Maybe Karen Deserved It?

After all, how much more thoughtless can you be than to have a picture of yourself framed with the inscription, "All my love, Karen," and give it to a blind man?

The Short Life of Mike Murdock

One of the more bizarre sagas from Marvel in the 1960s concerned Matt (Daredevil) Murdock's "twin brother", Mike. As I have discussed in the past, most superheroes are also only children, and as it happens, Matt is no exception to that trend.

The story begins in Daredevil #16. DD's enemy, the Masked Marauder, comes up with a novel idea on how to tie up two superheroes at once. He creates an army of Daredevil knockoffs and instructs them to attack Spiderman, who recently foiled one of his schemes. After the initial attack, they are to fade away, leaving the wall-crawler angry and frustrated.

The plan works to perfection. When Spidey encounters the real Daredevil, he lashes out angrily. While they are battling, the Masked Marauder pulls of a spectacular robbery. This convinces each hero that the other was in cahoots with the MM. By a bit of coincidence, Spiderman happens to be swinging by the law offices of Nelson and Murdock awhile later, and his spider-sense alerts him to the presence of Daredevil. He makes the obvious deduction that DD cannot be a blind man, and thus accuses Foggy:

Matt and Karen eventually convince Peter of the error he's made. In the following issue, DD and Spidey team up to defeat the Masked Marauder. A few issues later, Peter sends a letter to Matt Murdock, revealing that he knows that Matt is really Daredevil, but not to worry, he won't disclose the secret to anyone. Unfortunately, Matt disappears shortly afterward and Karen remembers a special delivery letter and:

This sets the stage. In DD #25, Karen and Foggy confront Matt with the letter:

Of course, Foggy points out the obvious: that he roomed with Matt at college and never heard anything about a twin brother. So Matt prevaricates some more and Karen says what does it matter now that Matt's back, but Foggy still wants to meet this mysterious sibling and so:

And for the next year and a half, Mike became a regular character in the DD universe. It's an insane plot twist but Stan manages to pull it off with some credibility because a) he acknowledges that it's crazy and b) Daredevil's abilities mean that he's able to pass Mike off as a sighted person despite being blind.

It's safe to say that most adult readers today find the storyline unbelievable and a low point. However, I remember reading these issues as a young teen and enjoying the heck out of them. Mike was the opposite of Matt in every way; confident where Matt was tentative, arrogant instead of sensitive and relishing letting Foggy and Karen know he was Daredevil. He flirts outrageously with Karen and teases Foggy abut his weight. What teenaged boy wouldn't want to try being a new person, confident and breezy, especially with the understanding that he could always go back to being the meek and mild-mannered guy if things didn't work out?

Again this is not to deny how ridiculous the stories are. Because Matt and Mike couldn't appear together, Matt was forced to rely on a series of increasingly implausible ruses to keep the imposture going:


And he apparently enjoyed being Mike so much that he began to get some decidedly weird ideas:

For a lawyer, Matt doesn't think things through very carefully.

In Daredevil #41, Mike (as Daredevil) is "killed" while destroying a machine that moves people into another time dimension. Is this the end of the superhero as well? Umm, no, as Matt tells the Jester (plus Foggy and Karen) in the next issue:


Blog into Mystery covers one of the early Mike Murdock stories here. There were two oddities that I noticed while reading the stories in this run:

1. The villain from last month's issue is frequently rescued by this month's villain. This happens to the Gladiator (rescued by the Masked Marauder in DD #19), the Leap-Frog (attempted rescue by the Stilt-Man in DD #26) and the Stilt-Man (rescued by the Masked Marauder at the end of DD #26).

2. The villains often attempted to blind (temporarily or otherwise) DD. The Masked Marauder hits him with an "Opti-Ray" blast that had briefly blinded Spiderman. The Gladiator threw sand in Daredevil's face in #23. The alien invaders in #28 use a "sight-stealing ray". The Cobra and Mr Hyde actually succeed in eliminating DD's extra senses with a potion intended to blind him in #30-32. And Dr. Doom's hynoticon in #37 fails precisely because ol' Horn-Head is sightless (just as the Ringmaster's hat was unable to hypnotize him in Amazing Spiderman #16).

Single Issue Review: Daredevil #12

I was flipping through this one today and thought with current events in the world it would make for a topical review. This is Johnny Romita's first effort for Marvel. Daredevil had struggled to find a regular artist during its history. The first issue was drawn by Bill Everett, #s 2-4 by Joe Orlando, and #s 5-11 by Wally Wood. Wood bailed to start up Tower Comics, as I discussed. So this marked what might have been a long run at Daredevil for Romita, had fate not had other plans for him.

As the story begins, Matt is leaving Karen and Foggy behind. Believing that Karen doesn't love him, Matt has decided to go on a long cruise to leave the field open for Foggy. But as he boards the ship he hears a passenger ask a curious question:



And Stan doesn't put those foreshadowing bits in there for nothing:



But the pirates hadn't planned on DD being aboard:



Unfortunately for DD, the Plunderer has a trump card in the form of hostages. Surprisingly however:



Does that reply by the Plunderer sound more than a little gay? Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that this comic has some very weird displays of affection going on. From another part of the story check out this:



The Plunderer is your classic loony:



We learn that his ship can convert to a submarine and that his hideout is called Skull Island which is located in a hidden land (of course, Ka-Zar's hidden land). But when they arrive at Skull Island, it has been raided by the Swamp Men. Before the Plunderer can seek his revenge against them, however, he is raided by Ka-Zar and Zabu. We get the obligatory good guy fight scene:



But later, when Daredevil is wounded, Ka-Zar remembers the courageous way he fought and brings the fallen hero back to his cave. The issue ends on a cliffhanger note, with DD near death's door as Ka-Zar tries to get some medicinal berries from a man-eating plant:



Comments: I really like this issue. The bit with the Plunderer not actually robbing the cruise ship seems unlikely, but it's a classic 1960s spy thriller plot device. Romita's artwork (with layouts by Kirby) hits home in every panel.

Update: A more critical reaction at the Comic Treadmill several years ago:

This story, involving pirates, the Savage Land and international intrigue, was beautifully suited for Kirby and Romita’s art. And it looks pretty. But what the heck was Daredevil doing in the middle of this? Like Spider-Man, Daredevil works well in an urban setting and stands out like Capt. Underpants at a JLA meeting when moved into fantasy realms.

A fair criticism. One thing is obvious about Stan Lee; he did things by the seat of his pants and often struggled for awhile to find appropriate villains and settings for his characters before hitting his stride.

Electro Prototype at Charlton?

Here's a July 1960 Charlton featuring the work of Steve Ditko. The opening story should be of some interest to Spiderman and Daredevil fans, as it features the appearance of a clear prototype for Webhead and Hornhead's longtime foe, Electro. George Clinton (pre-Funkadelic) is an accountant who suddenly and inexplicably finds his body supercharged with electricity. This look a little familiar?



Quite a bit like this:



Clinton goes out into the countryside so as to not be a danger to others, but then suddenly he senses a purpose:



And he sends a bolt skyward:



Comments: The story is ho-hum, but of course the Ditko artwork and the Electro connection make it much more interesting. Ditko seems to be experimenting with his style here; I certainly don't recall him doing lots of close-up portraits as he did in this story.

Random Issue Review: Daredevil #50

A very mediocre cover, with mediocre elements. The villain is big and green, and he's the only person doing anything dramatic (smashing a car). Daredevil is on his knees and holding his head, while a couple of bystanders are apparently shouting. Even the literary title is well below the mean: If In Battle I Fail--! Stan's not trying very hard with that one.

The story is a continuation from the previous issue, which is one of the problems with doing single issue reviews of Marvel Comics from the Silver Age. However, this was not an uncommon problem with collecting comics; sometimes I'd pick up an issue like this at a garage sale and not find the prior one for years (if ever).

DD is battling a robot (who is actually colored purple, not green) as we begin the story. Over the course of the story we learn what's going on both with the battle (a crook named Biggie Benson hired a robot-maker to destroy Daredevil) and with the soap opera (Foggy has been elected DA and Karen and Matt are on the splits again).

Daredevil succeeds in confusing the robot so it no longer remembers who is its target. It goes off in search of its maker, with DD in hot pursuit. Seeing DD, the maker tries desperately to load his picture into the "aromascope", which will target the robot again. But by accident, he loads Biggie Benson's photo instead. As the story ends, DD has broken into the jail but is wounded and largely incapacitated as the robot breaks in.

Comments: Not a great story; the robot is a pretty dull villain. The artwork is notably not by Gene Colan, DD's regular artist, but by a very young Barry Smith. Smith would go on to great fame in the 1970s for his work on Conan the Barbarian, but this is still early in his career and he had not yet developed his own unique style and indeed seems to be trying to imitate Colan. Smith did three issues of Daredevil (#s 50-52) and showed growth with every outing. Here's one dynamic sequence:



Solid work, but not yet the transcendent art we would get from Mr Smith in the next few years.

The Blinded Daredevil

A play, as George M. Cohan pointed out, is composed of three acts. In Act I, you get the hero up a tree. In Act II, you throw stones at him. In Act III, you get him down from the tree. Many superhero stories follow this simple formula. But there are two rather crucial parts that sometimes don't work. First, the stones thrown at the hero in Act II can't be too deadly. And second, the method of getting him down from the tree must be credible.

In Daredevil #30-32 (July-August, 1967), Stan went a little too far on both counts. The series features Daredevil against the old Thor villains, Mr Hyde and the Cobra. Matt figures out that they must be behind the series of robberies in the city. And since he reasons that he can't just patrol the city to find them, he decides to dress up like Thor to draw them out.

Well, you can probably see the fly heading rapidly towards that ointment. Sure enough, Don Blake hears that Thor is plying his trade in midtown and pounds his cane. Before you can say Ragnarok, Thor and DD are doing the classic Marvel, "I'm a hero and I know you are too, but let's fight for a couple pages so they can put it on the cover!" routine.



But eventually they stop clobbering each other and Thor flies off. And the villains DD had been hoping to attract show up. At first they attack him, but Mr Hyde has a better plan--let him follow them back to their nearby lab, where:



Well, the stuff in the test tube is supposed to make one blind. But since Daredevil is already blind, it has no effect, right? Heheh. Sorry, Marvel science doesn't work that way. Since he's already blind it takes away DD's special powers of hearing and the other senses he uses to compensate for his blindness.

Okay, so the hero's up in the branches and leafs and the stones are being hurled at him. But the story takes a twist. Mr Hyde and the Cobra, sensing that DD is no longer a threat, abandon him. DD somehow manages to find his way back to his apartment (apparently not thinking of changing his clothes). Matt does some heavy thinking. Since Foggy and Karen know DD is actually Matt's supposed twin brother Mike, if Daredevil is suddenly blind he'd better make sure that Mike appears to have been blinded as well.

And if the logic of that is as impenetrable to you as it is to me, congratulations, you've been paying attention, because none of this makes a whole lot of sense. So Mike shows up at the office, displaying signs of having lost his eyesight. Karen of course reacts selflessly:



Fortunately the tender scene is broken by the Cobra and Mr Hyde, who have taken up occupation of a nearby rooftop and are threatening havoc. So Mike gets into his DD duds, gets Foggy to help him up to the top of their building, so he can throw his billy-club line across to the villains. And DD tight-ropes his way across the wire, blind and unaided by his other senses, which freaks the crooks out so much they take off.

But they come back and realize that DD is indeed still blind. So they decide to take him back to their lab. Their other lab, not the barn they were in during the battle two issues ago. This one is in a lighthouse. DD goes along with them because he knows he needs the antidote, which Hyde has surely prepared for his blindness potion. And of course once they get to the lighthouse there is a battle, DD eventually gets the antidote, and fortunately guesses right that it has to be swallowed, not splashed on the side of his head like the original potion:



From there, DD makes short work of the Cobra, although Mr Hyde is able to escape. It's an entertaining storyline overall, but it strains credulity to the snapping point. The stones are too rough, and the way that the hero gets down from the tree is not believable.