Daredevil #35-38Issue(s): Daredevil #35, Daredevil #36, Daredevil #37, Daredevil #38 Review/plot: Still, you don't want to actually go to jail, so better get some legal advice first, right? Of course everyone knows that Matt Murdock is really Daredevil. Well, the Trapster clearly knows. Foggy and Karen still get mad when Matt acts casual about his "brother" getting threatened. But it gets them out of the room (in a huff; really guys? Are you really that dumb?)... ...so that Matt can change into Daredevil and answer Pete's challenge. Pete wins the fight, sort of, by covering Daredevil with the Wizard's anti-gravity discs. Of course, Daredevil gets out of that situation by, um, pulling them off (and, admittedly, being able to gracefully survive the fall). Meanwhile, Pete's victory goes to his head and he decides to defeat the Fantastic Four for an encore, while dressed up as DD. Luckily when he shows up at the Baxter Building, only the Invisible Girl is there, and she has an uncharacteristically bad showing even for this time period. Daredevil shows up in time to rescue her from the bomb he set. Then Mr. Fantastic and the Human Torch show up... ...but Daredevil demands that he be allowed the rematch with the Trapster, and the FF are fine with that. I mean, it's only Paste Pot Pete, right? Actually Daredevil tells the FF that Pete is really dangerous this time because "his asbestos glue is fire-proof". The FF politely keep to themselves the fact that this is always the case. Daredevil defeats the Trapster... ...but suddenly Dr. Doom shows up and starts beating the crap out of him. DD is taken to the Latverian embassy. There Doom explains why he isn't dead (Galactus' barrier was keyed to the Silver Surfer specifically, so when Doom collided into it, Galactus sent him back to Latveria). Then Doom switches bodies with Daredevil. We've seen Dr. Doom do a mind-swap before, in Fantastic Four #10, but that was without the aid of any kind of technology, and we'll see him use that method again later in John Byrne's run (it's also used in 2010's Spider-Man/Fantastic Four #1 continuity insert). Maybe this time he was trying to enhance the process in some way? Doom/DD heads out to trick the Fantastic Four while Daredevil/Doom is left in a prison cell. In the most rational scheme ever executed by a character written by Stan Lee, Daredevil makes the most of the body switch, first ordering Dooms minions to release him and then summoning his ministers and ordering them to declare war on all Latveria's neighbors. This forces Doom to return home and switch bodies back so he can stop the international incident. Daredevil also got a message to the Fantastic Four that he and Doom had switched bodies. While Doom is still in DD's body, he runs into Debbie Harris, who he of course acts coldly towards. Foggy sees this and gets mad. Foggy was recently approached to run for District Attorney. Debbie resurfaced immediately after that... ...but Foggy isn't sure if he should be associating with her because of her criminal record (to say the least! She was manipulating him the last time he ran for DA; it's amazing how naive Foggy is that he doesn't suspect her sudden re-emergence now. But then, he still thinks Daredevil is "Mike Murdock".). There's no mention at the end of issue #37 after the body switch of Daredevil's blindness, but it's covered for at the beginning of the next issue. It's interesting that Doom gets pretty far down the street before he even realizes that there's something different and observes that he seems to sense things rather than see them. I chalk that up to Doom's incomparable ability to adapt. Colan draws a nice Doom. Quality Rating: C+ Chronological Placement Considerations: This story continues directly in Fantastic Four #73. Since Thor also appears in that issue in between panels of the last few pages of Thor #150, this most likely takes place concurrently with Thor #150. A footnote in Daredevil #36 says the reason the FF are unavailable is because of the events of Fantastic Four #71 (with no specific reference to events), even though we saw them previously in DD #36. Reed quits the FF at the end of FF #71 at the end of an arc that began in FF #68 and rejoins the team at the end of FF #72. And these Daredevil issues continue directly in FF #73. So there's no way that these Daredevil issues could fit concurrently with all those FFs. The MCP agrees, putting these issues between FF #72-73. References:
Crossover: N/A Continuity Insert? N My Reprint: N/A Inbound References (7): show 1968 / Box 4 / Silver Age CommentsI think it's very telling that once Colan shows up any real creative juice on DD seems to go away. Instead of new villains, we get rehashed loser villains of other titles. This not a knock on Colan. Instead, it reveals how dependent Stan Lee was on others - particularly Ditko and Kirby, but for DD we can even add Wally Wood. These DD issues are just painful. Posted by: Chris | December 21, 2012 8:36 PM Sometime in 1968 comic strip artist Bill Lignante drew a Dr. Doom solo story for Marvel; it was rejected and never completed. One page of it got published in Marvelmania #3. Posted by: Mark Drummond | December 30, 2012 7:40 PM You are correct when you say that the Invisible Girl has a terrible showing here, even for 1968. The Trapster captures her quite easily and almost finishes her off! Yet again, Stan Lee shows his affinity for making Sue Storm a victim. Posted by: Frightful Four fan | May 10, 2013 6:18 AM One problem with the Dr. Doom story: Red China didn't have any allies in Eastern Europe(Sino-Soviet relations weren't that good). Posted by: Mark Drummond | July 27, 2013 2:53 PM Well they did have Albania as an ally. Posted by: Michael | July 27, 2013 2:59 PM I didn't notice this before, but did Sue Storm ever wear that costume with the black line trim ever again? Posted by: Mark Drummond | December 7, 2013 11:56 PM As far as I know, Sue only wore this mini-skirted costume in FF #68-71. In the FF issues this costume didn't have the back stripe that Colan draws here--but hey, she may have had various versions of this outfit on hand. Posted by: Shar | December 8, 2013 3:20 PM And by "back stripe" I'm referring to the vertical black stripe that's seen on the back view of Sue ("It's the Trapster's Paste Gun!!" panel above). In the Kirby FF issues 68-71, the vertical stripe appears on the front of Sue's costume only--and not on the back. Posted by: Shar | December 8, 2013 6:23 PM I completely agree with Chris. (First comment above.) Over the course of the first 19 issues of "Daredevil", Everett, Orlando, Wood, and Romita co-create: Matt Murdock, Daredevil, The Owl, The Purple Man, Mr Fear, Stilt-Man, The Gladiator, and others. Gene Colan joins the book starting with #20, and this story arc brings us forward another 19 issues. In this same amount of time, Colan co-creates: um... "Mike Murdock" and The Leap-Frog Posted by: Rand | February 10, 2015 12:32 PM That last pic is fantastic! Posted by: Wanyas the Self-Proclaimed | February 10, 2015 12:43 PM Marvel was already teeming with villains, I think it makes a lot of sense for them to be integrated into other series like DD instead of making more specifically for him. I also do not think Gene Colan was asked to create new villains nor did Stan Lee have a need to, because at this point there are very few new characters coming as they had created quite a playground. I wish even more villains from other books had showed up in DD under Colan's pencil, although I do have to wonder why nobody was ever able to give him a proper thematic rogues gallery. It's amazing that it takes another 150 issues before someone thinks to appropriate the Kingpin for Matt. Posted by: PeterA | July 17, 2015 1:05 AM I'm surprised no one has ever made a poster of that awesome strut of "DoomDevil". Posted by: Ataru320 | July 17, 2015 10:02 AM I liked these issues myself. Red China was allied with Albania in Eastern Europe. I liked Daredevil's solution as well. Posted by: Bobby Sisemore | November 13, 2016 6:09 PM I'm with Ataru on that last panel. One can hear the Bee Gees' classic "Stayin' Alive" as "DoomDevil" (clever, Ataru!) prances through NYC streets like he owns the city. Posted by: Brian Coffey | July 12, 2017 10:53 PM The splash page by Colan of Doom/DD behind bars is indeed awesome. It's a partial swipe of Kirby's splash panel from FF #57, published a year earlier, showing Doom's shout of triumph after stealing the Silver Surfer's power: compare especially the way Doom's hood settles around his mask. They're both great drawings; but how interesting is it that the same expression could be used to depict two opposing emotional states? Posted by: Chris Z | September 14, 2017 6:28 AM How can this be the same writer who wrote the Fantastic Four? Sue, just because she's pasted to the floor, can't use her force field to keep Pete from leaving the room? Can't wrap her force field around a bomb to protect herself and others when it detonates? Takes a nap after Pete leaves, and is unconscious when Daredevil finally arrives? Doom can't even tell that he's blind? Please. Posted by: James Holt | September 24, 2017 6:17 PM Soooo tempted to say "it's almost like Lee had less to do with the FF stories than Kirby did"... Posted by: Morgan Wick | September 25, 2017 10:47 PM @Morgan, Just to be up front about it, that's what I've long believed... but, Stan's Soapbox says: negativity never netted me, no no prizes, 'nuff said, true believer... and other things of that ilk. One could argue that, working in the Marvel method, Stan gave Gene a loose outline, and, not being nearly so familiar with the characters, Gene laid out the art as well as he could, inadvertently painting Stan into some corners, and deadlines are always a real factor. Nevertheless it seems to me that Stan could have worked some no-prize winning contrivances of his own into the narrative and dialog. For instance, since Sue was pregnant, maybe her powers were short-circuited, maybe she was exhausted for that or some other reason, and passed out before Daredevil appeared at the window. I have more trouble with the Doctor Doom angle, though. Surely nothing that would hold up in court in terms of "proving" Kirby was the real writer all along, and Stan at some point even produced that controversial one-page synopsis. Maybe Stan was exhausted too, if he was really scripting, what, DD, FF, Thor, etc., every month. I just offer these observations as more circumstantial evidence in the long running debate; it's nearly impossible for me to believe that the person writing DD is the same person who wrote FF. Also, as others have pointed out on this site, no comparable villains were created, and there's that matter of Mike Murdock, wow. I do believe that Stan created Mike (rolls eyes). Posted by: James Holt | September 26, 2017 4:56 AM Going by fnord's extract it looks like Colan intended Sue to have been knocked unconscious, and Lee didn't see why she would have been and gave her dialogue indicating she was awake but helpless. Posted by: Luke Blanchard | September 26, 2017 8:08 AM Thanks Luke. That makes sense, but looking back at #35, Sue appears conscious and struggling to escape the paste on page 17, panel 3, right after she gets pasted to the floor. She and Trapster have a 3 panel conversation starting with that panel. On page 20 panel 3 she clearly has her eyes open. The panel shown above (p. 38 panel 1) is the only one where she clearly has her eyes closed, until issue #36 panel 1, where her eyes are closed again, and Daredevil takes her to be unconscious. Another continuity problem with this whole FF/DD crossover is that Sue shouldn't even be at the Baxter Building or in costume during this whole sequence. She and Reed were in civilian clothes, and on a transcontinental train trip to California, in FF #72, when the Watcher showed up and teleported Reed back to NYC, leaving Sue on the train somewhere near a mountain range, presumably the Rockies. She's not seen in NYC again until FF #73, after Matt and Victor's mind swap has been reversed. If this was the same writer, he should have noticed that continuity slip and avoided it. The DD writer doesn't seem to know anything about what was going on in FF #71-73. Posted by: James Holt | September 26, 2017 6:34 PM I haven't seen those other panels. Is it possible Colan meant Sue to be falling asleep because of a drug in the glue? In his review of DAREDEVIL ANNUAL #1 fnord has a panel from the back-up story which shows Lee plotting a story with Colan. Lee is depicted as describing the story in broad strokes and leaving a lot to Colan to work out. That fits with John Romita Sr's account of how Lee would act stories out for artists. Making up a story involves coming up with ideas and fleshing them out. A lot of the quality of a story comes from how it's fleshed out: how it's paced, whether the action's exciting, whether it has imaginative visual touches. Probably Lee left more up to some artists than others, and how much of a drive the artist had to plot was a factor. Posted by: Luke Blanchard | September 27, 2017 5:19 PM That's possible but I saw no indication of it. At the end of #35, Sue was conscious with her eyes open, and her thoughts indicated she was fully aware of the danger presented by the bomb. As DD landed on the roof, her last thought balloon said, "That sound! A soft, muffled thud on the rooftop!! Someone-- is there--!" This lead right to the first page splash panel of #36, where her eyes were unexpectedly closed. DD radar-sensed her through a top floor window, and assumed she was unconscious. He used his billy club cable to remove the bomb before entering through the window. The bomb exploded more or less safely in mid-air. It appeared that Sue had already partly opened the window, which might explain why the Baxter Building's normal security systems were inactive. She awakened right after DD entered the window. My best guess is that Lee was under deadline pressure and simply forgot how the previous issue had ended. Both he and Kirby frequently made continuity slips between issues. They didn't work from full scripts and thus had few or no reference materials other than memories. The art pages from the previous issue had already been sent to the printers. Seems safe to assume that Colan and other artists who were also working under the Marvel method had the same handicaps. The many other continuity slips and oddities in characterization, however, strike me as more difficult to explain away. Posted by: James Holt | September 27, 2017 8:34 PM Comments are now closed. |
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