Obsessively putting our comics in chronological order since 1985.
| 1987-10-01 00:05:10 |
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Daredevil #247
Issue(s): Daredevil #247
Cover Date: Oct 87
Title: "The backwards man"
Credits:
Ann Nocenti - Writer
Keith Giffen - Penciler
David Hunt - Inker
Ralph Macchio - Editor
Review/plot:
Ann Nocenti returns to the super-soldier program that we saw in her fill-in debut in issue #236. That issue had Hazzard, who had been through Project Heart Attack and indeed had the power to stop people's hearts. But the program also was involved in stripping out soldiers' memories, so that they were functioning only on their core reptilian brain. And this issue goes back to that idea and gives us Agent Crock, a "beneficiary" of that program.
He's got a few wires in his head and he's able to pull on them to trigger a few select memories, but he's otherwise a blank slate. Not that he seems to have been too stable to begin with: from one of his retained memories we see that he had weirdly obsessive moods that alienated him from his wife, and one day he decided to test his wife by letting himself fall off a cliff, hoping that she'd prove her love by catching him. She didn't.
And so now he's a super-soldier.
He was being prepared to hunt down and capture the Black Widow after she didn't return from the Hazzard affair (it is confirmed that this is all part of a "secret government agent ring"), but he escaped. He nonetheless hunted down the Widow and apparently scared her real bad. She's an absolute wreck this issue, going to Daredevil for help...
...and disappointingly unable to fight for herself at all.
It's said she's also emotionally crippled after participating in Hazzard's death. Even giving her a spare Daredevil uniform doesn't help boost her morale.
She does, in the end, reach out to stop Crock from falling, and when he asks if it means that she really loves him, she says yes. Daredevil assures us that "she'll be fine now", but not from what i see in that word salad mess of dialogue she's spouting. And she's still not ready to go after the professor of the super-soldier program. But a camera-eyed crocodile is watching them.
This being a Nocenti story, Daredevil has some weird and surreal memories too...
...and indeed every character has bizarre thought bubbles, either on-the-nose literal or over-the-top crazy.
As Nocenti has Daredevil say, everyone is communicating from their deep subconscious.
Yow-wow-wow.
Quality Rating: C
Historical Significance Rating: 1
Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A
References:
- This super-soldier program was first seen in Daredevil #236.
Crossover: N/A
Continuity Insert? N
My Reprint: N/A
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Comments
This can't be Rick Leonardi. Who's the actual penciler? Could be Keith Giffen.
You're right; i had the credits from #248 listed. It is Giffen and inker David Hunt. Thanks.
Giffen was clearly in his much-derided Jose Munoz phase here. Nothing at all like his Kirby-ish 70's work on The Defenders.
Amazing Heroes Preview #5 said that Dr. Strike was also supposed to the doctor behind everything in Nocenti's Spider-Man 3-parter.
An early version of the cover was printed in Amazing Heroes #157.
Wow. Legion / Justice League flashback here. Didn't realize Giffen did any Marvel work at this point.
I've never actually read Giffen comics of this era, but looking at these scans, I'm surprised how obviously he's imitating Jose Muñoz. No wonder he caught some flak for of it.
