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Daredevil #269Issue(s): Daredevil #269 Review/plot: Pyro and Blob are sent by Spiral after a mutant for which no information is provided. ![]() That's a nice jacket Pyro is wearing. I'm pretty sure Gambit will eventually steal it from him, though. As soon as they get into town, they blow up the local windmill while discussing how sexy Spiral is. And then they turn their lusty attention to the teenaged old girl they've been sent to apprehend. ![]() ![]() Nocenti was X-editor for a long time, so she knows that Pyro is Australian, and she sure is selling that, ain't i blimey right, mate? Shrimponnabarbie! (Am i doing it right?) Blob and Pyro's interactions with the local sheriff don't look Mystique-approved... ![]() ![]() ...and then they go to the local bar where the blob sexually harasses the bartender. ![]() ![]() Daredevil, meanwhile, continues to walk the earth like Caine, and he winds up in the same town as the Freedom Force guys. He does not support the Mutant Registration Act. ![]() Sensing what he's going to be getting into, he buys an endless round of shots for the mutants, figuring that it will even the odds when he gets into a fight with them later. ![]() While Blob is still living it up, Pyro hears info about the girl they are searching for, and he leaves without his partner to go after her. Daredevil follows, and actually gets there first. The girl, Amanda, is up in a church's bell tower, being protected by some of the local townspeople. So Daredevil knocks them all out and takes Amanda with him. There's a lantern in the room, and when Pyro arrives he causes it to burst into deadly flames, which should have killed all the guards that DD knocked out, but a couple of thought bubbles assure us that the guards have somehow safely escaped (no thanks to DD). So Daredevil fights Pyro, and is no match for his, er, smoke so dense that it reflects DD's billy club. ![]() Despite being tipsy, Pyro is able to knock Daredevil out and take the girl. ![]() When Daredevil wakes up, he goes back to the bar where the Blob's sexual harassment has graduated into something worse. ![]() But Daredevil is able to put a stop to things by telling the Blob that Pyro has captured the mutant without him. And that gets Blob jealous. ![]() So far my complaint has just been that despite numerous chewing-outs by Mystique and Val Cooper, the Blob and Pyro still can't seem to understand how to behave as federal agents. It may be overdoing it but it's not out of character. But this idea that the Blob is... i don't even know what, exactly, to call his obsession with this mutant girl, except that it really makes him look mentally ill well beyond anything i've seen from him anywhere else. While Blob and Pyro are fighting, Amanda escapes, and now they have to fight Daredevil again to get through her. This time, Daredevil quickly takes out Pyro's flamethrowers. ![]() That really shouldn't take Pyro out of the fight, since there is plenty of other flame in this town for Pyro to control. But it does, so now Daredevil goes one on one with the Blob. ![]() Amanda's power is sort of like a one-way telekinesis, the ability to pull objects to her. She rescues DD from the Blob during the fight. ![]() And then Daredevil blinds the Blob. ![]() And Amanda pulls the church bell down on top of him. ![]() ![]() Spiral shows up at the end to teleport Blob and Pyro home. ![]() And then a really weird ending with Amanda's thoughts. ![]() I can see what Nocenti is trying to do here, and if she had ownership of the character, it could be good to develop the idea that the Blob deep down just feels unloved because of his appearance and that's why he acts the way he does and even inappropriately harasses women. But it's coming out of nowhere here, and it's weird that Pyro doesn't react to it and even seems to agree with the idea that the mutant girl might "love" one of them. And then the Blob's rant about her being ruined is especially weird. This isn't quite as bad as Nocenti's mishandling of Sabretooth in Daredevil #238, but it's along the same lines. Amanda's thoughts veering off at the end are also strange. On the other hand, a really nice set of fight sequences from John Romita Jr.! Quality Rating: C Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A References: N/A Crossover: N/A Continuity Insert? N My Reprint: N/A Inbound References (3): showCharacters Appearing: Blob, Daredevil, Pyro, Spiral CommentsI'm not buying the idea that a falling bell tower could knock out the Blob but Rogue tossing him halfway across San Francisco in X-Men 206 couldn't. Posted by: Michael | October 12, 2014 1:22 PM Love the "Three Stooges" eye-poke that Daredevil gives the Blob. Posted by: clyde | October 12, 2014 1:43 PM Has it ever been made clear just how tough the Blob is supposed to be? It seems like stories tend to peg him as functionally invulnerable until he needs to lose the fight, then he's not. Posted by: entzauberung | October 12, 2014 1:53 PM Several writers have established that his eyes,mouth, inner ears, etc. aren't as invulnerable as the rest of him. But usually it takes someone like Wonder Man or Colossus or Rogue to knock him out. Posted by: Michael | October 12, 2014 2:12 PM According to a 1990s Marvel Roleplaying game book, Blob has "Unearthly (100)" body armor against physical attacks. Colossus has "Amazing (50)" for the same. I only cite the RPG stats for the approximate thinking at the time; i'm sure they're not considered canon. Personally i'd think that his protection is weaker around his head, which might help explain why he can get thrown across a city and land ok but not take a heavy hit to the head like that as easily. Posted by: fnord12 | October 12, 2014 2:14 PM This is just another example of the frequent changes in relative power that happens when villains who fight powerful characters (Mr Hyde in Thor, Electro and Scorpion in ASM) show up in titles with less powerful characters (Mr Hyde and Electro in Daredevil, Scorpion in Captain America). There are plenty of other examples. All of a sudden that don't seem anywhere near as strong or tough, and are constantly taken out by lucky shots or just act stupidly. Sometimes they are within plausibility even if the fight could have been done better; other times not. Posted by: Chris | October 12, 2014 2:42 PM Ann Nocenti is indeed something of an acquired taste. Her scripts swim effortlessly in the seas of depression and despair. Come to think of it, that might explain Longshot, and perhaps even why she never wrote the character after the original six-issue miniseries. Longshot is ultimately a very tragic character, and the people around him even more so. But he is a logical reaction and even progression to the typical Nocenti character: skilfully handled madness and selective amnesia in order to overcome crippling depression. You can sort of see Matt becoming Longshot in personality if Nocenti retained the character long enough. This issue (and your review) are particularly revealing. You can almost touch the sheer loneliness coming from Blob and how deeply it taxes his sanity. Amanda is an interesting parallel. While the issue seems to go no further than hinting of it, she feels directionless and, much like Blob, Matt himself or Karen Page, is instinctively seeking a relatioship in order to lend her security and purpose. She is not really suited to live a normal life, nor can she even trust her own government to leave her alone, nor is she is a position to seek a future with the X-Men or the Avengers with such limited powers. That is pure Nocenti. The writer of characters that are so darned easy to relate to, and whose deep horror is that much scary because it is rooted in such familiar dilemmas. Posted by: Luis Dantas | October 12, 2014 5:37 PM At a guess, Nocenti is taking something from the Blob's first appearance in Uncanny X-Men #3 -- his somewhat aggressive advances towards teenage Jean Grey -- and pushing it to the point of absurdity. It doesn't really work, any more than it really works when Scott Lobdell and Mark Waid later dredge up Xavier's "crush" on Jean from a stray though bubble from the same period. I suppose we can No-Prize the Blob's defeat here by suggesting that his invulnerability is bolstered by his gravity power, and he's too drunk to use it well here. And, as fnord12 suggests, his power is down to his mutated adipose tissue, and the top of his head doesn't have much of that kind of tissue. But again, it doesn't really work. But yes, the Blob's invulnerability has always been inconsistently handled; for that matter, his level of super-strength seems to fluctuate depending on the needs of the story as well. Posted by: Omar Karindu | May 24, 2018 9:02 AM The most hilarious example of that has to be the Blob's entry in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. After the entry appeared, there was a correction- "Numerous readers have pointed out that the entry described the Blob as possessing normal human strength even though one of the accompanying illustrations showed him using his superhuman strength". Posted by: Michael | May 24, 2018 10:52 PM The most hilarious example of that has to be the Blob's entry in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. After the entry appeared, there was a correction- "Numerous readers have pointed out that the entry described the Blob as possessing normal human strength even though one of the accompanying illustrations showed him using his superhuman strength". Interestingly, the original Handbook did list the Blob as being super-strong; this was inexplicably removed in the Deluxe Edition. So much of this issue is just Nocenti plugging the characters into a certain kind of stock Western plot, with Blob and Pyro as the bullying thugs terrorizing the town and Matt as the lonesome stranger who appears, saves the day, and rides off at the end as the girl wistfully hopes he won't. But it requires bending a lot of superhero genre rules and Marvel Universe elements, and making the girl thirteen just adds a layer of WTF to a lot of it. Posted by: Omar Karindu | May 25, 2018 6:44 AM Comments are now closed. |
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