fans as one of the best comics ever, and well, it lives up to that title.

The story involves Namor coming to the surface to seek legal rights to land. Of course he ends up at the law offices of Nelson and Murdock.

The battles in this issue are excellent. Daredevil is clearly not in Namor’s class in terms of strength and endurance, but Namor can’t help but admire Daredevil’s courage.

Highly recommended.



Daredevil 8

Another great issue. It begins with Daredevil saving a woman about to be run over by an
out-of-control driver-less car.

“Keep screaming! Don’t Stop! Don’t Stop Screaming!” Daredevil yells at her as he swings towards her. I couldn’t help but wonder what she must have thought. She must have thought he was nuts.

After saving her he throws her onto an awning and thinks “Lucky I knew that the corner store always has its awning down at this hour.” Why has this guy memorized helicopter schedules (issue 2) and awning schedules for the whole city? Doesn’t the outline of an awning show up on his radar sense?

Then Daredevil drives the driver-less car with his radar sense, the car turns out to have a bomb on it, but Daredevil manages to get it out of harm’s way. Lucky teenage Matt Murdock learned how to drive a car before he went blind I guess.

I know that the Stilt Man is portrayed as kind of ridiculous in modern appearances, but in this appearance I thought he managed to seem like a real threat. When he robs a helicopter, the men try and shoot him and the bullets just bounce off his armor. So you can’t shoot him, even from the air, and on the ground all you can do is try and grab his fast moving legs, plus it seems that he can go from 40 stories to normal sized in the blink of an eye.

Daredevil finds himself climbing up Stilt Man’s long legs in order to try and actually fight him at all. But it’s a task that is easier said than done.



Daredevil 9

This issue is more evidence of Stan’s struggles to give Daredevil problems seeming extremely inorganic (Rip Jagger’s word).

At the start of the comic Daredevil is fighting some boat hijackers and he gets shot in the arm. He treats the wound at home himself. Now I remember issues where Spider-man gets his arm hurt and has it in a sling. I remember these issues being awesome and the injury adding a lot to the drama, but Daredevil just kind of plods along for the whole issue. Wood and Powell keep the continuity, Daredevil doesn’t use his bad arm, but it doesn’t seem to slow him down, in fact Daredevil fights a robot army one handed. It sounds remarkable here, but on the page it’s kind of ho-hum.

Daredevil’s just a guy that does what he can to fight crime in Hell’s Kitchen. To have him battling robots in a Latveria-like eastern-block dictatorship just seems very out of his wheelhouse.

Nowhere is this more evident than when the dictator launches a radioactive attack and Daredevil just kind of leaves it for somebody else to figure out.



Daredevil 10-11

Billed as a mystery thriller, this two-parter fails to be anything remarkable IMHO.

I love a good mystery, there were some good ones around this time in Amazing Spider-Man: Who was the Big Man, the Crime Master, and of course the Green Goblin? All three were interesting, suspenseful and ultimately satisfying.

The way the mystery is presented is just kind of dull. No one knows who the Crime lord the Organizer is, but we know he has some connection to the Reform Party. So he has to be Politician A, B, or C. But who cares, none of them are significant characters in the Daredevil comic. That's not dramatic! Why didn’t Wally and Stan make it seem like anyone could have been the Organizer: the Police Chief, Spider-Man, Foggy Nelson. That would have been interesting. Nelson is Matt’s best friend, it would have been interesting to explore what it would take for Matt to begin to doubt his friend.

The henchmen in this tale are another oddity. Each one is recruited for possessing some kind of unique ability. The Cat Man has good eyesight even in the dark? Why? Is he a mutant? Do his goggles do it?

The Frog Man was trained by the military to perform task underwater, the Ape Man is strong, the Bird Man, I’m completely stumped, maybe he was just the right height and weight for the suit. (Is it the same technology as the Vultures’?) And how are these guys still good enough fighters in these suits to take on Daredevil? Other then Bird Man and Frog Man who have equipment in their suits, why do they need suits? It’s all kind of silly.

(Plus, I have no idea how Cat Man gets Ape Man out of prison and later appears to get his Cat Suit for the first time with everyone else.)

Not so Mellow Yellow- Daredevil the Early Years Part 1

Originally posted January 19, 2009

Punk Funk Junk was kind enough to sent me Daredevil Essentials Vol. 1 during our Christmas exchange and so I started Daredevil’s earliest adventures for the first time.

Daredevil is a character that bothers me just a little, because he can hear people’s heartbeats clearly enough to identify them and yet I’ve never heard it explained how he can also manage to not clutch his ears in pain every time he hears a really loud noise. Frank Miller did a great job when Daredevil goes down to the subway and it completely messes with his radar sense to the point that he can hardly function. In DD 1, Daredevil pursues his father’s murderers down into the subway and has no trouble at all.

However, other than that quibble I did really enjoy these issues and can’t wait to read more.

Daredevil and Spider-man comics seem to be very similar thematically at this stage in the sense that both fight larger than life villains, and both balance being a hero with dealing with romantic troubles. Daredevil seems to have it much easier than Spider-man because he has a great job as a lawyer and Daredevil is not thought of as an outlaw.



Daredevil 1

I was really impressed with how much story is jammed into Daredevil 1. To go back to the Spider-Man analogy we see Matt Murdock go through school and become a lawyer in the first issue. Spider-man still has never managed to grow up and become a scientist in 40 years!

The art for Daredevil’s origin I didn’t think really worked, he pushes the guy out of the path of the oncoming truck, but how does he get exposed to chemicals, wouldn’t that have been in the back of the truck? And you never even see the chemicals or vapor or anything.

The evolution of Daredevil’s Billy club is interesting too. It starts out as a sort of cane looking thing and every issue he seems to be making it do new things. Until finally after his suit changes to red, he uses the club to get around town like Spider-Man. Thats not the only thing that evolves, Daredevil seems to use trial and error with his costume too. The yellow one he wore changes subtlety from issue to issue. In issue 3 he puts a pouch on the back of the costume for his street-clothes, but in the next issue he realizes that this is too dangerous.

Daredevil 2

I really liked the art by Joe Orlando, truly fantastic.

The cameo by The Thing and the FF was fun.

I found the explanations for Daredevil being able to land the rocket ship really unbelievable and then he hooks on to a helicopter and knows the exact second to let go in order to land on the Baxter Building. He says he knows the plane’s schedule. What does he do this all the time? But the full page art of Daredevil hanging on the copter with the city below him is stunning.

Daredevil 3

The Owl is kind of an interesting villain. Seems almost like a Batman villain in this issue. I thought it was ridiculous how proud he was that his cape enables him to glide down on the wind. Yeah that's really useful as long as you have some place really high to jump off of and enough wind otherwise it’s completely useless.



Daredevil 4

I really dug the Purple Man because he did have a valid defense, technically he never broke any laws, his super-power over people just convinces them to do whatever he wants, so he goes into a bank and he just asks for the money and people hand it over.

So Daredevil had to out think him, which I always enjoy.

And it’s great that all you have to do to defeat him is to cover his skin.



Daredevil 5

Daredevil the swashbuckler meets his match in courage and style, the Matador. The Matador robs an armored car by standing in front of it and then at the last second throwing his cape at it, now that’s a villain with chutzpa.

The Matador’s fights with Daredevil are a treat because the two are very evenly matched. They fight at a party and Daredevil is at a disadvantage because the noise of the crowd screws up his radar sense, (it is explained how the radar sense works in this issue) and as a final indignity the Matador cover Daredevil with a sheet and this completely disrupts Daredevil’s radar sense.

Wally Wood’s art is good, but so far I haven’t been blown away by it and actually prefer Orlando’s work.

Daredevil 6

This issue is interesting because the “Man without Fear” fights Mr. Fear and true to his name this guy has a fear gun that shoots pellets whose gas can make anyone afraid. Daredevil soon learns that even he is not immune when he promptly runs away after being exposed to it, but where as Spider-man would probably beat himself up over turning chicken for half an issue Daredevil only broods for about a panel and then just comes back swinging.