Issue(s): Daredevil #108, Daredevil #109
Cover Date: Mar-May 74
Title: "Cry... Beetle!" / "Dying for dollar$!"
Credits:
Steve Gerber - Writer
Bob Brown - Penciler
Paul Gulacy / Don Heck - Inker

Review/plot:
Daredevil and the Black Widow have a fight about their relationship. This is triggered by the Black Widow's rage during a battle with some thugs...

...and Matt's attraction for Moondragon, but it's been a long time coming anyway. Then Matt hears that Foggy Nelson, who is the DA in New York, has been shot by a sniper, and he gets Moondragon to fly him back to the East Coast in her space ship.

She breaks up with him during the ride.

At the hospital, Matt meets Foggy's family for the first time, including Foggy's fiance Debbie Harris (not seen since issue #60), and a sister that Foggy never mentioned.

The Mrs. Nelson that appears in this story will (much later) be revealed to by Foggy's step mother. Before passing out, Foggy says he believes he was shot because he was involved in a gang war case and investigating someone called the Black Specter.

As Daredevil, Matt picks up the trail, but runs into the Beetle stealing government money printing plates.

While they are fighting, agents of the Black Specter appear and attack them both and steal the plates.

Meanwhile back in LA, the Black Widow gets captured by Nekra.

Daredevil later responds to a riot caused by piles of money being thrown in the street. The Beetle shows up again and he and Daredevil team-up to fight the Black Specter agents. While fighting, DD picks up some clues about the agents but no conclusion is drawn for the reader yet (I'll spoil the surprise and tell you that they are all women, because the Black Specter is really the Mandrill and he has the ability to 'charm' women).

Then the Beetle knocks DD out with a sneak attack. He's later revived by San Francisco police chief Robert O'Hara who was in NY on his way back from his brother's funeral. Then O'Hara's niece Shanna the She-Devil shows up with her two pet cheetahs.

Interesting remarks on the letters page regarding Spider-Man and Daredevil's IDs in Daredevil #108. The letter says:

I enjoyed Spider-Man's guest-starring role in Daredevil #103. However, there were several large gaps in the logic in the tale. To begin with, Spider-Man has known who DD is since Daredevil #16; he even wrote a letter to Murdock in DD #24 telling him of this. Nevertheless, this fact is totally ignored in Daredevil #103.

On a similar track, since Daredevil first met Spider-Man in Spidey #16, his radar sense did [sic?] a very precise conception of what Spidey looked like. Granted that Daredevil might not have recognized him when they first met for the interview, but he most certainly would have recognized the similarity in heartbeats between Parker and Spider-Man during or at least after the fight with Ramrod when Parker once again popped up on the scene.

Try to get out of that one.

And the response is:

Okay, here goes...!

In Daredevil #54, horn-head faked the death of Matt Murdock (for his own purposes) which prompted Spidey, on page 13 of that issue, to think: "Funny... I once thought DD was a blind lawyer! But Matt Murdock's dead now! So scratch one web-headed hunch!" Later, when the whole business about Matt's phony twin brother was made public, Spidey accepted the explanation that the Daredevil he had suspected to be Matt was actually "Mike" Murdock. And that was that.

As for DD not recognizing the similarity in heartbeats between Pete's and Spidey's... well, we'll award you a tentative no-prize.... on the grounds that we should've said something and just plain forgot! In other words, maybe - just maybe - DD does know Spidey's secret. But we'll have to wait for a future issue to find out. Okay?

Daredevil, which has been in bi-monthly status due to poor sales for sometime, was scheduled to go back to monthly status with issue #110. Was this due to the addition of Steve Gerber as writer or did it just reflect changes in the market?

This is the last appearance of Lucretia Jones, a reporter that was introduced back in DD #95 as a supporting character as part of Gerry Conway's attempt at feminism. I see that she's been promoted to a newsanchor role, so that's good for her, but i also see that she had to change her ethnicity back to white again, like it was in her first appearance, in order to get the promotion.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - reveals Shanna the She-Devil is Robert "Ironguts" O'Hara's niece. DD breaks up with both the Black Widow and Moondragon. First appearance of Foggy Nelson's sister Candace.

Chronological Placement Considerations: It has been "two months" since Daredevil met Moondragon in Daredevil #105-107. In issue #109, a caption says it has been an additional "two months" since Daredevil left her life. Daredevil appears in Marvel Two-In-One #3 in between this arc and Daredevil #110. Code of Honor #1 shows events from Marvel Two-In-One #2 happening before the Daredevil/Beetle fight in this arc.

References:

• Daredevil met Moondragon in Daredevil #105.
  
• Foggy Nelson's father paid the rent for Nelson & Murdock's first law office in Daredevil #1.
  
• Reflecting on her relationship with Matt, the Black Widow remembers her late husband, the Red Guardian, who appeared in Avengers #43-44.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Steve Gerber admitted somewhere--maybe the DD letters column--that the bi-monthly status was his fault, due to the more cosmic aspects of the Moondragon/Terrex story not really fitting with Daredevil. Supposedly the Marvel higher-ups made the book monthly again on his promise to keep the stories more ground-level.

The title to #109 refers to the cheesy old TV show "Bowling For Dollars".

And here I figured the mystery was going to be that the soldiers were cat people, what with the highlighted grace and speed.

In your Historical Significance Rating, you've confused Foggy's sister, Candace, and his inamorata, Debbie Harris.

Thanks, Matthew. Fixed it.

Daredevil was attracted to Moondragon? Are you kidding?

I could go with the obligatory blind joke - after all he's with Black Widow, probably the hottest character in the MU (as Ultimate Peter Parker would say "She's the hottest woman I've ever seen. And I have cable.") and Moondragon, even aside from being bald, isn't exactly hot.

But let's ignore the blind aspect. Moondragon may be the most arrogant character in the MU and is certainly one of the most annoying. She has absolutely zero appeal in terms of attraction. I suppose she might have been different back in 1974, but I don't think she could have been that different.

Why wouldn't Daredevil be attracted to Moondragon?

She is renowned as physically beautiful and Matt even acknowledged this with his radar sense the minute he "saw" her. She allowed him to see for a brief time which further made Matt appreciative of her.

His relationship with Black Widow has been all over the place, at best, and Moondragon posed an alternative. Matt had never really met a woman like this before, a "goddess", and he fell for her. She was so other worldly and confident, so interesting and so very different to him.

It wasn't handled great but to say Moondragon has zero appeal in terms of attraction is not true. Her character is arrogant and prickly but so is Black Widow at times. She's done some bad and irredeemable stuff under certain writers, but so has Scarlet Witch.

But, if you really really hate it, you can just chalk it up to more Moondragon mentally forcing a man to love her.

Was it ever explained why Black Widow was dropped from the title? Did she help or hurt sales?

Interviews with Steve Gerber, the writer at the time, underscore that he felt like Daredevil's story is best told from its solitary, unique place in existence. "One man alone, in total darkness" as he put it, here: http://www.manwithoutfear.com/daredevil-interviews/Gerber
I'm not sure what difference Natasha made in DD sales- I found her appealing and interesting, but perhaps (due to the writers' limitations?) featuring her paired with DD wasn't the best situation. Alas, times seem not yet to have arrived for her to thrive in a solo book.

Heather is supposed to be physically perfect, as well as mentally superior. That would have been helped by an artist like John Romita, Sr., or Gil Kane. Bob Brown couldn't really pull it off.

Richard Howell owns the original artwork for that page with Shanna and her two pet cheetahs. As he recently recounted on Facebook...

"Once Mike Burkey informed me that he had a huge pile of inventory, all drawn by Bob Brown, I asked--in a perfectly non-insane tone of voice "Do you have the closing page of DAREDEVIL #109?" Mike--to understate the situation--was a tiny bit amazed that I a) remembered the page, and 2) plucked the remembrance (of things past) so immediately out of what Bob Brown non-splash page I would desire. It turns out that he did have it…for sale…(I think that he was a bit boggled that I cited that page over any other), so I bought it."

I'd guess it's more than coincidental that Robert O'Hara's nickname of "Ironguts" is so similar to the classic TV police drama "Ironside", starring Raymond Burr as a wheelchair-bound detective and police consultant also based out of San Francisco. Unless, of course, in his youth he had worked as a sideshow geek or man with a cast-iron stomach:-)