Issue(s): Daredevil #104, Daredevil #105, Daredevil #106, Daredevil #107
Cover Date: Oct 73 - Jan 74
Title: "Prey of the hunter!" / "Menace from the moons of Saturn! / Moon Dragon" / "Life be not proud!" / "Blind man's bluff!"
Credits:
Steve Gerber - Writer
Don Heck / Don Heck & Jim Starlin / Bob Brown - Penciler
Sal Trapani / Don Perlin / Sal Buscema - Inker

Review/plot:
This arc starts off with the Black Widow and Daredevil practicing in their private gym. It's just a power demonstration scene and i'd normally pass over it except the Black Widow makes mention of having been in the Bolshoi ballet and the Russian Olympics gymnast team.

Also because of some weird poses.

A little later, there's a rare, albeit clumsy, acknowledgement of Matt Murdock's blindness

Meanwhile, Kraven the Hunter is hired by a mysterious stranger and sent after Daredevil.

I don't really think of Kraven as an assassin type (even granted that he doesn't accept the money). He hunts Spider-Man because Spidey is a quasi-animal as far as he's concerned, and wanted by the police; i don't see him going after a regular super-hero like Daredevil.

DD has a pretty tough time against Kraven too, but not as bad as the Black Widow, who is in full-out damsel in distress mode.

Daredevil winds up getting thrown off a cliff by Kraven...

...but he's teleported away before he crashes. He winds up in an undersea lab run by Moondragon.

Moondragon was under the impression that Daredevil was a thrall of Thanos and she's been helping Matt Murdock's boss Kerwin Broderick secretly take over the city by creating super-villains for him, including Ramrod, Angar the Screamer, the Dark Messiah, and Terrex (not Galactus' Terrax). After sorting things out with DD (including a depiction of her origin by Jim Starlin - her parents killed in a car crash (later revealed to be the result of an attack by Thanos), she was taken to Titan and raised by the Shao-Lom Monastery, where she learned martial arts and genetics), she gets shot by Kerwin.

Meanwhile, the Black Widow defeats Kraven (which i guess makes up for her poor showing earlier) and gets close with Lt. Paul Carson.

After this scene a narration box tells us to ponder Carson's non-sequitur.

As Broderick leaves to merge with Terrex, Moondragon restores DD's sight so that he can use her technology to heal her wound. Then they meet back up with the Black Widow to fight the Dark Messiah and Ramrod. Angar switches sides after Terrax kills his girlfriend because she was telling Angar not to get involved with these people. Angar is dealing with his mental problems and he keeps saying "I am David Angar. I am sane."

Captain Mar-vell shows up to help fight Ramrod and Terrex, although Rick Jones doesn't really have a sense of urgency about letting Marvel out of the Negative Zone.

Terrax is defeated by Moondragon helping Angar create an illusion of a giant egg that leaks "un-life". No, i don't know what that means either, but hey, it works.

While all this is going on, the police chief Robert O'Hara gets a telegram informing him that his brother is dead. This is setting up for the continuation of the plot from Shanna the She-Devil, since that series was canceled and Gerber was writing that as well. I don't know if it was planned all along that Robert was Shanna's uncle, or if Gerber just took advantage of a coincidence that occurred due to the fact that all policemen in comic books have Irish last names.

In Moondragon's origin flashback in issue #105 we get to see a baby Thanos.

Here are a few appearances by Lucretia Jones, the reporter introduced in DD #95. Nothing really special; she's partially serving as a plot narrator, and/or Gerber was just keeping her visible as a supporting character for the series.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - origin of Moondragon. Resolution of the crime mastermind of San Francisco plot.

Chronological Placement Considerations: Takes place between Captain Marvel #30 and #31.

References:

• News reporter Lucretia Jones met Daredevil in Daredevil #95-96.
  
• Thanos was shown to be in control of Titan as of Captain Marvel #27.
  
• Moondragon caused a fight between Namor and Iron Man in Iron Man #54 (incorrectly listed in the footnote as #55). It turns out she was testing them to see how they'd stack up against Thanos.
  
• Dardevil previously fought Mordecai/the Dark Messiah in Daredevil #98.
  
• He fought Ramrod in Daredevil #103.
  
• He fought Angar the Screamer in Daredevil #100-101.
  
• Matt Murdock wouldn't run his cases the way his boss Broderick asked him to in Daredevil #98, Daredevil #101, Daredevil #103, and in this arc.
  
• Captain Marvel has been on the move since the "Kree Jewels case" in Marvel Team-Up #16-17.
  
• This takes place after Captain Marvel's metamorphosis in Captain Marvel #29.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Foom #2 announced Terrex as "Terra of the Living Earth".

This flashback has been ignored ever since because Thanos is usually written as being an adult when he killed Heather's parents.
It makes no sense that Moondragon didn't realize that Kerwin was a bad guy. She should have been able to read his mind. He didn't have false memory implants and he wasn't an insane person who believed that what he was telling her was true- he was just lying to her.

"Shao-Lom" is a reference to the Shao-Lin monastery in some kung fu films.

Hadn't thought about it before, but Moondragon's backstory of her parents being killed by a random space-villain encounter has similarities to the random alien attack/abduction Claremont works into Cyclops's backstory. Claremont was assistant editor or something for these DD issues, I believe. (Though the Thanos attack is added to Moonie's history a little later than this, I guess.)

Raises some interesting questions of how directly Starlin's Warlock myths may have inspired Claremont's Shi'ar stuff on X-Men.

Only a C- SERIOUSLY? Come on!

It's clear from the dialogue or narration that both the two panels of Paul and Natasha and the first two panels of Lucretia and Ashley you've reproduced from page 7 of #105 were in each case printed out of sequence.

Hey, those scenes read a lot better in the right order!

I believe those scenes of Thanos & Eros as children are being treated as a flashback within a flashback by the MCP.

Color goof on Kraven's vest. I noticed this back in the 70's when I had this comic. It's supposed to be a tan color, matching the lion's mane. The vest has the face of a lion, and lions aren't green. (Well, none of the lions I've come across!)

BERWYN!!!! Sorry, as a Svengooli fan I couldn't resist.

Also Rick Jones ordered TWO scopes of Vanilla ice cream! Why is one pink!?

The greater question is obvious: why won't Captain Marvel just let him eat his ice cream? Unless he just thinks that the kid is going to want to share it with Thanos or something. (I think the mad titan's favorite flavor is "Deathberry" myself)

I notice the footnote reference refers to issues 95-96 as "Daredevil/Black Widow." Was that ever the title's "official" name? (If you've addressed this previously, feel free to direct me!)

"Daredevil and the Black Widow" was the title on the cover from issues #92-107. It was never called that in the indicia, though.

Just as a note, somehow Moondragon is still called "Madame McEvil" on the cover of 105, even wearing she is still in her outfit from the Iron Man issue on the cover. Considering this is the first time that she is actually called Moondragon, I guess they just wanted consistancy alongside her first appearance in Iron Man.

I feel like there's a little more going on in this issues than just a big brawl. Almost all of the villains are tied to trends or political archetypes of the times: Ramrod is the "hardhat," which had become a sort of symbol of Nixon's "silent majority" after some confrontations between construction workers and hippies; Dark Messiah and Angar are hippie types; and Terrex, as a big green thing tied to the life force of the planet, is clearly some sort of riff on the ecology movement. It's probably supposed to mean something that they're all used by a rich lawyer who goes by "the Man" before his identity is revealed.

Unfortunately, it's all rather incoherent int he end, so whatever it's supposed to be saying, I don't know.

That panel of troubled child Thanos is the best thing I've seen all week...

In between #106 and #107, Angar's swastika somehow becomes a dove.

The most memorable line from #107, when Daredevil acknowledges taking on someone well above his weight class: "How can a glorified acrobat fight a god gone mad?"

Paul Carson's partner, Officer McHeny(no first name ever given) appears in #97 and #101, and Robert O'Hara's assistant, Officer Kowalski(again, no first name given) appears in #106-107.

Rolling Stone's involvement in this big long story doesn't make a great deal of sense, despite the fact that Daredevil was based in San Francisco at the time and something special was needed for the 100th issue. The magazine would do exposes on unethical practices in the music business and on government misbehavior on such things like Vietnam or drug laws, but it didn't really investigate local organized crime figures(at that point, anyway).

Moondragon's involvement in this story seems to have been tacked on halfway through. There really isn't anything before #103(she first shows up there in a flashback with a strangely bald Kerwin Broderick, but that was probably due to miscommunication with Don Heck) that indicates any alien-type involvement. I'm guessing that Gerber had discussions with Starlin & Friedrich & Englehart & Thomas and thought it would be a good idea to spread the Thanos epic out some more and get this book involved with it(which resulted in some bad sales consequences).

Moondragon's in-story reason for being here, as Michael pointed out, doesn't make much sense either. You'd think she'd seek out Reed Richards or Tony Stark rather than some rich San Francisco lawyer, and considering that she's Titan's most powerful telepath, she'd probably detect Professor X(or vice versa).

Mark, i've added a tag for Officer McHeny, but from what you say it sounds like Officer Kowalski only appears in issues covered in this entry, so i haven't listed him. Thanks.

Moondragon's origin here has some further contradictions with the later version: the car crash isn't Thanos's doing, but rather some sort of side-effect of the Titanian UFO causing its electrical system to shut down. Also, Mentor is apparently with someone named Kazantra, and he speaks to her as though she is the mother of Thanos and Eros. She'a definitely not Sui-San, in any case.

Kazantra has a line about Earth "becoming a wasteland..unhealthy for children and other living things," a reference to the slogan "war is unhealthy for children and other living things," which was used by the anti-war group Another Mother for Peace. The organization's founder, Barbara Avedon, was a television writer who later co-created the TV series Cagney and Lacey.

According to the GCD "The origin of Moondragon, pages 17-26 [of #105], is then-year-old Jim Starlin material intended for a 1972 Iron Man issue, according to the Captain Marvel #29 letters page."

As Matthew Bradley points out several panels are clearly out of sequence, which is made even more odd by the ''non-sequitur" narration box, which seems to indicate that the mistake was noticed (at least in the first instance) but not fixed for some reason. Surely if they could add that text box they could have switched the panels?

It's interesting to consider Moondragon's "un-life" illusion in the context of the New Gods that inspired her and the Titans. In Kirby's opus, "anti-life" wasn't about life and death in the literal sense; it was about loss of freedom, particularly freedom of thought, that is willingly surrendered to allay fear of responsibility, and which is instrumental in the rise of fascism. "Anti-life" is a term used by the philosopher Erich Fromm to describe fear-inspired "negative freedom", as opposed to the more difficult "freedom to". Gerber wrote some good stories about "fear of freedom", but in this story un-life is just a big, black egg.