Issue(s): Daredevil #252
Cover Date: Mar 88
Title: "Ground zero"
Credits:
Ann Nocenti - Writer
John Romita Jr. - Penciler
Al Williamson - Inker
Ralph Macchio - Editor

Review/plot:
This is one of the Ann Nocenti Daredevil issues that i read in realtime, since it was a Fall of the Mutants tie-in. And from that perspective this $1.25 issue was kind of a rip-off to younger me, since aside from brief appearances by Death...

War, and Pestilence...

...this story doesn't play into the larger Fall storyline. I did come to appreciate it more later, since it almost offers a Marvels-esque look at the regular person-on-the-street reaction to the events of Fall of the Mutants (or at least the X-Factor portion). I didn't know who many of the characters were, but that actually worked better because it was just like an anonymous cross section of the city.

Ultimately, though, this is Daredevil teaming up with a group of Guardian Angel style vigilantes...

...to fight a group of Mad Max style criminals...

...who, along with nearly everybody else, think it's the end of the world thanks to all this talk of Apocalypse and the Four Horsemen. The Black Widow has also resurfaced, but mainly to complain about helping Matt at his legal clinic.

Daredevil winds up fighting against even the vigilantes when he won't let them rape one of the other group's women.

And the boy Cain that was hanging around the clinic winds up getting killed by the rape victim.

Very Nocenti! As is this line about dead bodies being "so promiscuous like lovers".

The ray of hope in this issue is about a guy that escapes a police holding cell because of Apocalypse's attack, and finds an abandoned baby in an alley. The presence of the baby prevents him from killing someone for his clothes...

...and at the end of the issue we see that the guy is keeping the baby.

There was no way this story was going to get me interested in Daredevil when i picked it up in realtime, but i actually think it's a pretty good issue now, especially with the Romita art creating an appropriately apocalyptic atmosphere.

Quality Rating: B

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: This takes place during X-Factor #25.

References:

• "See X-Factor #25 for the full story" regarding what's happening here.

Crossover: Fall of the Mutants

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Ammo appears again as one of a group of villains assembled by Typhoid Mary to get revenge on Daredevil.

Thanks Michael. Listed him as a Character Appearing.

I like Ammo. I think street level heroes like Daredevil need recurring ordinary criminals to a certain extent to ground them more into the kind of crime they fight. They only need a ruthlessness and intelligence to elevate them along with some kind of gang or cohort. Maybe not as ongoing antagonists which implies some equality, but to build a mythos for the main character.

I like supporting casts in general, and recurring characters are a part of that whether part of the police force, criminals, or civilians. It's a good way to provide reactions from normal people.

Ok. Done with Nocenti. Even with her Longshot series I couldn't see what the fuss was about.

The next issue box in DD #251 states that Bad Seed is a new villain and that Bullet would fight War of the Horsemen. Instead, Bullet has brief cameo sitting at home with his son, while Bad Seed is just a confused teenager swept up in Ammo's rhetoric who ends up dead by the end of the story and Ammo is the new villain.

Never mind; it's not the next issue box; instead, I think it's a solicit in the Bullpen bulletins page or something. I distinctly remember a fight between Bullet and War being promoted somewhere during all of this.

Yeah,it's the solicit in Bullpen Bulletins- "Apocalypse's Horseman War takes on the masked assassin Bullet in this 48-page spectacular".

Thanks for finding that. I was beginning to think I'd imagined the whole thing.

There seems to have been a lot of editorial and/or marketing miscommunication around Fall of the Mutants, especially where the more peripheral tie-ins are concerned.

Always really liked this issue, especially for the Romita Jr. art. It's a very apocalyptic mood on the streets, really evoking how much terror the Horsemen were creating with their attack. Their cameo in the beginning really captured, much the way Marvels would later, how it must feel for the average citizen to watch these extraordinary events happening and not knowing the particulars of it.